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From: robert Macy [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 2:01 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Which Operating System - 2000 vs XP to use? Group, Anybody have a succinct (factual) answer to the question: Which Operating System should I use for controlling my equipment and manipulating the mass of data? Should I use the 2000, or XP? Consider we'll probably be running a lot of matlab type and/or viewlab type SW. I was already to go get a new 2000 system, but one of our third party software suppliers has recommended XP with the only justification - "our stuff has been tested in more applications, more units of the XP." Anybody have experience comparing these two OS? Also, where to get inexpensive, reliable PC's? Dell is one source. Fry's another. EBay is out. Any others? What ever happened to a company called, Evergreen? Does anybody have a system they want to sell in order to make room for an upgrade? - Robert - Robert A. Macy, PE. . [email protected] 408 286 3985. . . . . . . fx 408 297 9121 AJM International Electronics Consultants 101 E San Fernando, Suite 402 San Jose, CA 95112 Bob: I don't have any personal experience with Win2000, but I have WinXP Home at home and the preferred OS at Cubic is WinXP Pro. (Cubic does use single-board computers, running Win2000, in many of their commercial products. It's a lot cheaper to buy a lot of OS copies instead of developing your own machine code.) As far as I can see, WinXP Pro just adds layers of administrative garbage. If you are running a stand-alone system for data acquisition, I would use the cheaper, and dare I say, leaner <g> Home version. WinXP is so much more stable than Win98SE that there's no question about that choice. I still have applications sometimes lock up, but I have never managed to crash WinXP!! Besides, I believe in the "safety in numbers" concept of ownership. If there's a few hundred bugs hiding somewhere, let thousands of others help you gripe about it; then there's more chance of a fix. XP users far outnumber 2000 users. Another thing I believe in is simplicity. My lab computer for data acquisition is dedicated to the test equipment. It isn't loaded with 150 fonts, an office suite, phone modem, internet browser, surround sound, speech synthesis, text recognition or a monster 3D graphics capability. I don't even have a firewall or antivirus on it (it's not connected to the world & I have physical control over it). Any data is either printed in real-time, or saved to a floppy. I take the floppy to my office machine, which does have most of that load of stuff, and is also hiding behind Cubic's servers / firewall. That's slightly inconvenient, but it works just fine. I also have another lab machine, an old 486 running Win98SE, that I have fitted with Ethernet & IEEE-488. I use this as a general purpose loaner for clients who bring their hardware in to be tested; they often need to load special drivers using a serial Com port or the Ethernet. Again, it's not connected to the outside world other than through the floppy, but I do run antivirus on this machine. The concept of multiple computers isn't really so odd. Only one machine, my office system, is anywhere near contemporary. All the others are relics. For a business application, you want stability and reliability. My acquisition computer is a seven year old Pentium 1, running Win 95. If the hardware ever dies, I can replace it with something the cost of a doorstop. But as long as it keeps humming along, it's very obsolescence safely keeps me from doing something dumb like upgrade the graphics card or load in some new application. Human nature is such that you are constantly tempted to "improve" your junk, and you should yield to that urge only on your personal machine. Leave your lab controllers boring, yet safe. And despite my examples of computer dinosaurs, keep in the center of the herd. Regards, Ed Ed Price [email protected] WB6WSN NARTE Certified EMC Engineer & Technician Electromagnetic Compatibility Lab Cubic Defense Applications San Diego, CA USA 858-505-2780 (Voice) 858-505-1583 (Fax) Military & Avionics EMC Is Our Specialty This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. IEEE PSES Main Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions for use of the list server: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: [email protected] Dave Heald: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
