Will PCs ever truly "multi-task"?

[Newc]

I remember years ago when Win95 came out, one of the "big features" they touted about it was "multi-tasking". Granted, they defined it as "read AND compose emails at the same time", or "check your e-mail and surf the web at the same time".

For some reason, they stopped at that point, I assume because they thought no one would ever be sitting here, like I am, with 7 tabs open in Internet Explorer 8 on WinXP trying to surf for computer parts and expect the pages to load in a reasonable amount of time without maxing out my dual-core processor.

Either that or Flash is fucking up my online experience yet again. Haven't been nagged about an "update" this week. Wouldn't be so bad if people didn't make the entire god-damned web page out of Flash.

I've rebooted 3 times since 4am, downloaded the latest Spybot and ran a complete scan and immunization, and even cleared all my cookies and cache. As soon as I open the 3rd tab, Task Manager shows the CPU pegged out, and pages simply take forever to load, and I've got a 10MB download speed plan on a secure, wired, home network.

And that fucking Failbook icon is still slowing this place down.

[Sinistas]

Part of the problem is that XP is 3 generations behind and IE is the least optimized browser out there. Things run significantly better on W7 or 8, and Firefox or Chrome blow IE out of the water.

[Accept2]

I think PCs are getting much better now with Windows 8. It runs almost as good as a 1990 Amiga now..........

[rjohnstone]

PCs multi task just fine.
My T420 ThinkPad runs nearly a dozen programs that are all active without breaking a sweat. (Win 7 Enterprise, Core i7 CPU with 8GB ram)

Crap software and poorly coded sites cause more headaches than anything else.
Get off of XP for Christ's sake and join the modern world!
XP is over 10 years old.

[xenophobe]

Sounds like you need more main memory. A lot of people have XP systems with 2gb of main memory and that's barely enough for just the OS. Even with 4gb of main memory, you'll have trouble if you're running any applications that require a lot of memory.

And yeah, Flash, for the last 20-30 iterations, has been buggy as hell and likes to crash... Also, as mentioned, IE is probably the worst browser you could choose to run.

[xenophobe]

CleanUp will clear all the temporary files that you would normally miss... if you've never run it, it'll probably free 1+ gb... after 18 runs, it's freed up 15.2gb of space on my system... I just ran it right now and it deleted 1.6gb. Then download Ccleaner to clean up the Registry. Then do a full defrag on your main system drive.


Download CleanUp! http://www.stevengould.org

Ccleaner to clean the registry: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Auslogic Defrag http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/



And if you have more than two hard drives, put your swap file on your secondary drive.

XP is really susceptible to problems related to dirty/fucked up registries (all that info gets loaded into memory, so missing/broken entries slow your system down, temp files will help accelerate fragmentation.

It's been a while since I ran XP, but my last XP system would stay on for 6 months at a time before needing a restart.


Oh, I forgot to add, you can skip using CleanUp if you use Ccleaner to clean out your temp files, except CleanUp is an easy install with a one button push to clean.... the first time you run it, it runs in demo mode so nothing is deleted. Ccleaner is much less forgiving but more configurable... if you're not careful to configure it, you'll lose all your saved passwords, sites you're logged into and your browser history in IE. Both are equally as effective and both programs will miss a few things that the other will get, but not to the point you really need to run both. So for cleaning temp files, CleanUp! is probably the easy safe bet and use Ccleaner for cleaning only your registry.

[Newc]

I usually go into my Temp folders every few months and delete all those massive folders from the last 3 dozen Updates. The ones with 256-character names. I can't believe they still don't have those auto-delete after all these years.

And yes, XP is 10 years old. It will cost me $2K *today* to replace/upgrade the software packages I use - video editing, audio editing, graphics - and those are the upgrade prices.
Tried Win7 Upgrade last year - everything I use on a regular basis had to run in either Compatability Mode (which is a myth in itself) or wouldn't even get past the splash screen.
Then there's the stuff I use only rarely, but when I do need it, I need it. I never upgrade software unless it has a proven "I need that" feature.

As far as I understand it, the most RAM XP Pro 32-bit can recognize is 4GB (which is what I have). Even so, that's the limit of my current MOBO, and it's got the fastest CPU it could handle, or close to it (IIRC).

I checked my Flash - I'm current, so either it's just buggy or there's something killing my bandwidth. I know IE8 isn't the best, but it's the highest version XP will run. ALready tried to get 9.
I had Chrome once. I did not like it. Can't recall the specifics, as it went in, rebooted, then it came right back out. IIRC it was something about being overly invasive. Much worse than M$ ever was. I wanna say it was kinda like Norton-meets-M$: took over total control of my system and didn't want to leave.

Might have to do all this on my laptop (Vista and IE9) - see if it's easier.

[Newc]

Turns out it was easier on my laptop.

It also looks like I've got a new gaming system on the way