pandora
Premium
join:2001-06-01
Outland
 ·ooma
·Future Nine Corpor..
 ·Comcast
|  reply to Link Logger
Re: Computers and the 'experienced' user
I used to look for performance, and my first home built PC's were not cost effective. I quickly learned our technology evolved very quickly and whatever I spent for a given level of performance would cost half as much or less in a year.
For the past few years, I value stability above about all else. My PC's must be stable. No blue screens, no surprises. Since about 2001, I've been mostly buying and using Dell PC's. They have been great.
The second thing I value is quiet. I can't stand noise. I don't know what sound level annoys me, but if I can hear a fan, I'm annoyed. I had a 4830 video card that made a soft fan whisper, and replaced it with a dead silent 3850 card. I am much happier now. I prefer the silent video card ten times more than the whisper quiet card.
As to high resolution. I've gotten good at setting dpi, resolution, and page magnification on Opera and IE. Overall Windows XP has worked out well. I have almost as good an experience with Vista and Windows 7.
My biggest gripe currently is Live mail. I can't get it to resemble Outlook Express. I don't want to group my mail by user, I want to see it in the order it arrived in one inbox. To view Live Mail requires too much wasted screen space compared to Outlook Express.
Supposedly Live Mail is an advance over Outlook Express. It may be technologically, but it isn't in terms of viewability and overall effective screen layout.
I wish Microsoft would be a bit more concerned with older users who want to have more control of screen layout when reading mail.
As an aging PC customer, I'm overall very happy with the state of hardware, and very happy with the cost, and overall aside from Live Mail, very happy with the current Microsoft Windows products.
I have learned that integrated devices are a nice place to start, but to keep a PC around a few years longer, eventually a quiet, powerful, newer technology video card is helpful. Large monitors are great, everyone should have one. Higher resolution is a mixed blessing to me, it can be helpful, but is also an issue when I need to scale stuff up to match my eyesight.
Finally, my most recent learning 'experience' was that not all integrated NIC's are created equal. The ethernet interface on some of my old PC's was less efficient and effective than I realized. Installing better ethernet cards helped create an overall improved internet and LAN experience.
I wonder what changes my kids will experience over their lifetimes? I hope they are as happy with their hardware as I am with the stuff today.
--
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
