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launderess

launderess

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Jul 22, 2004
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Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage
This is Hyacinth Bouquet, B-O-U-Q-U-E-T, no it's not Bucket, coming to you on her new Dell Optiplex 960 with Windows 7 Operating System.

Am all a quiver using this modern technology! Coming from Windows 98 it's all so new to me. Will have to ask Sheriden to assist when he's home from the local Poly. Such a bright boy, and so devoted to his mummy. He and his friend Tarquin will be over just as soon as they finish running up some new curtains for their flat's front parlor.

Well I must dash, have the Vicar and his wife coming over for tea and light refreshments. Then I have to visit a sick friend in hospital. I go every Sunday and read her the "People's Friend" from cover to cover but she never seems to cheer up. But first must dash to the bakery for some cream cakes, but cannot find my shower proof. Shall be quite cross if it's been taken, twas a lovely colour and doubt if I shall find another like it.
 
I'm speechless!

Is Sheridan and friend making some lovely English floral draperies, or are they using Irish lace?

And may I remind Madame that even with Windows 7 she will still need to run the maintenance programs now and then! (scan-disk, disk defragmenter, disk cleanup & of course a scan using your favorite anti-cirus program)
 
Too funny.

I hope you remembered to invite your sister Rose to tea as well. I know how fond she is of the Vicar...

And here I thought I was being a Luddite with my Windows 2000 Pro system. Windows 98, indeed. You're in for some fun. Finally you'll be able to watch videos on-line, I would imagine.

I'm serious considering upgrading this system from Windows 2000 to Windows XP... that's as far as I'm willing to go at present. Windows 7 is nice but I hear it will break some older DOS-based software I need to run.
 
Thanks All

Have been that busy all afternoon with cables,wires, connections, vacuuming (you cannot imagine the amount of dust that gathers around a computer), hooking up new equipment and so forth. All this on such a lovely Sunday, damn shame to have spent it indoors.

Fun hasn't even started as next have to move nearly two decades of files from the old computer to the new. Since Dell no longer offers Zip Drives on any thing they build, had to settle for a DVD burner and "thumb drive". Sadly the former is no good at the moment for my purposes as it is not possible to burn CD's with my old Windows 98 system (more about that later), neither is using thumb drive.

Was up all last night until the wee hours copying vast amounts of data onto zip disks. Once the external CD burner arrives from eBay (Jack Rabbit) will transfer the data onto CDs. Well that was the original plan but someone we know can lay hands on an external zip drive that uses USB instead of SCSI (something else Dell does not build into their motherboards anymore either.Would be far easier with the later so am thinking about going that route.

Microsoft has discontinued Outlook Expresss so had to move ages worth of files in that program over to Outlook on the old computer. Once that was done had to move those files also onto a zip disk (or try five).

So far this Windows 7 isn't that bad, but coming from '98 it tis a bit of a pain sorting things out. It is going to take ages to get this computer the way I like it.

First ripple in the sea came this afternoon trying to connect the Phaser printer to the computer. Damn silly thing kept saying there wern't any drivers, nor would it install same from disk nor Xerox's website. Finally used "add a printer" instead of allowing Windows to supposedly know what it is doing.

Will post some snaps later in the week. This Dell Optiplex is *huge* compared to the nearly twenty year old Dimension it replaced. Worse still even though it's a mini tower it has to go on the desk. My previous computer suffered badly from dust and was advised one of the best ways to deal with that is to keep the thing off the floors.

I've got all the mod cons for this system. RAID, dual Core (or is it Quad?), two hard drives and so forth.
 
The Dell Optiplex systems are made for commercial use, like in offices and corporate environments while the Dimension systems are used for home systems. Your computer should be built well and will last for years and years!
 
Iomega no longer makes zip drives.

However they are still available from outfits like Amazon.com or eBay.

What you might have to do is to get a USB or parallel port zip drive, install it on a Windows 2000 system, copy your files from your zip disks to a flash thumb drive on the Windows 2000 system, and then take the thumb drive and transfer the files from that to the Windows 7 pc.

I say this because I've had mixed results trying to run a USB 250 Zip drive on a Windows XP system... so I'm pretty sure they won't work so well with Vista or 7. But they will work on windows 2000, which also supports flash thumb drives.

Oddly, I had better luck getting an old parallel port 100 MB Zip drive to work on Windows XP than the USB version. But I'm pretty sure that Windows 7 will not work with a parallel port Zip drive.
 
Thanks Suds

Since my printer connects via USB, do have the printer parallel port free, but as you say not sure if Windows 7 will like it.

Problem with these "legacy" devices is that many computer manufacturers no longer bother installing them, and thus drivers and so forth aren't being written for anything say after Windows 2000 if you are lucky.

If something runs on Vista, it *should* run on XP and thus Windows 7, but wouldn't bet the farm on it.

You can also order a new computer with Windows 7 that has a Vista overlay in order to use software/devices that simply won't run otherwise.

As for the data, may end up simply buring all onto CDs and not bothering with Zip. We shall see what there is to be done. Used and MIB USB external Zip drives go for good money on fleaBay. Don't know why unless there are lots of persons still on Windows 98 through 2000.
 
OK, yes, if you can get the Windows 98 system to run the CD burner, that would be by far the best solution.

And forget the Zip disks in future. They are obsolete and not in a good way ;-).
 
Floral I Hope

I use a portable hard drive with tons of storage.  I have moved a few things from the archives over to the new machine for posting on this and other sites but it keeps my "pantry" clean on the new machine. Should anything go south I have the complete back up on the hard drive as I use it for back up protection with Dell Safe when it runs a performance evaluation.  I have a new Dell with Windows 7 and use Microsoft Security Essentials for protection and I have never had a whisper of issues with a program that is free and espressly designed for Windows Operating Systems.  Hopefully with a faster computer you'll have more time with Sheldon and can post more juicy bits here for all of us to share.

Kelly
 
Don't know why unless there are lots of persons still on Windows 98 through 2000.

Here is a chart from the statistics of my turntable website. I shows all the users for today and what operating systems they are using. It is a good snapshot of what people are using today.

Looks to me like XP is still the leader with 7 and Vista trailing along.

whirlcool++6-5-2011-21-43-7.jpg
 
Went With Windows 7

Since one was coming from such an outdated OS (98) and didn't want to be bothered updating in a short time just because Mr. Gates needs more funds for his good works.

Sure enough read that Windows 8 will soon be out but Microsoft can hold their breath if they think I'll be updating anytime soon.

Indeed MS should have learned their lesson by now that not everyone ditches perfectly good computers and or software just because Windows says so.

This could all be pretty much moot in a generation anyway. Tablets and smart phones are increasingly the way "young folks" access the web,and it shows in declining PC sales. Businesses are the real market and probably will remain so to an extent.
 
Good luck with your computer!

Another option may exist for moving data to the new system: a USB flash drive. At least as of a few years ago, some of these still had Windows 98 support. There may still be something out there. You'd have to download a special driver, I recall, but once installed it SHOULD work OK. A card reader (for camera cards) plus a memory card should work, too. (Assuming drivers exist, and there isn't some other evil problem lurking in Windows 98--my experience with 98, as limited as it was, was bad enough so I take nothing for granted!)

Zip disks may be obsolete, but they are still useful for those who have and use older computers. Zip disks may be the one of only viable ways of moving data between old and new sometimes. It's been a while, but I haven't had problems using USB Zip drives on this computer. The drive, as I recall, connected and disks were properly recognized. But--and this is a big but--this is with Linux. No telling what would happen with Windows 7.
 
Perhaps the easiest, for some that is, way of moving all that data would be to simply remove the old hard drive and plug it into the new computer. Copy all the desired files to their new home, then put the old drive on the shelf for safe keeping in case some document might be needed in the future. No Zip, USB Memory or CD, unless you really want another copy of that data.
 
Here Is My System.

OptiPlex 960 Minitower Base Standard PSU
311-9533 1 OptiPlex 960, Core 2 Duo E8400 with VT/3.0GHz,6M,1333FSB
311-7444 1 4GB,Non-ECC,800MHz DDR2,2X2GB OptiPlex
310-0760 1 No Keyboard Selected for OptiPlex Systems
320-3704 1 No Monitor Selected, OptiPlex
320-7407 1 Integrated Video,GMA 4500,Dell OptiPlex 760,960 and 980
341-5474 1 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s and 8MB Data Burst Cache,Dell OptiPlex
341-8102 1 No Floppy Drive with Optical Filler Panel,Dell OptiPlex 950Desktop and Minitower
330-6228 1 Windows 7 Label, Optiplex, Fixed Precision, Vostro Desktop
469-0476 1 Windows 7 Professional,SP1,No Media, 64-bit, Optiplex, English
331-3300 1 Dell Back-up and Recovery Manager for Win7, MUI,Service Pack 1, Optiplex, Precision, Latitude
310-3553 1 No mouse selected on your OptiPlex system
330-2626 1 vPro Secure Advanced Hardware Enabled Systems Management Dell OptiPlex
313-7063 1 16X DVD+/-RW SATA,Data Only Dell OptiPlex 960 Desktop or Minitower,Black
421-4370 1 Cyberlink Power DVD 9.5,No Media, Dell OptiPlex, Latitude and Precision Workstation
421-4539 1 Roxio Creator Starter,No Media,Dell OptiPlex, Latitude and Precision Workstation
467-7659 1 Thank You for Buying Dell OptiPlex 960
313-3350 1 Internal Chassis Speaker Option,Dell OptiPlex Minitower
330-2010 1 OptiPlex 960 Minitower Standard Power Supply
330-7422 1 Enable Low Power Mode for EUP Compliance,Dell OptiPlex
421-5078 1 Dell Data Protection Access,OptiPlex
330-1711 1 Power Cord,125V,2M,C13,Dell OptiPlex
330-1710 1 Documentation,English,Dell OptiPlex
341-5477 1 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s and 8MB Data Burst Cache,Dell OptiPlex 960 Minitower
341-8016 1 RAID 1, Dell OptiPlex
467-3564 1 No Dell Energy Smart Power Management Settings,OptiPlex
313-3673 1 No Resource DVD for Dell Optiplex, Latitude, Precision
410-0329 1 Trend Micro Worry Free Business Services,MUI,30 Day,Dell Optiplex, Precision and Latitude
330-2234 1 Chassis intrusion switch, DellOptiPlex 960
330-2029 1 Shipping Material for System Minitower,Dell OptiPlex 960
311-9543 1 Mainstream Pentium Dual Core ell OptiPlex 960 Minitower
410-0560 1 Adobe Acrobat X, includes Serial Key Card, FI, ENG/FRN
421-3950 1 Microsoft Office Starter 2010,OptiPlex,Precision and Latitude
421-3954 1 Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010,English,OptiPlex,Precision and Latitude
991-1792 1 Basic Support: Next Business Day Parts and Labor Onsite Response 2 Year Extended
991-4250 1 Basic Support: Next Business Day Parts and Labor Onsite Response Initial Year
992-5868 1 Dell Hardware Limited Warranty Plus Onsite Service Extended Year(s)
992-5867 1 Dell Hardware Limited Warranty Plus Onsite Service Initial Year
900-9987 1 Standard On-Site Installation Declined
421-2992 1 Media Kit,Win 7 Professional 64bit,MUI,Dell OptiPlex, Precision and Latitude
310-9490 1 You have chosen a vPro System
 
Congratulations on a new computer! I just got a new one too and have some difficulties to adapt to Windows7 too. I come from WindowsXP, but the difference is big too.

BTW, I bet you are way too busy to entertain the dishy vicar. You can send him over, I will take care of the entertainment...!
 
@ MattL

Am considering keeping the old computer for use as a back-up hard drive, or mounting same into the new system, however have some reservations.

For one thing what prompted me to finally loosen the mouse-trap and part with good money was the strange error messages coming from various things connected. In short the printer and other devices were sending word that they detected a "failing" hard drive. Hence my reasons and speed for purchasing a new system.

Aside from documents, photos, "favourites", emails and perhaps a few other things, there isn't much that simply cannot be saved onto a DVD/CD/ Flash or even Zip drive and archived. Since my new system already has two hard drives built in am not sure about a third.

Am hearing more and more it is best to back-up data one wishes to archive some place else other than the main computer. Which sort of makes sense, I mean if the whole thing goes south, not sure if the remaining second or third HD could still be accessed.
 
I agree, and have several hard drives in my computer, odds are they all won't fail at the same time unless there is a catastrophic power supply problem. My suggestion of moving the drive would net the quickest transfer of data, which might be of importance at this point, USB memory sticks would yield a fairly quick back up too.

Do you have any idea of the size of all the files you want to move? You might want to use one of the "cloud" services. I've got 20G free from Amazon 5g free permanently and the remainder for a year for buying a $.99 MP3.
 
I did the two drives thing several years ago when we had a power surge. Yes I also had an APC surge suppressor too. Both drives were crashed. I was able to recover them using a disk utilities package. But as soon as they were recovered, I replaced them. They were sure to burn out shortly.

So I learned that nothing replaces and external hard disk for backups where you can store it offline in a location remote from your computer system.

Remember the old adage, you are only as good as your last backup!
 
Congrats on the new PC!

I just got a new computer too, and I'm adapting to Windows 7 quite well.  I would like to get a USB external hard drive to store my pictures, music, and videos on, and for important backups.
 
Once you get past the pretty intro screens a lot of Windows 7 looks just like Windows XP. Look at the Computer> Disk properties.

Has anyone tried to format a disk using 7? Now THAT'S a real trip!
 
True That

True to the history of Microsoft, Windows 7 is merely XP and a bit of Vista with all the bugs worked out. Anyone with an ounce of common sense ever purchases the first release of any MS OS. First consumers are really "beta" testing and in short order patches, updates and so forth flow to such an extent you now have a 'new" version.

MS had better wake up and realise it is not the 1990's anymore.
 

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