Poll

Which version of Windows version would you use for a weather station?

2000/ME
1 (3.3%)
XP (any version)
20 (66.7%)
Vista (any version)
1 (3.3%)
7 (any version)
7 (23.3%)
98 (hee hee, ha ha..seriously?)
1 (3.3%)

Total Members Voted: 25

Author Topic: Windows versions for weather stations  (Read 2691 times)

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Offline Chris H.

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Windows versions for weather stations
« on: December 03, 2009, 11:11:40 PM »
Okay..so a friend of mine are going to be building a powerful custom computer..for various things, including a weather station. Now, I'm not asking for any advice here, just your opinions in case you decide to build a computer, or buy a new/used one. In any case, considering that I haven't had any major problems with 7 on my Toshiba laptop (well, except that WMC will not play DVD's, and yet other software will...despite Microsoft's opinion *cough* belief- belief that it's the hardware, which is a crock- on that one).

Other than that, I'll also ask, what have you experienced with any version of Windows that has ticked you off? (the last thing about Windows that ticked me off was on XP..on my old media center computer that used to run my weather cam...viruses killed it, and I've yet to reinstall a fresh Windows XP version. No viruses anymore, but the registry is a freakin' mess. Nothing can fix it..like you guys have said, reinstall the OS...I'll add to it that when that computer was upgraded to SP3, WMC failed to start, which took 6 months to fix by Microsoft, for free..and Vista, which on my Toshiba laptop, was a ton of trouble no matter what.)

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Offline Garth Bock

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Re: Windows versions for weather stations
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2009, 11:59:53 AM »
Micro$oft has had 3 big blunders......Windows ME, Windows Vista and Windows XP Media Center. I have played with every flavor (starting with DOS) because of my support job and also have heard from friends about their experiences. The top 3 were either buggy, sluggish or totally unstable. Especially XP Media Center. Here at work, home and my friends who have XP Pro with good virus protection, XP PRO is very very stable. Unfortunately everyone thinks that XP MC is XP. I have heard stories here and other places where someone has had a bad experience with every version of Windows. It just comes down to numbers. The three Win versions I listed have had the highest lack of reliability compared to all other versions. I also think that some of the problems that folks have had was due to hardware or hardware driver incompatibilities or buggy-ness.

Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Windows versions for weather stations
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2009, 12:04:08 PM »
I'm running XP Professional MC and it's very stable, but I don't use MC. But MC came on the pc. I actuall have two video cards in it, of which one I don't even use. I need to just pull it out I guess.

But yes, I've used every version since the first version of Windows, just got finished installing XP on my laptop that came with Vista. 2000 wasn't bad but XP appears to be the most stable.

Offline SlowModem

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Re: Windows versions for weather stations
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2009, 03:32:58 PM »
Micro$oft has had 3 big blunders......Windows ME, Windows Vista and Windows XP Media Center. I have played with every flavor (starting with DOS) because of my support job and also have heard from friends about their experiences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1ltR2tCz_o
Greg Whitehead
Ten Mile, TN USA

Offline Chris H.

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Re: Windows versions for weather stations
« Reply #4 on: December 06, 2009, 06:37:04 PM »
Micro$oft has had 3 big blunders......Windows ME, Windows Vista and Windows XP Media Center. I have played with every flavor (starting with DOS) because of my support job and also have heard from friends about their experiences. The top 3 were either buggy, sluggish or totally unstable. Especially XP Media Center. Here at work, home and my friends who have XP Pro with good virus protection, XP PRO is very very stable. Unfortunately everyone thinks that XP MC is XP. I have heard stories here and other places where someone has had a bad experience with every version of Windows. It just comes down to numbers. The three Win versions I listed have had the highest lack of reliability compared to all other versions. I also think that some of the problems that folks have had was due to hardware or hardware driver incompatibilities or buggy-ness.

About every computer that I've had running XP Media Center (regardless of edition) has had problems. It's gone on long enough that I'm cleaning out the hard drives on the computers that have XP MC on them, and I'm reinstalling Windows XP Home or Pro. I like having Microsoft Virtual Machine to mess with things, so gotta have Pro I guess. Vista was one of the biggest blunders I can remember. And it too has been a PITA (pain in the...), but we've yet to experience major problems with it on the remaining two computers that are using it right now. Other editions of XP are still going strong in this house, both are Home edition (one HP Pavilion laptop, one custom built PC). To clarify:

XP (non-MC):
-HP Pavilion laptop
-Custom computer
-two Acer Aspire One's
-Lenovo Idea Pad (has problem with CMOS battery)

XP (MC-Edition):
-Custom PC (different from one above), this one is problematic
-HP Pavilion desktop (won't shutdown w/o first logging out, then shutting down from there)
-Another custom PC (Dad's) that WMC quit working on after being upgraded to XP SP3. Big mistake.

Vista:
-HP Pavilion Elite (nVidia GeForce 9500s graphics card replaced, much quieter)
-Toshiba Satellite A215 (upgraded to 7)
-Dell Studio 15
-Compaq Presario CN...(can't remember model number)..gave to grandmother who needed a laptop

7:
-Toshiba Satellite A215
-ASUS (no name computer..Pentium dual core processor, 2.8gHz)

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Offline SlowModem

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Re: Windows versions for weather stations
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2009, 06:39:17 PM »
XP (non-MC):
-HP Pavilion laptop
-Custom computer
-two Acer Aspire One's
-Lenovo Idea Pad (has problem with CMOS battery)

XP (MC-Edition):
-Custom PC (different from one above), this one is problematic
-HP Pavilion desktop (won't shutdown w/o first logging out, then shutting down from there)
-Another custom PC (Dad's) that WMC quit working on after being upgraded to XP SP3. Big mistake.

Vista:
-HP Pavilion Elite (nVidia GeForce 9500s graphics card replaced, much quieter)
-Toshiba Satellite A215 (upgraded to 7)
-Dell Studio 15
-Compaq Presario CN...(can't remember model number)..gave to grandmother who needed a laptop

7:
-Toshiba Satellite A215
-ASUS (no name computer..Pentium dual core processor, 2.8gHz)

Do you live at best buy?
Greg Whitehead
Ten Mile, TN USA

Offline Chris H.

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Re: Windows versions for weather stations
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2009, 07:20:26 PM »
XP (non-MC):
-HP Pavilion laptop
-Custom computer
-two Acer Aspire One's
-Lenovo Idea Pad (has problem with CMOS battery)

XP (MC-Edition):
-Custom PC (different from one above), this one is problematic
-HP Pavilion desktop (won't shutdown w/o first logging out, then shutting down from there)
-Another custom PC (Dad's) that WMC quit working on after being upgraded to XP SP3. Big mistake.

Vista:
-HP Pavilion Elite (nVidia GeForce 9500s graphics card replaced, much quieter)
-Toshiba Satellite A215 (upgraded to 7)
-Dell Studio 15
-Compaq Presario CN...(can't remember model number)..gave to grandmother who needed a laptop

7:
-Toshiba Satellite A215
-ASUS (no name computer..Pentium dual core processor, 2.8gHz)

Do you live at best buy?


LOL..

No my Dad works for the government, and does computer network and server, as well as is the overall IT guy for the New Mexico military. He sometimes goes out of state (to say Florida, DC, San Diego) to fix other state military computer problems. So..that makes money. He and I possess computer knowledge to building custom computers and rebuilding computers. (That HP laptop needed a new motherboard since the old one, where the charging connection had broken off the board and soldering it was not fixing it, was taken out. Yes, I live in a computer centric household, and more than once have I suggested for him to use an old one that still works to turn it into a server for the household.)

Oh yeah, I'll mention that he's been building his own desktop computers for years now, since Windows 95 came out. My first computer was a rebuilt Compaq that used to be his, til he rebuilt another Compaq the Army screwed up. And umm, his computer room in the house, is littered with fried hardware (from an HP and a Dell), hardware that stopped working (like the HP laptop motherboard), computer cases raging from beige ugly boxes to these interesting new cases (that have all these modifications, like fans, vents, I/O ports, controllers etc.). And there's fans, boxes of older Windows versions, MS Office versions and old computer games that ran on 95, 98 and 2000/Me. Oh yeah, and discs of software.

And two Mac's, both acquired this year. (A ten year old Power Mac G4 w/ OS X Tiger and a Mac Mini early 2009 with Leopard).

We've also owned a much older Compaq Presario that ran 98 for awhile, then the drive went bad. So we reinstalled 98 and sold it to a friend years ago...I hated that laptop though.
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