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I copied more files onto the small internal drive; sound was better but still not where I wanted it.
So, wanting a cheap-ish experiment, I bought an old refurb HP machine, dual core, upgraded to 4 meg RAM and added a 1TB internal drive, Win 7, about $180 all told. Installed my Juli@ card and JRiver, slimmed Windows a bit
Better. The old XP just didn't have it.
I'll probably try 8.1 and not bother tweaking 7 any more.
thanks to everybody who replied to my original post below
Follow Ups:
Hi and speaking of OS i was willing to try one of the versions of Linux
Then i saw that no driver was available for my usb wireless adapter
and i stopped immediately
For me good drivers are what matters ... and usually they provide drivers for Win 7 as a norm
i think that most of the OSs now with a decent HW work quite good. The differences are not that big,
But drivers are really needed.
So in the end my personal choice now would be win 7 ultimate 64 bit with a basic installation
And with the audio PC absolutely disconnected from the web so that a antivirus is not needed.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 11/09/14 11/09/14 11/09/14 11/09/14
I gave up on getting an old wireless card to work on Linux. There were supposedly drivers but they didn't work. However, the newer USB wireless adapters worked fine, including a very cheap one from Edimax.
All the wireless cards place a heavy load on the attached computer. If you are worried about that, then you may get better results using a wired connection. If you can't string wires you can use a short Ethernet cable from your computer to a wireless bridge. These are under $50.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Hi Mr. Lauck !
thanks for the helpful advice
actually looking around better, i have noticed that some of the newer usb dongles are indeed compatible with Linux like the one you kindly recommend
I have seen some from Asus as well
I have no experience of wireless bridges
I have to study the thing
I will try Linux soon ... i am curious
Thanks again
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 11/10/14
I had some wired Ethernet devices that were working fine in the room where my router is located, but they didn't have working drivers for wireless and I needed to move them to a distant room with no Ethernet wiring. So I just got a wireless bridge and connected them to that. They continued to work as if they were connected directly, keeping their MAC address and IP address.
When I first got the bridge it was necessary to connect it to a computer to set it up on my wireless network. After that it's strictly plug and play.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Good morning Mr Lauck !
Interesting device indeed this wifi bridge
For now i have been able to wire the router directly to the net and the pc
I guess the pc has not a Gigabit port ... but still i get around 30 Mbit/s in the download test
I will install a PCI Gigabit lan adapter soon (i have seen one on Amazon)I have only another pc in another location and the usb wireless work quite ok for now. But it is the secondary one.
So my next challenge would be Linux
I have always read great things about this OS, but also that can be quite tricky for beginners
But i think it could be interesting after all
Thanks a lot again
Have a nice day, beppe
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 11/11/14 11/11/14
So why would you want to go to Windows 8.1 ??
Cut-Throat
'cause it's better. More robust and less quirky when something goes wrong.
Look beneath the surface and ignore tales.
n/t
Not too long ago HP decided to make most of their PCs available (again) with Windows 7, against the wishes of MS. They lost too many PC sales by limiting buyers to Windows 8/8.1.
Personally, I think 8.1 is pretty stable and more responsive (snappier) than Windows 7. It also boots faster and shuts down faster. However, I absolutely hate and do not need that tiled 'Modern UI'. We have our Windows 8.1 systems automatically boot into the familiar standard desktop which is easy to do w/o any third-party scripts.
"Personally, I think 8.1 is pretty stable and more responsive (snappier) than Windows 7. It also boots faster and shuts down faster. However, I absolutely hate and do not need that tiled 'Modern UI'. We have our Windows 8.1 systems automatically boot into the familiar standard desktop which is easy to do w/o any third-party scripts."
Stuff happened, so I had to install/unstall Win 7 and Win 8/8.1 a bunch of times on same machines, and AbSOLUTELY Win 8.1 smokes Win 7 when it comes to responsiveness and boot/shut-down times. I far prefer the Win 8.1 as far its stability and inner workings.
All Microsoft had to do was listen to its customers and bring back the classic desktop, which third party apps like Classic Shell does. It would have been a wildly successful OS IMO. Microsoft is extremely stubborn, in this instance trying to force down our throat their idea of perfection, the Metro tabs-driven mobile-centric, touch-screen interface on our desktops. I hope some people responsible on top at Microsoft get fired going forward. As much as people hate Microsoft, imagine what would happen if Microsoft failed. What are we gonna do, use Mac's?
Pretty much as a direct result of the public's reception of Windows 8 and the flameout by the early versions of Surface, Microsoft jettisoned Steve Sinofsky, retired Steve Ballmer and removed Bill Gates himself from the chairmanship of the board of directors.
I'd say someone at Microsoft was listening to the customers.
Windows 8 was pretty much developed completely internally with little input from users. By contrast, Microsoft has released an alpha version of Windows 10 and made it very easy for early users to provide feedback. If you want some input on the next version of Windows then you owe it to yourself to download the alpha, try it out, and provide feedback.
JE
True. MS is seeking input from early adopters of the Windows 10 "Tech Preview". I have found that the UI is thankfully less "Metro-Instrusive".
I've been playing with the Windows 10 Tech Preview on my Mac within a virtual machine where it can't take a shit and damage anything. ;-)
Windows 8 failed miserably in trying to force a poorly thought out touch screen tablet interface onto folks with standard PCs. It was a compromise OS at best that no one wanted.
I guess I was one of the few who were completely unfazed by Windows 8. I don't love or use Metro all that much, but neither does it bother me. With Windows 8.1 I find that I only ever interact with Metro when I go looking for it. Otherwise I pretty much stay exclusively in the desktop environment.
What are your thoughts on Windows 10?
JE
8.1 was improvement over 8 but still I find a lot of the utilities kind of scattered about with different ways of getting to them. I use it only when I must which is seldom.
As for Windows 10 Tech Preview I think they're trying to streamline it but too early to come to any conclusions. I'll wait for 10 to release and then 10.1 for many fixes. ;-)
So 7 is still your preferred version of Windows? I can't really object to that as 7 was a solid version of Windows. However, as fmak points out above, 8, and 8.1, once you get past the Metro stuff, are even more solid. While Microsoft has been fiddling with the interface, it also has been refining the underpinnings. These are two different groups! And while the interface may have created controversy, I don't think anyone has argued that the underpinnings are not a substantial step forward.And truly, for me at least, the foibles of 8 weren't that hard to master. It's like the way car manufacturers have moved the transmission lever from the console to the steering wheel column. For a day or so it's disconcerting, but then you learn how it works and quit thinking about it.
The same thing with Windows 8. If you insist on it's being Windows 7 you're just going to have heartburn. But if you work with it eventually you'll quit thinking about it altogether.
JE
Edit: Oh, and by the way, Windows has always been about giving you multiple ways to do things. I used to be a huge Mac fan until Apple taught me a bitter lesson in the economics of sole-source suppliers. Before then I would quip that Apple provided the best way to do something while Microsoft provided every other way to do the same thing.
Edits: 11/14/14
I gave up on Windows about 7 years ago as my primary operating system. Prior to that, I was on DOS and many flavors of Windows up to the point of switching to Mac. I find Mac OS to be better thought out, more intuitive, and rock solid. Of course it is based on UNIX which has a few decades of refinement under it's belt and I know UNIX well enough to do a lot of fancy things on the command line if necessary.
I agree that Windows 8 is snappier and pretty stable. But I think Windows 8 will be seen as the Windows Vista of recent MS operating systems once Windows 10 is released. Windows 8/8.1 has actually stalled PC sales. Realizing this, some manufacturers who stopped loading Windows 7 in favor of 8 have reverted back to Windows 7 again to help sales pick up.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time with the Windows 10 Tech Preview. I mainly wanted to get a quick look at it.
and there's no way we'll ever buy any GUI even remotely like 8, for our desktop users. I've adjusted to Server 2012, - but that's about as far as I can stand.
Seems like Microsoft is at a crossroads, but they are seemingly too big to fail completely, at least a slow death seems like it's starting. But then again, I am not so good at predictions.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
The start screen puzzled me for a few hours. After that, I preferred it to the older arrangement, especially when using my convertible device as a tablet (no keyboard).
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
yes, I have a laptop on 8.1 and I don't like the UI either. I've learned to Live with it, but I will welcome Windows 10, like I welcomed Windows 7 from Vista.
Cut-Throat
I downloaded the Tech Preivew iso image which is about 4GB and installed it as a virtual machine under VirtualBox on my Mac. It's a little clunky but that's why they call it a "Tech Preview".
When installing under VirtualBox you tell it that you're installing Win 8.1 because VirtualBox has no knowledge of Windows 10. It will install just fine.
I allocated 4GB of RAM and 1 CPU core for the Tech Preview virtual machine within VirtualBox
Of course there were several updates available when querying Windows Update
Installing the updates
Reboot
Then wait wait wait wait wait for Windows like usual
Well, lots of posts about 8.1 having better sound (potentially). I will probably listen as is for a while.
Oh, I do loath 8. Happy my work laptop is 7, I spend most time on it
.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
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