Hi William>> Well, I don't about technical superiority, but I can tell you (from the new 'puter, up and running for 24 hrs.) that THIS is the WAY TO FLY! Man, oh man, have I been missing something. I don't know how this system compares to others (I don't trust everything the benchmark programs say), but turning up the graphics and still hitting the frame rates turns this program into a whole other experience. <<
I got my new computer 2 weeks ago now and it's great isn't it? Mine's got the Athlon 1900+ processor and nVidia GeForce 3 Ti500 card and nothing slows it but it highlights what a mess the MS 747-400 is. The update rate on the panel is still just as slow as with the AMD 800MHz this PC replaces.
I'm not sure whether I like winXP yet. I've no doubt it's a more solid OS than 98SE and the way it handled my hardware was nothing short of amazing. This is how all the upgrades should go. After I'd connected the bits together and switched it on I started adding all my hardware, one piece at a time, and everything was recognised, everything works. Amazing. I love the way it set up my network too. Just follow the wizard and away it goes.
However, there are one or two things that really annoy me.
1. For my work there are times when I need to do a multiple floppy disk copy - I teach IT part time at the local Tech and need 30 floppies all with the same files on them so I create one floppy then disk copy to the other 29. Under win95 and 98, at the dos prompt I could type 'diskcopy a: a:' and, after the first copy, I was given the option: 'Do you wish to make another copy of this disk?', so answer yes to that, shove in the next floppy and that too would be written too. Now, under XP, after the first copy is done the prog starts all over again, asking for the source disk once more before the target disk. Why?? In heavens name all the data is there in ram. The previous version of diskcopy.com already did this. Why change a perfectly good little program for something fundamentally worse
2. I left a floppy disk in the A drive on Sunday last. Needless to say, the PC failed to boot but, instead of that useful message all previous versions of windows has given, telling you there's a floppy in the A drive with no system files on it, all winXP says is: 'NTLDR failed to load'. Great. Took me over 2 hours to find the cause. Big source of aggro and hugely unimpressed. Another decidely backward step. Sure, I'll know where to look next time I see this message but what a pain in the butt. Am I the only one left who uses floppies these days?
Anyway, now let's get back to the seriously good scenery that's available with this system ...
Paul Croft
10 miles south east of LHR