I wouldn't mind too much if my school's CS department decided to upgrade to these. We're still on P4s in the student lab and Pentium Ds in the classrooms. And I hate them, especially running in Windows.
Well, majority of schools-- elementary to college-- have poor performing computers in the computer labs and libraries for menial tasks such as web browsing or word processing.
My last college were still using Pentium IV Celerons and Windows 2000 in every library workstation as of last year. They haven't updated ever since I started there many years ago. If you think that's bad, my elementary school are still using IBM PS/2 and Macintosh IIc computers in their computer labs, and I graduated from there in 1994.
*sigh*
It would be nice if the schools a whee bit more cash towards updating their computers for their students. These Tri-core or dual-core would be perfect since they're affordable.
Amazingly, my high school actually updates their computers. They now have Windows XP and MS Office 2007 on all their PCs in the only computer lab on campus with Intel Core Duo CPUs (cheap, affordable ones of course).
haha the libraries at my school use dell thin clients with old celerons, and they make even simple web browsing a chore. However, our engineering labs have the dell workstations with core 2 duo E6400's in them.
Octoberasian - I agree with you that most labs at schools are meant for web browsing and word processing. And the computers in the library have Celerons still, and they are very very slow. But for most applications, they are really fine. Where I'd love to see these new Optiplex PCs is in our computer science majors labs, where the software engineering happens. It is a real pain to be told you have to use Visual Studio and then wait 10 minutes for it to start every time you log in. And don't get me started on compiling.
@ Andrew: I'm glad that my avatar can single-handedly drive the economies of both Japan and America. Hope you enjoy your new console (I'm a proud 360 owner, but the PS3 is a great piece of equipment)
At my university Windows is a very slow environment on dual-boot machines compared to the Fedora distro. I enjoy Windows XP on my home machine, it boots fast and is reliable. On school machines no settings are saved because they dont want to give us server hard drive space. As a result, it's like booting up for the first time every time. And with Visual Studio that is a problem because it takes 10 minutes to configure first-time use.
I wouldn't blame that on the computers or Windows though. My university's windows machines use Novell, which really works pretty well, runs most engineering apps fairly quickly on a mixture of P IV, Pentium D, and a few Core 2. All the settings and profiles are saved and everything behaves the same no matter what computer you are on. Although I use the older non HT PIV's with Debian for most things.
Does anyone else have a bunch of ridiculous Sun SPARC workstations around that never get used?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John P @ Feb 17th 2008 1:00PM
I wouldn't mind too much if my school's CS department decided to upgrade to these. We're still on P4s in the student lab and Pentium Ds in the classrooms. And I hate them, especially running in Windows.
octoberasian @ Feb 17th 2008 2:06PM
Well, majority of schools-- elementary to college-- have poor performing computers in the computer labs and libraries for menial tasks such as web browsing or word processing.
My last college were still using Pentium IV Celerons and Windows 2000 in every library workstation as of last year. They haven't updated ever since I started there many years ago. If you think that's bad, my elementary school are still using IBM PS/2 and Macintosh IIc computers in their computer labs, and I graduated from there in 1994.
*sigh*
It would be nice if the schools a whee bit more cash towards updating their computers for their students. These Tri-core or dual-core would be perfect since they're affordable.
Amazingly, my high school actually updates their computers. They now have Windows XP and MS Office 2007 on all their PCs in the only computer lab on campus with Intel Core Duo CPUs (cheap, affordable ones of course).
asphixiated @ Feb 17th 2008 2:16PM
haha the libraries at my school use dell thin clients with old celerons, and they make even simple web browsing a chore. However, our engineering labs have the dell workstations with core 2 duo E6400's in them.
John P @ Feb 17th 2008 2:31PM
Octoberasian - I agree with you that most labs at schools are meant for web browsing and word processing. And the computers in the library have Celerons still, and they are very very slow. But for most applications, they are really fine. Where I'd love to see these new Optiplex PCs is in our computer science majors labs, where the software engineering happens. It is a real pain to be told you have to use Visual Studio and then wait 10 minutes for it to start every time you log in. And don't get me started on compiling.
Andrew Danks @ Feb 17th 2008 3:49PM
John P: Looking at your avatar is what made me buy a PS3 today.
John P @ Feb 17th 2008 4:48PM
@ Andrew: I'm glad that my avatar can single-handedly drive the economies of both Japan and America. Hope you enjoy your new console (I'm a proud 360 owner, but the PS3 is a great piece of equipment)
Abuzar @ Feb 17th 2008 4:51PM
What's wrong with Windows XP?
John P @ Feb 17th 2008 4:56PM
At my university Windows is a very slow environment on dual-boot machines compared to the Fedora distro. I enjoy Windows XP on my home machine, it boots fast and is reliable. On school machines no settings are saved because they dont want to give us server hard drive space. As a result, it's like booting up for the first time every time. And with Visual Studio that is a problem because it takes 10 minutes to configure first-time use.
Abuzar @ Feb 17th 2008 5:03PM
Oh then, yeah it would suck.
Have you ever used OSX? First time I used it I was like "Look it's Linux, but only a few programs work with it!".
Linux is actually pretty good now, before it used to lack that Finish, but it's come a long way.
oppositelock @ Feb 17th 2008 9:32PM
yea, but Linux never lacked Finnish!
I wouldn't blame that on the computers or Windows though. My university's windows machines use Novell, which really works pretty well, runs most engineering apps fairly quickly on a mixture of P IV, Pentium D, and a few Core 2. All the settings and profiles are saved and everything behaves the same no matter what computer you are on. Although I use the older non HT PIV's with Debian for most things.
Does anyone else have a bunch of ridiculous Sun SPARC workstations around that never get used?
Abuzar @ Feb 17th 2008 9:51PM
Sorry, typo. I meant Finish.