Re: Electricity!

T <nospam.kd1s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:MPG.1f39cb5247e62b42989a6f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

In article <Xns9812CD76466F5f99a49ed1d0c49c5bbb2@xxxxxxxxx>,
XXXusenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
"David W. Fenton" <XXXusenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:Xns98129B6B739FDf99a49ed1d0c49c5bbb2@xxxxxxxxx:

Things today seem to be quite stable, though. There haven't
been any voltage drops at all since early this morning (8-9am).

Well, starting about 5pm, it returned to the voltage swings ever
5-15 minutes. I needed to check something out on an old version
of Windows and had to turn on a Win95 PC from 1996 that I know
works perfectly well. It shut down and rebooted with every one of
these power swings, while my 1999-era PC (the one I use all the
time) stayed on all but 2 of them. I don't know if that indicates
that the older PC had a substandard power supply or if it has
just worn out (I used it as my daily workstation until 2001, but
the other machine was used as a file server starting in 2000, so
it has been in daily use for longer than the Win95 box was).

In any event, this is getting REALLY BORING.

Wow - you hold on to machines as long as I do. I just bought
myself a new one this past December. But the old one is sitting in
a closet, just in case. It dates to 1998.

Well, the cost of migrating to a new machine is REALLY HIGH. I keep
telling this to clients who want to buy $400 PCs, that such a
machine will need to be replaced in 3 years of so.

I just migrated a client to a new PC who'd had the old one for SEVEN
YEARS. The machine worked just fine, still, but something or other
prompted her to upgrade. She's an accountant and the process was
HORRID because of the terrible accounting packages that upgrade
themselves dynamically with downloads over her slow dialup
connection. The problem is that the applications don't keep the
dynamic data that was downloaded (mostly tax forms and tax tables,
not binary files) separate from the executables. The result is that
she has to redownload a lot of the updates whenever she needs to
refer back to the old tax returns.

And it cost about $800 in my time to do the migration.

However, the total cost including hardware was less than the
hardware-only cost of her old PC.

I don't migrate for two reasons, one being the reason above, and the
second being that running an old PC makes it possible for me to
program reasonably for my clients. If it's fast enough on my machine
it will be just fine for all my clients, who almost all have faster
machines than mine.

And companies like Dell wonder why they can't meet investor
expectations. Hello - if you make the hardware last for more than
3 or 4 years its going to impact your sales.

I don't understand why Windows migration is not as easy as OS X, and
why some classes of programs (tax programs) are so incredibly badly
designed.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/
.

Relevant Pages

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