[TOOLS] Motherboard and CPU

[Edgar D' Souza]

Kevin, my 2c :
1. If the power supply is an old one, and an integral part of your
purchase, it might pay to check that the mobo you're buying accepts
the mainboard power connectors from that power supply. Been there,
been bitten :-)

2. If that's not an issue, then may I recommend you try an Intel
processor with VT (Virtualization Technology ... ahem! Fred, am I
right this time? ;-) ). Since you're a Linux fan, you might want to
try out one of the new distros with Xen for virtualization; the VT
processor allows you to run unmodified Windows (XP, no idea about
Vista and couldn't care less) in a VM under Linux, and dedicate one
processor core to each OS, more or less. So you never really get out
of Linux, even when you're running Windows :-) You'll need extra RAM,
of course, but then buying a system with less than 1GB of RAM doesn't
really make that much sense now...
Another great virtualization solution is VMWare - especially good if
you don't want to spend on a VT processor. A full license for VMware
Workstation 5 is available for US$199 (packaged distribution) and
US$189 (electronic distribution). (from
http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/faqs.html)
As John Posada said in another thread, VMWare overhead is surprisingly
low - and I'm running it under Mandriva 2006 on an AMD Turion 1.6GHz
laptop with 768MB of RAM. (At 512MB of RAM, though, the swapping
causes a big slow-down - therefore get as much RAM as you can afford -
it's useful!).

3. If you use virtualization to run Windows (one of the above
methods), then you can firewall off the Windows VM from the Net (which
is what I do, and haven't had a single worm/virus problem in over a
year). You anyway do your mail, browsing from Linux - so that oughtn't
to be a problem.

4. CodeWeavers claim that Crossover Linux 6  can run FrameMaker 7.1
and MS Office 2003. Around US$40 for a license.
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/
http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=cxo

Regards,
Ed.
P.S.: I'm not affiliated in any way with either CodeWeavers or VMWare
or partner companies or sales agents. Totally neutral. :)

On 2/28/07, Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan at safenet-inc.com> wrote:
> Poshedly, Ken [mailto:PoshedlyK at polysius.com]
>
> had generally sound advice, but missed the obvious...
>
> Install Linux, man!     :-)
...
> So, I normally use Linux for everyday stuff, and
> when I really need to fire up Windows, I just unplug
> the ethernet cable for a while.
>
> All mailing and browsing are done in Linux. I never open
...
> I haven't tried FrameMaker with Wine recently... maybe I
> don't even need to boot Win anymore...  hmm.   :-0
>
> My wife uses ACT! (a contact database program that's popular
> with sales reps) and also does our taxes in Windows-only
> software, so she does spend a bit more time in Windows,
> and she HAS spent ongoing bucks and aggravation to keep
> the virus, spy-ware and other protection current on her system.