My 2008 full-tower XP computer with an AMD quad-core processor just gave up the ghost. I suspect that the second and only-remaining video card died. I was able to remove the hard drive and salvage all my data so at least I'm not mourning the loss of data AND the old reliable computer. Ironically I was in the middle of backing up some .flac files that I had ripped when the machine gave up the ghost via the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Is there a better or more honorable way to die for an XP machine?
Fortunately I was in a position to have purchased a customized machine a few months ago to have in position to succeed the dead one:
i7 Sandy Bridge-E 3930 processor with 6 cores
Vertex 256 GB SSD
6 TB of hard disk storage
EVGA GeForce GTX 660 video card with 3 GB RAM
16 GB system RAM
Soundproofed full-tower case
Blu-ray Burner/Reader
Windows 7 64-bit
USB 3.0
I decided to go with the motherboard's sound via S/PDIF to an external DAC and likewise with the Ethernet connection.
While I have enjoyed the relative reliability and speed of XP for now over 10 years over multiple computers, the difference between these machines in terms of functionality and speed is pretty marked:
1. Multiple downloads simultaneously do not noticeably slow the machine
2. Unraring 30 GB of files now takes less time than unraring 10 GB of files on the old machine
3. In fact, nothing I have done seems to slow the machine and I'm running all of Windows 7 "window dressing" and running a number of apps in the background at all times including the inevitable antivirus solution
4. The one problem I ran into is that the eSATA connector does not seem to work but the one device I use for that connection is an external hard drive dock and it has a USB 3.0 connector also. With the USB 3.0 connector, I'm getting speeds pretty comparable to what I was seeing with eSATA.
5. My old large-format photo-quality printer would just not work with the 64-bit driver; fortunately I had an updated one in the wings also. My old flatbed scanner's 64-bit driver seems identical to the 32-bit one.
Re-installing all my necessary software is somewhat of a drag and time-consuming but I have had a chance to reconsider all of it and find better alternatives in some cases.
So R.I.P. XP. You served me well.
However...
Happy Holidays.
Jim
np:
Rigel Orionis - Centrifugal (wow!!!) on
zzzone.net