Has microsoft done anything good for the computer industry?

[piratePenguin]

248MB (32MB for on board graphics)

I have 256MB RAM on my system (supposadly), and an on-board 32MB graphics card. Does the graphics card use memory from the 256MB? That would partly-explain why 'free -m' tells me I have 219MB RAM.

I also disagree, I run Windows XP on an 1800MHz 248MB (32MB for on board graphics) machine and it's not too bad. Right now I'm running Opera with a couple of tabs open and it's using 104MB of RAM up, and just 80MB with nothing running. Wow XP is using up just 32.25% of my physical memory!

Try removing 128MB RAM and see how it copes with a deficieny of RAM . A wise-man once said "It's all about memory management", or something like that.

Here, I'm running GNOME 2.12, with two KDE apps: Konqueror (which isn't even that bad) (four tabs ATM) (I fucked up Firefox recompiling it. Recompiling it ATM with different (i.e. working) configure options) and amaroK, GAIM, irssi (in an xterm), and a GNOME terminal (I don't use/need alot of GNOME terminal's functionality, not even tabs alot of the time, but I still use it. And I still don't have problems with slowness/anything.) open, and I'm using 215 out of 219MB RAM, and 22MB swap. Even when I'm compiling stuff (RAM and CPU anyhow goes into basically 100% usage/fullness) and running much the same applications as now, I can browse away and nearly forget that the system's compiling-away.

BTW, I've used Windows XP on this machine (so same amount of RAM), and it sucked alot (not all. Most likely not when I'm only browsing the web (in IE).) of the time. I had put it down to my "mingy" 256MB RAM. Maybe Windows XP only sucks on a small amount of RAM when you actually use some RAM?

EDIT: Whoa, I just started the GIMP, Glade, inkscape, KWord (BTW, my dislikeness for KDE is over, ever since I installed it again.), nautilus, and Emacs. And not a hitch on editing this! Here's the output of 'free -m' (I know it surprised me):

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           219        216          3          0          4         75
-/+ buffers/cache:        136         83
Swap:         1913         45       1868

I can still mess about in each of these apps without any hitches.
I dunno how they do it.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I have 256MB RAM on my system (supposadly), and an on-board 32MB graphics card. Does the graphics card use memory from the 256MB? That would partly-explain why 'free -m' tells me I have 219MB RAM.

My mistake I did have 32MB for graphics but I cut it down to just 8MB with the BIOS set up program, I don't run any game so it was being wasted.

As Windows is concerned (like anything else) it depends on the configuration, the origional OEM install used 166MB of RAM while idle! We were considering a RAM upgrade when the hard disk fucked up so I bought a new one and installed XP myself and I managed to more than halve the memory usage. I often get really annoyed because I see so many insecure and bloated Windows installations (one install of Windows 2000 uses >200MB when ideling!) but there's nothing I can do about them.

My point: I know Windows uses more resources than Linux (I wasn't trying to suggest otherwize) but if you know what you're doing Windows isn't as bad as many people say.

[piratePenguin]

My mistake I did have 32MB for graphics but I cut it down to just 8MB with the BIOS set up program, I don't run any game so it was being wasted.

As Windows is concerned (like anything else) it depends on the configuration, the origional OEM install used 166MB of RAM while idle! We were considering a RAM upgrade when the hard disk fucked up so I bought a new one and installed XP myself and I managed to more than halve the memory usage. I often get really annoyed because I see so many insecure and bloated Windows installations (one install of Windows 2000 uses >200MB when ideling!) but there's nothing I can do about them.

My point: I know Windows uses more resources than Linux (I wasn't trying to suggest otherwize) but if you know what you're doing Windows isn't as bad as many people say.

What do you do to make it use less RAM? Stop services (I heard that that's mostly a myth. I haven't used Windows since (well, in school I have). Is it mostly a myth?)? Remove crappy-MSN-messenger (talk about bloat)? What else?

[H_TeXMeX_H]

What do you do to make it use less RAM? Stop services (I heard that that's mostly a myth. I haven't used Windows since (well, in school I have). Is it mostly a myth?)? Remove crappy-MSN-messenger (talk about bloat)? What else?

The more services you disable the less stable Window$ gets ... at least for me ... maybe I disabled too many ? or the wrong ones ?

What I know about this: Most of the running services are marked 'SYSTEM' ... meaning that you are playing russian roulette when you disable one of these ... you can disable any services except SYSTEM ones and it shouldnt crash ... I think you may see the problem, there are only so many services you can disable before Window$ becomes too unstable to function properly

[piratePenguin]

The more services you disable the less stable Window$ gets ... at least for me ... maybe I disabled too many ? or the wrong ones ?

What I know about this: Most of the running services are marked 'SYSTEM' ... meaning that you are playing russian roulette when you disable one of these ... you can disable any services except SYSTEM ones and it shouldnt crash ... I think you may see the problem, there are only so many services you can disable before Window$ becomes too unstable to function properly

Yep. There was only a few really-useless (to me) ones that I'd always disable.

[Aloone_Jonez]

What do you do to make it use less RAM? Stop services (I heard that that's mostly a myth. I haven't used Windows since (well, in school I have). Is it mostly a myth?)? Remove crappy-MSN-messenger (talk about bloat)? What else?

It's quite easy and I could tell you but that would be breaking the forum rules wouldn't it piratePenguin?

[piratePenguin]

It's quite easy and I could tell you but that would be breaking the forum rules wouldn't it piratePenguin?

No it wouldn't.
I suggest you take a closer look at them.

[Aloone_Jonez]

request to fix a specific Microsoft product (example: "Someone deleted my Internet Explorer, and now I can't Internet. How do I fix it?")

Forum Rules

You're asking me how you can reduce the amount of memory Windows uses, is it just me or is this requesting help|support for a Microsoft product?

[piratePenguin]

Forum Rules

You're asking me how you can reduce the amount of memory Windows uses, is it just me or is this requesting help|support for a Microsoft product?

I asked you how do YOU reduce your Windows installation's RAM usage. It's a personal question. I didn't ask "how do I fix MY Windows?"...

Someone MIGHT want to modify the rules.

[Refalm]

That rule is there to prevent this forum from turning into a Microsoft helpdesk, loosen up

[worker201]

Personally, I have found that Windows has a somewhat magical ability to expand into whatever resources it has available.  I don't know how it does this.  I have XPpro at work, and a 2.4GHz P4 with 1.5GB RAM.  And somehow, it manages to be really unable to deal with PostScript files above 200MB.

My co-worker's laptop is an Athlon XP-11 Mobile with 512MB RAM.  We timed how long it would take Adobe Illustrator 10 to open a 150MB PostScript file.  1.4 minutes on the laptop, 1.3 minutes on the desktop.  Considering that every single hardware aspect of the desktop is superior, and the computers both run the same OS and same programs, you have to kind of wonder what the fuck Windows is doing.

This same desktop computer, with Linux booted, can crunch numbers, recode video, play a movie, and run gaim, firefox, and gimp all at the same time, with no significant slowdown.

Need I say more?

[187nimd4]

I asked you how do YOU reduce your Windows installation's RAM usage

You are not alone here, I also wondered how is it that you (he) can have XP not use up so much ram, but I think it not possible, at least not without crippling it ..

.. worker201 that's one funny ass post you just made; I got the same thing a while back, doing graphics with a medium system and with a 3.06 DDR, etc. system and there were no visible inprovements to the better system, fucked up :/

[dmcfarland]

I have a P3 550MHZ 384 MEG, 64 MEG vid card. Im running fc 4 w/kde. My computer works just fine on Linux. I can compile a number of programs in separated terminal sessions, etc.

BTW this post is supposed to be disscussing if microsoft did anything good for the it industry.:thumbup:

[Aloone_Jonez]

That rule is there to prevent this forum from turning into a Microsoft helpdesk, loosen up

Very well then, I suppose this post isn't too bad anyway because I'm recommending some alternatives to Microsoft products.

Firstly, the crappy OEM install came with MS Works, AGV anti-virus and possible some other crap bundled with it I made sure that things were going to be a lot differant when I set thing it up. I partitioned and formatted my hard disk using Knoppix so I could create and one big NTFS and some Linux and large FAT32 partitions.

I did a default Windows XP install, then I disabled: the silly luna theme, Windows secutity alert, automatic updates, the crash reporting, auto reboot on crash, MSN messenger and insecure remote access services (if any were running I can't remember now). I set up all of the user accounts with restricted  privileges and to show all file extentions to help gaurd against any infection by fire wall breaches  or suspicious downloads.

To keep things fast and light I didn't install any 3rd party security products. Alright I did install AVG awhile ago after Google told me I might have a virus. I shouldn't have panicked (no viruses were found) it was just an ad so I promptly uninstalled AVG and searched for any traces in the registry and services.msc, fortunately there wern't any (I've had bad experiances with software leaving stuff behind after you uninstall it).

I chose the software very carefully; I ditched IE for Opera and Firefox and disabled Active X in IE (just incase I need it for IE only sites), I removed Outlook Express and replaced it with Thunderbird. All the other software installed is either open source or is produced by a reputable company - no crappy spy/add/shareware here. I do use p2p but again I stear clear of Kazaa, Imesh and all the other shit, I use Gnutella and BitTorrant and I don't download any .exes.

My system still runs very smoothly, it's been over 6 months and I haven't noticed any significant increase in resource useage, nothing I wouldn't expect anyway (I have installed an ext file system driver and set up a USB network for my brother's laptop) so some increase in memory useage is to expected. I hate using the PCs at work and college they're so slow and unresponsive, they make me realize why Windows has such a bad reputation where memory usage and security are concerned.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

I have a P3 550MHZ 384 MEG, 64 MEG vid card. Im running fc 4 w/kde. My computer works just fine on Linux. I can compile a number of programs in separated terminal sessions, etc.

BTW this post is supposed to be disscussing if microsoft did anything good for the it industry.:thumbup:

True ... but do we ever stick to the what the thread is about ? It gets boring after a while ... so we gotta change the subject some.