Advice Requested on Life Expectancy of a PC Windows System

[Dave G4UGM]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Antonio
> Carlini
> Sent: 30 June 2015 18:03
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: Advice Requested on Life Expectancy of a PC Windows System
> 
> On 30/06/15 17:02, Dave G4UGM wrote:
> > Well there are other reasons. You buy a new printer and you find it
> > only works on Windows/7 onwards.
> 
> Indeed. The latest stuff is (obviously) only tested against the "current"
eco-
> system, so if you find that you need a new printer or network interface or
> whatever, then  you may be forced into an upgrade.
> 
> > Microsoft does things to "persuade" you to upgrade... Lets take the
> > latest Skype upgrade.
> 
> Worked with me. I'm running Linux now :-)
> 
> Back to the original question. It looks like system (c) is the most
capable and
> the most likely "next" platform.
> 
> I'd heartily recommend the advice to try out Win98 in a VM. I'd start by
> installing VMWare Player or VirtualBox, create an empty VM and install
> Win98. If that goes OK then I'd copy across the required stuff bit by bit.
(Or
> use the VM converter mentioned earlier if that's a suitable choice).
> 

Can I say that VMware Player is IMHO the best reason to upgrade to Windows/7
64-bit. 

I have a "Core I5 2500" with 4 Cores @ 3.6GHz and 12Gb or RAM. I bought this
box because I wanted to run the Hercules emulator and that can use the CPUs
and RAM...
However with the aid of VMware or Virtual Box I can run a host of VM's,
including DOS and Windows 95 , multiple Turnkey Linux systems for playing
around with Drupal, WordPress and Joomla among other things.
.. its really great fun.... Only OS/2 is a little truculent....

Most things can be run virtual, there are one or two things that don't work,
but on the whole its fine. Even my Printer Port JTAG programmer works fine
with XP in a VM....


> Assuming all goes well then you know that you have a viable upgrade path
> when something eventually goes irrevocably south with the current system.
> 
> You'd also have the advantage of being able to install multiple VMs so you
> could (if you chose) keep your various uses separate (if that makes
sense).
> 
> You probably should choose to use a dynamic disk (or disks) in the VM -
that
> way you can specify a 100GiB disk size but the container file will only
grow to
> the size that is actually needed. This also makes backups pretty easy:
> shutdown the VM and copy the container directory of to somewhere safe.
> 
> When system (c) goes bang, you replace the hardware, install VMWare (or
> VirtualBox), restore your VM and away you go.
> 
> Antonio
>