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[David Rose]

Ugh! Just about the time I depend on them, I don't receive them. I can't find anything in AOL I might have done, and the "send notifications" is checked on the Creek. Any place/thing else I need to check?

David

[John Miliunas]

Any place/thing else I need to check?

David

Uh, David...with ALL due respect. You need to check your phone book and see if there's a *REAL* ISP available in your area! (Tongue firmly planted in cheek!) Seriously though, (okay, more seriously) it may just be a temporary glitch. If you haven't changed anything else on your end, there may just be some issues with one of the mail servers. This, BTW, is by no means exclusive to AOL; Many, if not most ISP's, have a glitch like that from time to time. If you haven't changed anything on your system, just let it ride for a bit and see if it doesn't return to "normal" all on its own. In the meantime, let your fingers walk around the Yellow Pages a bit... Good luck!

[David Rose]

OK, John. I don't need a lecture on this. (read that BIG grin) You are 110% correct! There is almost nothing I agree with AOL about from politics to contributions to sexual preferences. 'Nuff said about those subjects. We started with AOL when we first got on the net. The only good thing about it is that is easy for a beginner to use. Once email addresses were established and on all our business paper work we were somewhat stuck. Now that daughter is getting married, so that her end doesn't matter, I am seriously looking.

We have an independent phone line at about $16 a month and the aol service at about $23 a month. We can get DSL from our local phone company for about $35 a month. But, always a but, since we connect to the net in our business it will cost us about $5x a month. The time I lose in our business waiting for dialup connection should quickly pay the difference. My only real concern is learning to deal with the front end programs like IE (or other browser) and something to deal with email. Integration in AOL is a slick way to spoil a user. And I question whether my old machines will load it all successfully with slow processors and low memory. Why do I sense another lecture coming on? Go ahead, make my day!

Thanks, John. I really do appreciate the help.

David

Uh, David...with ALL due respect. You need to check your phone book and see if there's a *REAL* ISP available in your area! (Tongue firmly planted in cheek!) Seriously though, (okay, more seriously) it may just be a temporary glitch. If you haven't changed anything else on your end, there may just be some issues with one of the mail servers. This, BTW, is by no means exclusive to AOL; Many, if not most ISP's, have a glitch like that from time to time. If you haven't changed anything on your system, just let it ride for a bit and see if it doesn't return to "normal" all on its own. In the meantime, let your fingers walk around the Yellow Pages a bit... Good luck!

[John Miliunas]

No lectures, David! I can see that you've already seen the light, though the dark side (AOL) hasn't given you enough opportunity to see what it's really like out there. Actually, doesn't AOL use some form of IE already? If not now, I think they may have at some point in time, so it shouldn't be that "foreign" to you. The requirements really aren't that stiff, but as mentioned on another thread, support for 98 is going away and that could be an issue down the road. Another issue is 98 being pretty "wide open" in terms of security. If you're going to DSL, that's an "always on" connection. I would definitely make sure you run through some sort of firewall or router. I'm sure if you ask your DSL provider, they can clue you in on some of the particulars and associated costs. Typically, browsing and email don't require a "powerhouse" for the PC. I will say, though, that if you have pretty old machines, you may start to experience some "lag" in the way your screens refresh when cruising the web. DSL is fast and, if your PC's are pretty old, some of the active content on certain sites will be downloading to your machine(s) faster than the CPU and/or video card can keep up with them. In general, I think the sooner you leave the world of AOL, the happier and more pleasant your Internet experience will become! Just MHO, of course and the usual disclaimers apply....

[David Rose]

Windows 98??? Is that some new operating system since 95? Boy, they are moving along on me. "Dark side"? Is that like where they use hand planes? Boy! Do I like hand planes! They are so smooth and quiet and use very little in the way of electrons... I started with DOS 2.x. I remember when programs still ran faster than you could imagine... and on a screaming 286-8 with a couple of MEG (imagine that!) of memory! I liked those "knuckle dragging days". I remember when the vendor told me I would "never outgrow a 20 megabite hard drive". Now they tell me I won't outgrow a hard drive with a few gig... in a year or two. I think I'm getting old, John.

Yes, AOL does use it's proprietery form of IE. I have to have IE in native form installed on the 'puter. But the interface is definitely AOL. I will have to check on the requirements.

OK, so here is my admission. The machines I want to run the internet on are a Pentium 150 and a 300. OK, now you can laugh. I thought they were really screamers. Well, I did once. Why can't "you people" leave me alone!? I guess I am going to have to do some upgrading before too long. XP Pro sure does look interesting.

Btw, the way I plan to set up my DSL access will be through a router which will include a hardware firewall.

"Some lag"... here you go again! You "kids" can't help talking about going faster can you? I remember the days when we were taught that "speed kills". How do we slow you down? Oh well, I remember the days of upgrading machinery each year too. But money is not as free now. I would love to see a slight slow down in upgrade activity.

David, who now knows that "speed kills"... the pocketbook

No lectures, David! I can see that you've already seen the light, though the dark side (AOL) hasn't given you enough opportunity to see what it's really like out there. Actually, doesn't AOL use some form of IE already? If not now, I think they may have at some point in time, so it shouldn't be that "foreign" to you. The requirements really aren't that stiff, but as mentioned on another thread, support for 98 is going away and that could be an issue down the road. Another issue is 98 being pretty "wide open" in terms of security. If you're going to DSL, that's an "always on" connection. I would definitely make sure you run through some sort of firewall or router. I'm sure if you ask your DSL provider, they can clue you in on some of the particulars and associated costs. Typically, browsing and email don't require a "powerhouse" for the PC. I will say, though, that if you have pretty old machines, you may start to experience some "lag" in the way your screens refresh when cruising the web. DSL is fast and, if your PC's are pretty old, some of the active content on certain sites will be downloading to your machine(s) faster than the CPU and/or video card can keep up with them. In general, I think the sooner you leave the world of AOL, the happier and more pleasant your Internet experience will become! Just MHO, of course and the usual disclaimers apply....

[John Miliunas]

and on a screaming 286-8 with a couple of MEG (imagine that!) of memory! I liked those "knuckle dragging days". I remember when the vendor told me I would "never outgrow a 20 megabite hard drive". Now they tell me I won't outgrow a hard drive with a few gig... in a year or two. I think I'm getting old, John.

OK, so here is my admission. The machines I want to run the internet on are a Pentium 150 and a 300. XP Pro sure does look interesting.

Btw, the way I plan to set up my DSL access will be through a router which will include a hardware firewall.

You "kids" can't help talking about going faster can you? Oh well, I remember the days of upgrading machinery each year too. But money is not as free now. I would love to see a slight slow down in upgrade activity.

David, who now knows that "speed kills"... the pocketbook

LOL! Hey, I can remember like yesterday, when I wrote a few macro's for some spreadsheets I used to do. I'd get the data keyed in and get far enough ahead of the macro's, I had time to go downstairs and have a smoke! Heck, for a while, I had THE fastest machine in the office. Yup, I was one happy hombre when the guy came over and installed a MathCo processor for my 386! AND, you ain't THAT much older than me, my friend!

If you're running 95 on both machines, that CAN be a problem! Networking on 95 can be a bigger nightmare than AOL! The 150 won't run XP but, believe it or not, with enough RAM, the 300 could. Not real fast, but it'll run.

I used to do upgrades every few months, much less couple years! Not the whole machine, but punch up the CPU, a hotter motherboard, maybe play with some cooling so that I could overclock it, better video card, bla, bla-bla, bla...Well, not since I took up woodworking! Not only that, but IMHO,unless you're a gamer or into real heavy-duty graphics or scientific work, there is little need for most of the upgrades out there today. If you're in need of upgrading, but short on the green, I'd seriously look at the "Want Ads" in the Sunday paper and try to find a used one. Lots of folks out there still doing the semi-annual shuffle, which could easily get you into a 1.4GHz or better machine on the cheap. And for the majority of the populace, even that is overkill for the bulk of the functions people do on them! Also, FWIW, I think the single-most significant contributor to speeding machines up over the last couple of years is NOT the speed of the processor or RAM; It's the speed of the hard drives and the affordability of RAM, so that a person can load up on it so that programs run mostly off the memory. Good luck in whichever way you choose to go.

[David Rose]

John, I think the 286 ran the little DOS programs faster than the pentiums run the current stuff. I really started to notice this with Access versions and the OS upgrades. My Access 2.0 programs run MUCH faster with around a million records (badly set up, I might add) than my V.8 program does with things done right and 50K records. Something is wrong with this picture. As it appears to me, no matter how you stay on top of things, things are slowing down. And very much so. I am 55 this year. I'll bet I've got you beat by a couple.

I am running Win 95 on 3 machines. To get perspective, 2 machines are are Point of Sale machines networked. The faster machine is in our house networked to the other two. The network is a Lantastic network which was last versioned with Win95. I have considered Win95 network for the past couple of years. Then I could possibly run the house machine (the 300, which is a fairly snappy Dell) on WinXP. I was talking to a customer tonight who says he runs Win 95, Win 98 and XP all connected by Microsoft net. Are you saying that is a nightmare? Can you elaborate? Two machines, the POS machines, will need to stay on Win95.

I went through the "upgrade at every chance syndrome" thing too. I installed my own 386 math coprosessor. I suspect that may date us. I never overclocked but only out of fear. I did upgrade processors and memory and graphics cards.

I need to add memory and a couple of hard drives anyway. Maybe there is hope. I would consider XP on the later machine if I can simply network with M$ network. If you say it is a nightmare, I may hold off trying.

Around here the paper is loaded with 486 machines. We aren't in a "state of the art" area for computers. I'll look again. But my experience has been that a well optimized Dell back a couple of processeor speeds beats the hooey out of the latest and greatest no name machines.

David

LOL! Hey, I can remember like yesterday, when I wrote a few macro's for some spreadsheets I used to do. I'd get the data keyed in and get far enough ahead of the macro's, I had time to go downstairs and have a smoke! Heck, for a while, I had THE fastest machine in the office. Yup, I was one happy hombre when the guy came over and installed a MathCo processor for my 386! AND, you ain't THAT much older than me, my friend!

If you're running 95 on both machines, that CAN be a problem! Networking on 95 can be a bigger nightmare than AOL! The 150 won't run XP but, believe it or not, with enough RAM, the 300 could. Not real fast, but it'll run.

I used to do upgrades every few months, much less couple years! Not the whole machine, but punch up the CPU, a hotter motherboard, maybe play with some cooling so that I could overclock it, better video card, bla, bla-bla, bla...Well, not since I took up woodworking! Not only that, but IMHO,unless you're a gamer or into real heavy-duty graphics or scientific work, there is little need for most of the upgrades out there today. If you're in need of upgrading, but short on the green, I'd seriously look at the "Want Ads" in the Sunday paper and try to find a used one. Lots of folks out there still doing the semi-annual shuffle, which could easily get you into a 1.4GHz or better machine on the cheap. And for the majority of the populace, even that is overkill for the bulk of the functions people do on them! Also, FWIW, I think the single-most significant contributor to speeding machines up over the last couple of years is NOT the speed of the processor or RAM; It's the speed of the hard drives and the affordability of RAM, so that a person can load up on it so that programs run mostly off the memory. Good luck in whichever way you choose to go.

[John Miliunas]

The MS Network may work OK between all three. I understand that some of the POS applications won't work on newer operating systems unless you upgrade the POS software. Yeah, I know. This can be expensive!

I also agree on the Dell w/a generation or two older technology still being better than "state of the art" no-name white box.

Were it up to me and $$ was a major player (isn't it always?!), I think I might try the obvious upgrades on my fastest box and up the O/S to XP or, at least, W2K. If you do go for the hard drive, you may also need to get an add-in IDE controller for the drive to take advantage of faster read/write access speed. The stock IDE port will work, but then the new drive will still throttle back to what that port's speed can handle.

Needless to say, if you are toying with *any* upgrades, backup critical data. Then, *test* your backed up data to be sure it's viable. Only then proceed with any upgrades. Good luck and if you choose to go ahead with it, have phun! Sounds to me like you've got a pretty good handle on the technology end of it!

[David Rose]

The POS is no problem as I developed it with MS Access back in the days when I did have more of a handle on this computing business. It should handle a move fine. I just hope I can find or get all the patches for V2. That could be difficult if I didn't save them all.

Thanks for the tip on the IDE controller. I did not realize that. And I appreciate the backup warning too. As I mentioned, the Access program itself with all patches is the most critical on this machine. It will also be the most difficult to find the way MS scatters pieces. Oh! And all the aol list data! It might be best to just copy the drive to the new drive and upgrade the OS. I hate to carry over any old problems. And I'm not sure if a copy can be made to a disk with a different file system. Lots to think about.

Isn't there an XP and an XP Pro? Which are you suggesting? I haven't checked out either just assuming that I couldn't use them. I think I remember better things said about Pro, but I'm not sure. The overhead is probably higher for it too.

David

The MS Network may work OK between all three. I understand that some of the POS applications won't work on newer operating systems unless you upgrade the POS software. Yeah, I know. This can be expensive!

I also agree on the Dell w/a generation or two older technology still being better than "state of the art" no-name white box.

Were it up to me and $$ was a major player (isn't it always?!), I think I might try the obvious upgrades on my fastest box and up the O/S to XP or, at least, W2K. If you do go for the hard drive, you may also need to get an add-in IDE controller for the drive to take advantage of faster read/write access speed. The stock IDE port will work, but then the new drive will still throttle back to what that port's speed can handle.

Needless to say, if you are toying with *any* upgrades, backup critical data. Then, *test* your backed up data to be sure it's viable. Only then proceed with any upgrades. Good luck and if you choose to go ahead with it, have phun! Sounds to me like you've got a pretty good handle on the technology end of it!

[Jim Becker]

Isn't there an XP and an XP Pro? Which are you suggesting? I haven't checked out either just assuming that I couldn't use them. I think I remember better things said about Pro, but I'm not sure.

There is WinXP Home and WinXP Pro. Get Pro. It has significantly stronger security and is the best for a networked environment. A coworker of mine did a pretty close look at both and gave thumbs-down on "home" for most folks, especially when multiple computers are involved. And you do have a business situation, too, so security is very important.

If you're going to put it on one of your current machines, the cost difference isn't all that great between the two since you can buy "upgrades" given you already have exisiting Windows Licenses. (You need the original CDROMS to install it) If you buy new machines, just specify you want Pro rather than Home if you have a choice. There will be a slight price difference on the machine from that change but it's worth it.

[David Rose]

That sounds something like what I heard. John was saying that I possibly could run XP on an older machine. I was trying to clarify which version he was thinking about. I suspect Pro has higher requirements, but I haven't checked yet. Thanks, Jim.

David

There is WinXP Home and WinXP Pro. Get Pro. It has significantly stronger security and is the best for a networked environment. A coworker of mine did a pretty close look at both and gave thumbs-down on "home" for most folks, especially when multiple computers are involved. And you do have a business situation, too, so security is very important.

If you're going to put it on one of your current machines, the cost difference isn't all that great between the two since you can buy "upgrades" given you already have exisiting Windows Licenses. (You need the original CDROMS to install it) If you buy new machines, just specify you want Pro rather than Home if you have a choice. There will be a slight price difference on the machine from that change but it's worth it.

[John Miliunas]

That sounds something like what I heard. John was saying that I possibly could run XP on an older machine. I was trying to clarify which version he was thinking about. I suspect Pro has higher requirements, but I haven't checked yet. Thanks, Jim.

David

David, the captain of the SS MiniMax is steering you correctly toward Pro. The overhead difference between the two will be negligible. One word of caution, though: If you do the upgrade, I would probably wait until you have your DSL connection, because there's a tirade of security patches which need to get done immediately! I would also very much advise doing that from behind a firewall! As a matter of fact, if you don't have the firewall in place prior to the upgrade, it would be of great benefit to you to have the Service Pack and related security patches on CD to put on the fresh install *before* you even hook it up to the network! The "welchia" virus, in particular, is rampant out there. Granted, out in the "public world" it may take a bit longer for an un-patched machine to catch it, but on campus, we don't dare take that chance! On a fresh install of XP connected to a live network, the average time for the unpatched machine to get nailed is 15 seconds!!! If you're interested, I could check at the office tomorrow and get you the filenames of the critical patches you should have before going live. Let me know...

[Jim Becker]

David, the captain of the SS MiniMax is steering you correctly toward Pro.

Geepers...it's only a row-boat, err...carrier. And one ship does not make a fleet...oh, OK, I did order the second one. hee hee

[David Rose]

15 seconds! Wow! Yeah, I am pretty committed now, so if you don't mind I could use them. I will follow your order of installation.

"And he got a second one..." Good grief!

David

David, the captain of the SS MiniMax is steering you correctly toward Pro. The overhead difference between the two will be negligible. One word of caution, though: If you do the upgrade, I would probably wait until you have your DSL connection, because there's a tirade of security patches which need to get done immediately! I would also very much advise doing that from behind a firewall! As a matter of fact, if you don't have the firewall in place prior to the upgrade, it would be of great benefit to you to have the Service Pack and related security patches on CD to put on the fresh install *before* you even hook it up to the network! The "welchia" virus, in particular, is rampant out there. Granted, out in the "public world" it may take a bit longer for an un-patched machine to catch it, but on campus, we don't dare take that chance! On a fresh install of XP connected to a live network, the average time for the unpatched machine to get nailed is 15 seconds!!! If you're interested, I could check at the office tomorrow and get you the filenames of the critical patches you should have before going live. Let me know...