__/ [Ray Ingles] on Thursday 09 February 2006 14:05 \__
> So my niece is over at our house last night to help my wife with some
> baking and such, and I'm going to give her some help with her math
> homework. She's got some courseware loaded on her laptop, and we boot it
> up. I didn't time it, but I'd have to say it took this 1.5GHz, 256MB RAM
> machine running XP Home over four minutes *minimum* to boot up to the
> login screen, and then at least three minutes after clicking the login
> icon before the system was settled enough to run any applications.
>
> "Yeah, my computer's pretty slow," she admitted. "And sometimes it says
> it's out of virtual memory, whatever that is."
>
> Yup, spyware all over the place. Literally, no fooling, two *dozen*
> processes running under her username before a single app was launched. I
> didn't even bother to try to eliminate it, I don't have that much spare
> time. I told her about Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D and wished her luck.
> Maybe next time she comes over we'll set them up scanning and go do
> something else while they run. She's definitely going to be switching to
> Firefox.
>
> She's got enough spare disk that at some point I'll set up an Ubuntu
> install for her and see if she likes it.
Rest assured that even a clean and properly-configured Windows box slows
down considerably after some software installations. That fallacy that
Windows boots fast should be taken with a barrel of salt. It neglects to
take into account an important fact: Windows out-of-the-box, which boots
up quickly by all means, is a naked and non-functional tool to work with.
To use an equipment-type analogy, base SuSE is like a pitchfork whereas
base Windows is like a pool cue for plowing a field.
Once you load up a dozen decent-sized applications, assuming the hardware
specifications above and Windows XP, a 3-minute load time is rather all
right. I have seen Windows XP machines that take around 5 minutes to boot
and log into. With Linux, things scale differently as the notion of the
Registry is non-existent. I have seen colleagues who warn others to ab-
stain from install anything on Windows boxes because it slows them down,
even after re-installation. WTF! Neglecting the issue of inexpensive disk
space, has humanity come to the point where software diversity and satura-
tion entails a penalty? Could it be Microsoft's little trick for deterring
third-party software from replacing the rust?
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Warning 0x12C: ispell feels tired
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
2:15pm up 23 days 9:31, 11 users, load average: 0.09, 0.17, 0.15
http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine
|
|
