Windows 10, PCs 4

In my world, today is August 6  August 14. My last post was on the 24th of July, and much has happened since then... more in a following post!

For starters, on the very last day that the free Windows upgrade was available (July 29), I upgraded one of our PCs in the SUL. I might have upgraded more, but only one of the PCs we tried actually worked.

I'm very happy with the upgrade.As it was a workday for me, Mr. T had the privilege of babysitting the install process. It  was very smooth, according to him, and seemingly unlike every other new OS install, the HDD was untouched save for the OS. Had I the slightest clue it would be this easy, I would have installed it on at least one other machine. Alas, that time has passed.

So,how is performance?

The machine in question is an HP/Compaq DC7600 Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with 4GB (max, I believe) and a 1TB HDD.  

From a cold start, I think I get a login screen in 10 seconds or less. This is a 50% or better improvement. The interface is very nice- Win 7/8 users should have no problem transitioning to this OS.

On the minus side, MY experience with the new Edge browser has not been good. It is no better than the last iteration of IE, which is VASTLY inferior (that's the polite way of saying it absolutely SUCKS) to Chrome, Pale Moon or Vivaldi. As a side note- if you've never tried the Pale Moon or Vivaldi browsers, give them a try.

That's it for now- just a few notes on Win10.

AS always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Dude, you're getting a Dell, or, Resistance is futile.

We don't have many Dell computers in our home. Longtime readers may nod in agreement at this statement, but for the benefit of the uninitiated, we have many computers in our home. And while not all are in service, all ARE serviceable; that is, with just a bit of TLC, I believe we could have no fewer than thirteen PCs online simultaneously.

Granted, I would NOT do this for a number of reasons.

Firstly, most of these boxes were "designed for Windows XP". Now, I have nothing against XP- I have one machine that is an XP machine- and it's physically OFFLINE.

Next, most do not have green power supplies. Although all of the monitors in the SUL are now energy-efficient flat panels, the power supplies aren't really worth upgrading, as most of the PCs that are not in service are pretty much waiting to be cannibalized.

Finally, it's just not practical. Four individuals running 13 PCs in a SOHO environment?

The reason Dell came up is that a certain Dell PC crashed one of my external HDDs recently. I know for certain that it's a particular Dell because every time I plug the external drive into this Dell, it asks if I want to repair the drive. Mind you, this drive normally is hooked up to another Dell or a Lenovo or an HP or Compaq machine with no problems. This particular Dell has issues, though, and the last time I use the drive, I ignored the repair message, and in turn it made the drive unusable. I don't know why or how, but this machine is now persona non grata.

End of story.

Lego data news-

I'd been using Peeron's database for some time, but recently it came to my attention that BrickLink has a more complete database. Not only does it seem more complete, but the part numbers are properly formatted, they are already in a separate column and the descriptions do not succinct and do not seem to require editing. The data will still require a bit of formatting to fit my particular usage. That's the good news.

The bad news is that unlike Peeron's single page text file format, BrickLink displays its data on webpages. Not bad, as its still copy-and-paste. What's really from my perspective is that each page displays fifty part numbers.

There are 837 pages... a relatively small price to pay for superior data.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.