Minor Landmark

[altivo]

Whee! I just took the last Windows 98 machine out of service at the library. Unfortunately, because the machine in that rarely used location does get used by someone addicted to Microsoft Publisher, it was replaced with Windows XP on a slightly faster machine. The retired unit was also the last Gateway PC we had in operation, other than three provided by the Gates Foundation under partial grants. Those must remain in service with Windows installed until either five years have elapsed or the hardware fails. In one case, I suspect the hard drive is going to die before the five years are up.

Now if I could only assassinate Windows ME. It only resides on a single machine, a flaky Dell laptop. At this point it's a tossup whether the laptop itself will die or ME will fail miserably... Oh, I should take that back. Windows ME also runs our heating and cooling system. It's often hard to tell whether environment control problems are due to ME or to the crappy system it controls. But I can't touch that, it's outside my domain.

Counting...

Present tally:

Windows ME = 1 (plus the dedicated machine that controls the HVAC)
Windows 2000 = 4
Windows 2000 Server = 2
Windows XP Pro = 8
Slackware Linux v. 10.2= 3
RedHat Linux v. 7.0 = 1 proxy server
Fedora Core "Linux" = 11 single user machines, 1 multiuser machine with 5 X terminals
Unspecified Linux version = 1 WatchGuard firewall box

Some of you know I am decidedly not a fan of RedHat/Fedora. I inherited the proxy server, and as long as it keeps working I'm not messing with it. The Fedora installations are part of a third party management package that runs on nearly all our public access machines. Being Linux based, it runs with very few problems and costs us far less than the same number of machines with Windows on them did, so I'll settle for that.

Comments

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Out of curiostity, where do the old machines go?

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Computer heaven? :P

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

The Big Bit Bucket In The Sky!

I was sorta hoping they went to low
income schools or such.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Schools at that level often have zero tech support available. That means they are unable to utilize older stuff like this. They need something from Apple or Dell or Gateway with a support package included.

In any case, we are low income ourselves. By the time I give up on finding any use for a machine, it won't run any current software fast enough for anyone to sit still for it. Kids who already have ADD or literacy issues aren't going to sit for long to use an older, slower machine.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The Gateways and one or two really old Dells are likely to end up as scrap or be auctioned cheap eventually. They are P1 class machines, really slow stuff.

The four and five year old Dell P3 boxes I recycle to a new less demanding task, like as a public catalog terminal (only has to run a web browser ever) or proxy or print server. We have quite a few of them (about 20 originally) that are identical so I can also use one or two to cannibalize for parts to keep the others going. All our catalog terminals run on those.

This sort of thing horrifies the tech consultant types of course. They want us to replace every computer we own on a three year cycle. I don't have that kind of budget and never will, so it isn't gonna happen. Fortunately, those P3 machines run Linux pretty well, even though they crawl with XP.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Windows ME=Ick, ick, ick, ick, ick, ick. Worst OS ever. (Well, probably not, but certainly Microsoft's worst version of windows IMHO). I finally exterminated the one copy we had on an HP laptop by replacing it with Win2K. Victory is mine!!!!

Win2K= :0)
WinXP Pro= :0) :0)
Linux = I'll let you know if I can ever get it to work (actually, I have, but it never fails to diss some piece of hardware that I have).

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually from the stories I'm hearing, Windows Vista may edge out ME in the end as Microsoft's worst disaster. Actually, though, I think the people saying that are all too young to remember Windows 2.0 and 2.1, which were so buggy and unreliable that I expected Microsoft to lose its market share immediately. Of course that didn't happen because they spent all their money on market manipulation instead of development and testing.

If it's odd hardware that gives you trouble with Linux, have you tried some flavor of RedHat? I dislike them a lot, but they have more native drivers available than any other distribution as far as I can tell. That or someone will know how to make it work.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

It's been 5 years since I've foraged in Linux-Land, so maybe it's worth another try.

I wasn't into computers when Windows 2.0 was out..the first one I used was Windows 3.1..but I can certainly believe 2.0 and 2.1 were buggy as all get-out.

I don't really know what's going to happen with Vista. It usually takes me two or three years to upgrade my OS, and right now I'm really happy with XP Pro. I'll probably try it at some point, but it won't be for awhile.

I think Microsoft is a victim of its own success. I can hear all the Apple junkies cringing, but what I mean is that there has to be a reason for people to switch. But how do you motivate people to switch without alienating the people that are already running your other products? As a computer-weenie, I might upgrade to Vista out of curiosity, but I know a lot of workplaces that are still running Windows 2000..because it does everything they want it to do, so why change? I can't convince my boss to spend the money for a copy of Vista because I really can't come up with any good reason.

And of course, there's the whole "better wait until the first SP comes out"...plus the increased hardware requirements...et. al.

Trying to get my boss to buy a new computer is like selling ice cubes to Eskimos, although we're finally getting rid of the last of the real dogs (however, there's still a Celeron 400 that I'm trying to get rid of). I imagine it's probably that way in many situations. "Well, I'd like to run this new OS..it's a bit buggy still, and BTW, it requires $750 worth of new hardware." Not a very convincing argument to one's boss!

Time will tell.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. I have the opposite problem with my boss. Once she has the budget approved she wants to spend it right away. This year she had budgeted for three new machines to replace the old ones at the circulation desk, mostly because the software selected by the Big Messed Up Consortium wouldn't run on the existing machines at all. She started asking me to spec the machines and buy them last summer. I kept putting her off because I knew we wouldn't need them until April at the earliest, and both the requirements and the prices would change substantially. Both did change. The requirements went up, the prices went down which was just what I planned on. I hadn't counted on dodging the entire software change bullet by walking out of the consortium, because I didn't think I'd succeed in promoting that. However, BMUC shot itself in the foot too many times and we escaped. I was able to buy five heavily loaded machines and come in under the amount originally budgeted for three. I win. ;D

[marzolan.livejournal.com]

Windows ME running your heating and cooling... some how I get this nice image of indoor snow...

But I don't think ME is Microsnot's biggest failure. It comes close, but I think BOB still outdoes it. ME runs ok once you subdue it. For the most part anyway. I'll still be glad to get rid of it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

BOB was such a flash and vanish act that I never even saw it, so I don't count it as anything other than a miscarriage. ;p

As for indoor snow, yes, that is very nearly what we sometimes get. Last week we had an event in our meeting room that was way overattended. That room is a separate "zone" on the system precisely because it is often empty but sometimes heavily occupied, and should in theory be able to compensate for that. The outdoor temperature at the time was about 50°F and the temperature inside the room was 78°F and rising when someone complained to me about it. So I went to the mechanical room to check on the thing. As usual, Windows ME thought it was 3 am instead of 7:30 pm (for some reason the clock on ME never keeps good time when running for any extended period) and worse, was pumping additional heat into the space. The hot water coils were open and the fans running full blast. The air being blown into the room was at 85°F, the relief fans were off, and the situation was being totally ignored even though the desired temperature was set to 72 which is supposed to keep it in the range of 69 to 75. I had to manually disable the heat, and use a supervisor command to force the system to bring outside air into the room. It does this kind of thing all the time, yet the HVAC folks keep telling us it is performing "as expected."

[marzolan.livejournal.com]

*laughs* As expected... probably so.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah the whole system is unbelievably Rube Goldberg.

Architects. I swear, they are only interested in appearances and never in practicality.

[baphnedia.livejournal.com]

Congrats! (my brain isn't functioning at a high enough capacity to post more than this)....

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmm? What have you done to your brain? Tried to boot Windows 95 on it perhaps? ;p

[baphnedia.livejournal.com]

Actually, no. The problem really was my immune system - it was using Norton Anti Virus. :You can just imagine how healthy my system is at the moment...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Eewww. Yes, I can, unfortunately.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Laptops get pulled off tables everyday >;D

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

ME could be tamed but you had to know what you were doing, I had it working crash free, but due to the system resources problem you needed to do a restart at least once or twice a day.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've seen ME do some amazing things. Like for instance, when running our library applications. These are coded in Java. and open a window with a row of buttons across the top, the usual menus, and three data areas with text in them down below. Under ME, when opened, the window is in one corner of the screen, the buttons are scattered around on the desktop OUTSIDE the window, and when you click on a menu it pops up somewhere else on the screen. Very entertaining, but not very practical.

The same apps work flawlessly on XP, Win2K, Win98, and Linux. Only ME has this problem with them.