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Not really an option for a lot of people.The industry standard is Windows, and being proficient with it's many varied incarnations is a prerequisite to being and appearing proffessional.
wonder what the people with MACs would say about that.?

although it is a pretty low standard that has to be achieved if the standard is windows.

why do you say that spin.?

if my experience is anything to go by (probably not) even the major multinational companies that use windows on their desktops(as the staff are thick as sh1t) use Linux or a version thereof for the server, even most MAC companies do the same,

makes you wonder why really doesnt it.?

IMHO, and it is pretty dumb as far as PCs go, I think using windows makes you look inward and not really forward thinking at all,

we are electricians, and as much as its not necessarily true, the general public think we should be at the cutting edge of technology,

using windows kinda blows that theory out of the water before it has even started.

 
Strangely a lot of people have said to me " You're an electrician , you must understand all this computer and high tech stuff " I usually nod sagely . :C
I'm the same. spent 20 years in computer support, and I still dont understand how to change the paper in a photcopier :(

 
There are several things you can do which should dramatically speed everything up (all free!!)

1. Go to de-frag and run a check -this will tell you if you need to de-frag, if so go ahead and go do something else for an hour or two - like overnight!!!

2. Go and look at all your start up programs - what happens when you switch on, lots of programms have a front end mini program that starts up automatically and then sits waiting so that when you want to use a program it is already primed! - however, these programs take so little time to boot up it is not worth them auto starting i.e. Word, i-tunes etc as this really eats time and CPU usage

3. turn off auto updates and do this manually each month, again this slows you down!!

4. Google ccleaner (yes two C's, used to be crap cleaner!) download and install from File Hippo free of charge! Run claener and registry cleanup weekly

5. Get rid of all your archive files - anything you don't use on a regular basis - be ruthless - to an external hard drive - music and images eat memory.

6. Set antivirus to run maunually except the upgrades

Now if you want to spend a little bit upgrade your RAM, the memory that does all the calcs etc. Go to Crucial.com, you can run a quick check which id's your machine and tells you how much ram you have and to max it (i.e. 1meg to 2meg C

 
Thanks Steve , I've done some of that , the great defragging exercise of last week has reduced start up time to 7 mins (from 15)
I did tell you , but you all mocked :)

And do I get thanks ? , no :(

I think a 50% speed up is good :)

 
Your not going to like my next suggestion, defrag it again, and agiain, until it goes through in about 5 mins. Then you know it is defraged. You wont get the same increase in speed but it will help

 
Thing is there is no one fix!!

Each step will add a bit more speed i.e defrag =usually best gain, each step add progressively less increase in speed however they mostly take seconds to do!

get a routine of houskeeping and do it every week ccclaener/registry

and run antivirus full scan as you go to bed - remember to tell it to close down as this helps.

Set caches to empty after every session, History/temp downloads/etc - having full cache's for internet etc will slow down your browsing considerably

 
I have a few computers;

an old iMac (G5) - boots in about 20secs

iBook boots in about 30 secs,

a new iMac boots 1:30 mins

a eeebox booting into Ubuntu in about 45secs

and an msi wind again about 45 secs to boot into Ubuntu

I've got win XP on the eeebox & the msi and takes about 3-4 mins with most startup items disabled.

 
I had the same problem with Vista on my laptop....I was told that Vista insists on booting up every driver it can find on the system and more it you let it......I was then advised to switch to Windows 7 by purchasing the update which I did......problem solved.

Now I am not saying you have the same problem all I am doing is telling you I had a similar situation and how I resolved it.

 
I had the same problem with Vista on my laptop....I was told that Vista insists on booting up every driver it can find on the system and more it you let it......I was then advised to switch to Windows 7 by purchasing the update which I did......problem solved.

Now I am not saying you have the same problem all I am doing is telling you I had a similar situation and how I resolved it.

 
Update on this subject. Using my vast computering know how I discovered that my PC had a RAM memory ( is that right?) of 1GB . So via a company online I bought and fitted 4 replacement boards @ 1GB ea so RAM is now 4GB and seems to be zipping along quite happily . No gurgling and churning going on , windows opening at blistering speed.

 
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