installing win7 on an ancient dell poweredge 400sc

[wellington1869]

installing right now... any bets?  
the 400sc doesnt even have winxp drivers available on the site...  server 2003 is the best they've got.

[wellington1869]

wow, running like a dream. it auto installed all the drivers except audio. might get that too once i get it an internet connection. win7 rocks.

[microsoft windows]

Make sure you're using Professional. Windows 7 Professional runs great.


By the way, what are the specs of this Poweredge?

[ch_123]

A server with audio? Waaah?

[microsoft windows]

Seems kind of strange. Maybe he put in a sound card.

[wellington1869]

specs on the poweredge - i forget but it was decent actually. pentium IV I think (could it have been a III? Pretty sure it was IV), at either 2.8 or 3ghz.  Only 512kb of ram tho.

yea it had an audio card of some kind.

the other nice thing about win7 (other than that it finds nearly any driver you can think of, automatically, no mean feat given the wide range of hardware platforms it can go on), is that the actual install is likety-split quick.

[ch_123]

Only 512kb of ram tho.

Sure you didn't buy one of MW's surplus stock? =P

[wellington1869]

Sure you didn't buy one of MW's surplus stock? =P

didnt look like a timex sinclair...

[wellington1869]

btw this is one of those machines that some totally clueless academic administrator ordered for the computer lab, having absolutely no idea that its a server, nor any idea of the difference.  Then they got it and it looked weird and asked all these management questions on bootup so they stuck it in a closet and forgot about it. Total waste of the $1500 or whatever it cost them at the time.
This sort of thing happens a lot around here.  We've got professors with RAID machines on their desk with no idea how they got it or what it does. They just go onto the dell site going "computer! I need a computer!!" and click on links willy nilly until they get one.

[microsoft windows]

At work there was an old dual Pentium III Poweredge. I wish I took it.

[ch_123]

There used to be a Dell Poweredge with twin Pentium 3s with a ****load of hotswappable 10GB SCSI drives in college. It looked something like this, except orientated horizontally instead of vertically -



There's a video of me, and another guy, throwing the thing into a pile of garbage. And I mean throwing...

[D-EJ915]

hahaha those things are pretty hefty, that one just has deskside panels instead of rackmount rail mounts.  They have one of my school's old DCs under a desk in a student test/experiment classroom and it has P2 xeons with ECC simms lol

[microsoft windows]

There used to be a Dell Poweredge with twin Pentium 3s with a ****load of hotswappable 10GB SCSI drives in college. It looked something like this, except orientated horizontally instead of vertically -

Show Image

There's a video of me, and another guy, throwing the thing into a pile of garbage. And I mean throwing...

You should have gotten it. A dualie 933Mhz PIII would be a good, reliable system.

[wellington1869]

Reminds me of this.

lol thats one of my fav videos of all time

[audioave10]

Nice to hear about Windows 7 being such a great OS. (its about time MS!)
I do like it with the quadcore and its very fast.
Did you have to use the 32bit version?

[wellington1869]

Nice to hear about Windows 7 being such a great OS. (its about time MS!)
I do like it with the quadcore and its very fast.
Did you have to use the 32bit version?

yea 32 bit, i rarely pull out 64-bit around here. Too many old peripherals wouldnt work, no drivers.

quadcore sounds nice. I just ordered one for a prof who does a lot of video encoding. I think she'll be v happy with it.

[EverythingIBM]

Windows 7 is great. You got to give Microsoft some credit for coding driver detection on so many different pieces of hardware.
The only downside is their lack of MIDI support... why they removed that is beyond me. Now I'll have to use ****ty XP for audio stuff.

98 and windows 7 I think are the best to have in terms of compatibility with everything.

Windows 2000 is just weird, I never heard about it until way later. Who used it?

[Oqsy]

I used Win 2000 Pro for about 6 years.  I liked it a lot.
I really need to try Win7, but I can't justify spending money on it when XP SP3 still runs just fine for me

[Oqsy]

"I need the one with the bigger GBs"
"Oh God."

Yes, this amuses me.

[EverythingIBM]

I used Win 2000 Pro for about 6 years.  I liked it a lot.
I really need to try Win7, but I can't justify spending money on it when XP SP3 still runs just fine for me

Oh I got it for free. MW probably did too... we've got connections.

Yeah it's fairly pricey. Not to mention, you have to keep damn phoning microsoft each time you want to renew your keycode, that is SO ANNOYING. I guess you better make an image of your drive when you first install windows.

What ever happened to just typing in the keycode and being able to activiate windows without the need of internet or phoning like in 98?

[wellington1869]

my cat is homeless now.

[wellington1869]

I used Win 2000 Pro for about 6 years.  I liked it a lot.
I really need to try Win7, but I can't justify spending money on it when XP SP3 still runs just fine for me

yea my main laptop is XP still. Works fine

MS had some fantastic student-only pricing on win7 and office, if you can get hold of a student ID. Dont know how strictly they check on these things.

I think this is the $30 win7 page for students:  
http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/windows/buynow/default.aspx

they used to have office for $59, guess its $79 now.
http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/default.aspx#discounts

[ch_123]

Do you know who also has great prices on Windows 7?

The Pirate Bay.

[microsoft windows]

Windows 7 is great. You got to give Microsoft some credit for coding driver detection on so many different pieces of hardware.
The only downside is their lack of MIDI support... why they removed that is beyond me. Now I'll have to use ****ty XP for audio stuff.

98 and windows 7 I think are the best to have in terms of compatibility with everything.

Windows 2000 is just weird, I never heard about it until way later. Who used it?

Windows 98 is compatible with a lot of things, but it's a terrible OS. It crashes all the time. It makes Windows ME look good.

And W2k's actually a very good OS. Very reliable and compatible with just about everything (This includes 486's).

[microsoft windows]

I work at a school district. I wonder if I could get into that stuff? Or is it all "colledge-only"?

[wellington1869]

Also, if your school grants students access to MSDN Academic Alliance, you can get Windows 7 Professional (32- and 64-bit) free of charge.

ya, mine does Very happy about that. We also get office for free. The full version with Onenote and everything. Onenote on a tablet is Da Ill Bomb.

[gr1m]

ya, mine does Very happy about that. We also get office for free.

That's cool, because McGill's MSDNAA doesn't give Office, it's in the rules. I got two free keys for Win 7 Professional though, so I can't complain.

[gr1m]

Na, both 64-bit. I basically got two OSes instead of the normal one, but the guy in charge said they had extras anyway and that he wanted to get rid of them before the date where Microsoft restocks them.

[wellington1869]

As for OneNote, I find it irritating in a traditional user interface (keyboard + mouse + non-touch-screen monitor) but I have a feeling that a touch screen makes it wayyyy more useful.

ya absolutely, its really made for a stylus.  Its as easy and intuitive as a paper notebook when you have a stylus in your hand.

For keyboard use I'm a huge fan of Surfulater. A little known but really very powerful and easy to use piece of genius-ware. I've got most of my dissertation notes in there. Couldnt live without it.

I also make extensive use of Word's built-in outlining feature. In office 2010 they've finally allowed you to drag outline headings around in the left pane, making it more like a true tree-view outliner. Very happy to see that.

[ch_123]

MSDNAA gives Office licenses to the staff of third-level institutions. For some mind-numbingly stupid reason, students don't get it.

[wellington1869]

with my palm pre i've finally started using evernote, too. (palm app for it, syncs with their online server and then with my laptops. They did a good job with the 3-way syncing).

[wellington1869]

so far as I can see, new stuff in office 2010 that I'm going to like:
-syncing to skydrive (25gb free).
-office web apps at office.live.com, including onenote ink, in the browser. I tried out the web apps and they're pretty slick, well implemented as far as I can see. I was especially impressed with the way they duplicated onenote in the browser. That couldnt have been easy.
-mini translator -- hover over a word and see its translation. Great for language learners. Works in onenote and word.
-inking in Word. No need to print out student papers to grade them anymore Just write on the screen w/ stylus directly in Word and email it back.

we should be getting 2010 sometime in the Fall...

[microsoft windows]

I use Office 97 for the most part. I lost my '03 CD, but '97 gets the job done.