6 ms·

I can concur to this anecdote. I'm personally in the IT field, and just got tired of fixing computers all day, to come home and fix my own computer. It was some

I can concur to this anecdote. I'm personally in the IT field, and just got tired of fixing computers all day, to come home and fix my own computer. It was something I loved enough to make a career out of, but yet I grew exasperated at having to maintain my own setup just to keep it in a semi-enjoyable state. Once I had another hardware failure, I scrapped the whole thing for one of the first gen white Intel iMacs, and never looked back. I no longer get in to a domestic dispute with my computer when I come home at the end of the day. My desktop is at peace.

dman 15y ago
I have often wondered what people do to their computer to break it? I have a windows 7 install that is a couple of years old at this point. And my linux install is an unbroken series of debian upgrades going about 7 years.
- krallja 15y ago
  What hardware are you running it on?
  - dman 15y ago
    A self assembled PC that I put together eons ago.
    - krallja 15y ago
      Would you say you used high-quality parts? ;)
      - dman 15y ago
        Only the very best - I prefer to use server boards which dont have whizbang features but receive bios updates for a couple of years. I think buying PC's is like an art. You dont want to buy any PC that has a radical feature vendor specific. For eg I would never buy anything with Nvidia optimus, chances of Nvidia sticking around to maintain it five years from now are zero. Youre much safer buying a middle of the road model that will receive vendor updates because the vendors lifeline depends on it. Buying motherboards that are used in supercomputing clusters is also great because those users tend to actually contribute kernel patches in case compatibility breaks over the years.
- narrator 15y ago
  Agreed, Redhat 9 was hell but Ubuntu saved Linux for me. I hardly ever have any problems, especially the crapware, malware, 30 different "please update me" popups kind of problem that are a dime a dozen on windows. I also like that I know what's going on with the system all the way down to the bare metal. The main thing that I can't use Linux for: Watching Netflix or other premium content is largely solved by the fact that I do all that, and play video games on my big screen TV via a PS3 and the built in Netflix/Amazon Video features of the TV.
  - dman 15y ago
    Yes netflix has now replaced flash as the top frustration on linux. No easy solution seems to be in sight.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  I had an install of XP that went for 4 years, then another 4 after something in it broke and forced a reinstall. Windows 7 is shaping up to beat that record. I don't want to say people are exaggerating or leaving out details like doing uncommon things, but I don't see how so many people have problems with Window otherwise.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  I'm sitting here using a year-old $1300 HP Envy 14. It's the MBP of PCs -- all aluminum/magnesium alloy case, backlit island style keyboard, edge to edge glass around a 1600x900 display, i5, switchable graphics adapters, the works. The fan cycles on and off every 3 seconds the entire time it runs. It hard freezes if I play certain games for a few hours. Sometimes it emits a high pitched noise. There's some discoloration starting where my palms rest. I doubt it'll make it another year without needing service to at least apply new thermal paste or pads or something. This is HP's finest build quality and it's still not up to Apple standards. As for the software side, one of my jobs is to resell advertising services, and I manually review each order to make sure the sites to advertise meet some quality guidelines - 20 to 30 a day. At least one of them each day will be a site distributing malware of some sort. Even with a firewall, Windows Update set to auto, Microsoft Security Essential Real-Time Protection enabled, and using the auto-updating Google Chrome... I sometimes get infected by one of these sites anyway. Last week it was one of those pieces of malware that pretends to be an antivirus program telling you to register to clear an infection -- while autokilling all processes except explorer.exe and iexplore.exe on the system. Took me half an hour in the registry editor in safe mode to get rid of it.
  - dman 15y ago
    HP has never gotten their laptop thermal solutions right, sorry cant help you with that. For the other problem - create a virtual machine with windows installed. Then use a clone of this virtual machine to do your actual surfing. Once that gets infected just make anohter clone of the virtual machine and resume surfing. I am assuming that there is something windows specific in what you are doing, if not just surf in linux and kiss most malware goodbye.
    - culturestate 15y ago
      "Create a virtual machine for the express purpose of surfing the internet" is a solution that should never have to be proposed.
      - bermanoid 15y ago
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- shmeeps 15y ago
  I have to agree here. I had an XP install for 5 years with no problem, built a new computer with Vista that I upgraded to Windows 7 somewhere over the course of 3 years, and built another Windows 7 PC last year have yet to have a problem on it. The first computer I built is now repurposed as my parents computer and runs fine. My laptop has been running vista/7 dual booted with Ubuntu and has had no problems. Conversely, I use an imac at work that is relatively new that runs horrifically slow and spends alot of the time I'm at working having programs or the whole system crash. Can't explain why, but that combined with what I feel as a much less user friendly interface compared to any Linux distro I've ever used has completely put me off ever owning a personal Mac.

dman 15y ago

I have often wondered what people do to their computer to break it? I have a windows 7 install that is a couple of years old at this point. And my linux install is an unbroken series of debian upgrades going about 7 years.

krallja 15y ago
What hardware are you running it on?
- dman 15y ago
  A self assembled PC that I put together eons ago.
  - krallja 15y ago
    Would you say you used high-quality parts? ;)
    - dman 15y ago
      Only the very best - I prefer to use server boards which dont have whizbang features but receive bios updates for a couple of years. I think buying PC's is like an art. You dont want to buy any PC that has a radical feature vendor specific. For eg I would never buy anything with Nvidia optimus, chances of Nvidia sticking around to maintain it five years from now are zero. Youre much safer buying a middle of the road model that will receive vendor updates because the vendors lifeline depends on it. Buying motherboards that are used in supercomputing clusters is also great because those users tend to actually contribute kernel patches in case compatibility breaks over the years.
narrator 15y ago
Agreed, Redhat 9 was hell but Ubuntu saved Linux for me. I hardly ever have any problems, especially the crapware, malware, 30 different "please update me" popups kind of problem that are a dime a dozen on windows. I also like that I know what's going on with the system all the way down to the bare metal. The main thing that I can't use Linux for: Watching Netflix or other premium content is largely solved by the fact that I do all that, and play video games on my big screen TV via a PS3 and the built in Netflix/Amazon Video features of the TV.
- dman 15y ago
  Yes netflix has now replaced flash as the top frustration on linux. No easy solution seems to be in sight.
mkr-hn 15y ago
I had an install of XP that went for 4 years, then another 4 after something in it broke and forced a reinstall. Windows 7 is shaping up to beat that record. I don't want to say people are exaggerating or leaving out details like doing uncommon things, but I don't see how so many people have problems with Window otherwise.
dangrossman 15y ago
I'm sitting here using a year-old $1300 HP Envy 14. It's the MBP of PCs -- all aluminum/magnesium alloy case, backlit island style keyboard, edge to edge glass around a 1600x900 display, i5, switchable graphics adapters, the works. The fan cycles on and off every 3 seconds the entire time it runs. It hard freezes if I play certain games for a few hours. Sometimes it emits a high pitched noise. There's some discoloration starting where my palms rest. I doubt it'll make it another year without needing service to at least apply new thermal paste or pads or something. This is HP's finest build quality and it's still not up to Apple standards. As for the software side, one of my jobs is to resell advertising services, and I manually review each order to make sure the sites to advertise meet some quality guidelines - 20 to 30 a day. At least one of them each day will be a site distributing malware of some sort. Even with a firewall, Windows Update set to auto, Microsoft Security Essential Real-Time Protection enabled, and using the auto-updating Google Chrome... I sometimes get infected by one of these sites anyway. Last week it was one of those pieces of malware that pretends to be an antivirus program telling you to register to clear an infection -- while autokilling all processes except explorer.exe and iexplore.exe on the system. Took me half an hour in the registry editor in safe mode to get rid of it.
- dman 15y ago
  HP has never gotten their laptop thermal solutions right, sorry cant help you with that. For the other problem - create a virtual machine with windows installed. Then use a clone of this virtual machine to do your actual surfing. Once that gets infected just make anohter clone of the virtual machine and resume surfing. I am assuming that there is something windows specific in what you are doing, if not just surf in linux and kiss most malware goodbye.
  - culturestate 15y ago
    "Create a virtual machine for the express purpose of surfing the internet" is a solution that should never have to be proposed.
    - bermanoid 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
shmeeps 15y ago
I have to agree here. I had an XP install for 5 years with no problem, built a new computer with Vista that I upgraded to Windows 7 somewhere over the course of 3 years, and built another Windows 7 PC last year have yet to have a problem on it. The first computer I built is now repurposed as my parents computer and runs fine. My laptop has been running vista/7 dual booted with Ubuntu and has had no problems. Conversely, I use an imac at work that is relatively new that runs horrifically slow and spends alot of the time I'm at working having programs or the whole system crash. Can't explain why, but that combined with what I feel as a much less user friendly interface compared to any Linux distro I've ever used has completely put me off ever owning a personal Mac.