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Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)

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A quick fix for sluggish Windows machines

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10 Dec 2017 10:48 - 10 Dec 2017 10:51 #258872 by Cranberries
A coworker retired, and in exchange for my soul the department chair let me have my retired coworker's two-year-old Lenovo desktop. It is not a high-end machine to begin with, and was really sluggish. So, I ordered 4 GB of ram and installed it, and it was ok, but still sluggish. So I disabled all of the realtime virus checking and turned off indexing, and basically spent about three hours trying various methods to speed it up. It was ok at first, but I think that IT kept re-installing the realtime security software and so it would slow down again.

Today I found a simple, free solution. I downloaded Ubuntu, put it on a flash drive, and installed the latest version, which took about 20 minutes. Now the machine is quite snappy. Yes, I got permission from our technician to do this. Ubuntu also quickly found both of our department printers and connected to both quite easily.

I know from experience that if I try to do anything other than use the word processing and Firefox, and listen to music, that I'll start getting irritated with Ubuntu, but that's all I ever use on this machine. It currently sits on an improvised standing desk (thanks Ikea) and I've attached a mechanical keyboard, so I'm liking it so far. I kind of don't care a lot about which operating system I use at this point, although the Linux command line is useful.
Last edit: 10 Dec 2017 10:51 by Cranberries. Reason: Because I can.
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11 Dec 2017 08:54 #258890 by Legomancer
"Install Linux" is not a fix for a sluggish Window machine, dude.

This is why people hate Linux evangelists.
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11 Dec 2017 11:18 - 11 Dec 2017 11:22 #258895 by Cranberries
I don't think Ubuntu is all that great, and I wouldn't want it on my daily driver. The real fix is to peel off all of the mandatory security software that IT requires, but that presents other problems. But if you have a crappy old machine and primarily are using the web and word processing, it works really well. I guess I'm saying that Ubuntu installs really quickly and is markedly less irritating than it was a few years ago. I'm not a complete rank amateur and I was surprised at how painless it was.

My painfully sluggish windows machine became not-quite-blazing-fast after hours of hassling didn't work, with a fifteen minute install

I could have installed Amiga OS with those results and I would have been excited about it.
Last edit: 11 Dec 2017 11:22 by Cranberries.

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11 Dec 2017 13:28 - 11 Dec 2017 13:31 #258909 by southernman

cranberries wrote: ...... The real fix is to peel off all of the mandatory security software that IT requires, but that presents other problems. But if you have a crappy old machine and primarily are using the web and word processing, it works really well. ... .


Can someone please call Cranberries and tell him his account has been hijacked by Chinese or eastern European hackers/criminals [ insert shocked face emoji here ]
Last edit: 11 Dec 2017 13:31 by southernman.
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11 Dec 2017 15:07 #258916 by Black Barney
maybe Cranberries is secretly Tommy Wiseau??

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11 Dec 2017 17:12 #258924 by RobertB
cranberries wrote:

I could have installed Amiga OS with those results and I would have been excited about it.


Amiga was the real deal, back when sock ties were a thing. :) In the Uphill Both Ways department, I spent $400 way back when for a 20 MB hard drive that plugged into the side of an Amiga 500. That machine was awesome, but the lack of memory protection made software a little twitchy. Not that I couldn't blow up x86 boxes back then too, but I had to work harder.

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11 Dec 2017 17:25 #258926 by southernman

Black Barney wrote: maybe Cranberries is secretly Tommy Wiseau??


After googling who he is I still don't understand Barney's post ... that is sad,
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11 Dec 2017 17:28 #258928 by southernman

Southernman wrote:

cranberries wrote: ...... The real fix is to peel off all of the mandatory security software that IT requires, but that presents other problems. But if you have a crappy old machine and primarily are using the web and word processing, it works really well. ... .


Can someone please call Cranberries and tell him his account has been hijacked by Chinese or eastern European hackers/criminals [ insert shocked face emoji here ]


OK, cranberries may have been referring to using Ubuntu rather than turning off AV protection - I retract my allegation if that was the case (my IT 'perimeter security' mode flicked on) :-)

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11 Dec 2017 17:50 #258932 by Black Barney
Lol Southern, i was just going to post a picture of Wiseau but I thought it was too much of a stretch so I figured putting his name would be enough

You just have to hear him talk to get it

Or, alternatively, go see The Disaster Artist

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11 Dec 2017 18:45 #258936 by rocketkiwi
A solid state drive is usually the biggest pick-me-up for low-medium spec laptops if someone wanted to keep running Windows.
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11 Dec 2017 19:07 - 11 Dec 2017 19:17 #258937 by Cranberries

Southernman wrote:

cranberries wrote: ...... The real fix is to peel off all of the mandatory security software that IT requires, but that presents other problems. But if you have a crappy old machine and primarily are using the web and word processing, it works really well. ... .


Can someone please call Cranberries and tell him his account has been hijacked by Chinese or eastern European hackers/criminals [ insert shocked face emoji here ]


Ok, they don't just install a virus checker and a firewall--there is some other thing that constantly scours your hard drive for any signs of unprotected identification or anything that could be scraped to forge your identity and gain access. I also carry around a key fob (because I'm so cool that I don't have a smart phone) because I have to use two-factor authentication to access the mandatory course management software. It is death by a thousand paranoid IT paper cuts, backed up by Legal, who are the only real authority at our corporatized state college.

Still, it's better than most other jobs I can imagine that pay anything.

A solid state drive is usually the biggest pick-me-up for low-medium spec laptops if someone wanted to keep running Windows.


Windows TEN is pretty snappy and I like it, and I installed it originally so I could use Lightroom at work. I used to be a self-righteous Apple/Linux dick, but now I don't care, as long as it has an aluminum body, good keyboard, a crisp screen and good battery life.

(although I want an iPad for Garageband)
Last edit: 11 Dec 2017 19:17 by Cranberries.

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11 Dec 2017 19:25 - 11 Dec 2017 19:25 #258940 by Frohike
I'm a developer/manager at UC Santa Cruz. Whenever I order a new machine (usually a Mac because I dunno... built in shell?... don't care much about OSs these days), I do whatever I can to stay off of the radar of centralized IT support because they inevitably install some anti-virus, machine scouring, power option regulating, update pushing monstrosity of an enterprise support product. Last I checked they were using IBM's BigFix, which many informally renamed BigBrother. Almost without fail, it will cripple one of my developers machines once or twice a year.

Wiping the OS and installing Ubuntu sounds drastic, but I understand where you're coming from.
Last edit: 11 Dec 2017 19:25 by Frohike.
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