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Windows XP? ME2? 7? What's your flavor?

S

spinjector

Something occurred to me today... I was wondering what flavor of Windows other engineers use at their clusters?

It seems most broadcasters I've seen are still on XP. I've only seen Vista aka ME2 and a smattering of 7 on laptops. And Windows 2003 on the servers, of course...

So what do you all use?
 
The automation and other control room gear is all on XP. Newer office computers are on 7 (with a few on cough, Vista).
 
We're mostly XP, too. However, just learned the newest version of Simian will run on 7; about time, getting more and more difficult to get XP machines.
 
Our automation PC hardware runs either Windows 2000 or XP Professional. Mainly BSI Simian and WaveCart based. Our sales lady laptops and engineering laptops are XP Pro, Vista Home Premium, or Windows 7 Professional. Our air staff do their web browsing on Macs or Linux boxes.
 
Yea I've got about 40 desktops, a dozen laptops, all on XP. It's like why should we spend money on all those new licenses when this works fine.

I remember an article in a big computer magazine about a year ago; I think it might have been on the cover. It was the XP logo with the words "Good enough?" emblazoned across it, and I have to agree.

I do have to admit some curiosity in 7; a lot of my hacker & geek friends gave it "two joytsticks up". The consensus was that M$ finally got it right.
 
XP-Pro for workstations. Windows 7-Pro (highly tweeked) for on-air automation. Server 2003 & 2008.

No ME & no more W2K. No support. Only exception for W2K is a stand alone not connected to the outside world PC used to record audio. Only analog audio I/O. Do not want to have W2K connected to the internet for any reason.

There's a Windows 98 PC at a transmitter site (not owned by us). Last time I turned it on it was immediatly busy on the internet. Pulled the power plug & walked away.
 
We're all XP Pro for automation. Won't run on anything higher than that. Bought a couple extra XP boxes just in case.

For office use and web surfing, its Ubuntu 10.4.

I'm thinking about seeing if our automation will run (unsupported) on Ubuntu with WINE. Adobe Audition 1.0 does... perfectly.
 
boiseengineer said:
XP-Pro for workstations. Windows 7-Pro (highly tweeked) for on-air automation. Server 2003 & 2008.

No ME & no more W2K. No support. Only exception for W2K is a stand alone not connected to the outside world PC used to record audio. Only analog audio I/O. Do not want to have W2K connected to the internet for any reason.

There's a Windows 98 PC at a transmitter site (not owned by us). Last time I turned it on it was immediatly busy on the internet. Pulled the power plug & walked away.
Click to expand...

What automation system are you running on 7?
 
All our machines are running XP Pro: office and automation.

I prefer XP Pro to Win 7 at this point because XP has a troubleshooting history. If I have a problem with the XP system, I can Google and almost always find a solution. Given the age of the system (10 years?), someone has had the same problem, has found the fix, and has posted that fix on the Internet. Win 7 doesn't have this history yet.

I also find XP highly stable. A properly configured box will just run and run (although same is true for Win 7, I'm sure).

There are still boxes running Win 98, Wow?!
 
ChiefOperator said:
All our machines are running XP Pro: office and automation.

I prefer XP Pro to Win 7 at this point because XP has a troubleshooting history. If I have a problem with the XP system, I can Google and almost always find a solution. Given the age of the system (10 years?), someone has had the same problem, has found the fix, and has posted that fix on the Internet. Win 7 doesn't have this history yet.

I also find XP highly stable. A properly configured box will just run and run (although same is true for Win 7, I'm sure).

There are still boxes running Win 98, Wow?!
Click to expand...

Ditto here. NT was nice, but then isn't that the base for XP?

I wouldn't want to try to set up proper file sharing on any consumer-oriented windows os.
I need to do things in admin accounts that I don't think anything but XP Pro will be happy with.

Too much pie-in the-sky stuff on Win 7, too much "silly" overhead.

I have one old win 95 machine in order to use fixed machine timing on the RS-232 port so's to be able to run a teletype. :)
 
Just did a Simian box on W 7. Worked great until someone turned updates on and it rebooted at 3am. I have found a host of foul ups at 3am associated with update.

Only problem with Simian is that W 7 keeps things up but hides them close to wax on and wax off (triggers, time events on/off) and when you click one of these windows it fades through to turn triggers or time events on or off. Go to maximize schedules and you may turn time events off.
 
Any windows machine on-air needs to have updates turned off and make sure Internet explorer is set to be off-line.
This has kept my on-air stable.

This laptop, which needs IE access, and updates, hah!... I NEVER know when it will
be found sitting there all proud that's it's done installing a security update, rebooted,
and stopped doing what I told it to be doing. :D I've never lost work, but it is annoying.


Make sure Microsoft updates are turned off on anything that "has" internet access, if it's on the air.
 
Tom Wells said:
Make sure Microsoft updates are turned off on anything that "has" internet access, if it's on the air.
Click to expand...

Another good tip: Turn OFF the system sounds! You'd be surprised on how many on-air computers don't have them turned off.

As for Win98: I've actually grown to like that ol' OS. Found this page a few years ago: http://www.usbman.com/win98seusbguide.htm

It has links to the "unofficial" service pack and a HOST of tips/fixes.

I still have a 98SE computer running the "free" version of ProTools 5 from a decade ago and it's VERY stable.
 
Let's keep this going! I've searched for a good broadcast-centric list of tweaks for winxp or even win7. What about services, anything to disable or set to manual there? Thanks!
 
XP is fine for single core or dual core processors. It doesn't support quad core or higher CPUs. That was the primary reason for Vista/Windows 7.

XP will fade away as the old machines die, and newer hardware takes its place. The other big change is the evolution from 32-bit processing to 64-bit processing. Expect the software manufacturers who actually spend development money to take advantage of the greater power and capability of the new generation of both hardware and operating systems.

Realistically, audio is a simple task for modern CPUs. Those companies who are going to stick purely with audio are likely going to start moving more toward Linux in order to save money. Smart content companies are ultimately going to incorporate video and other multi-media streams, which will make the power & complexity of Windows 7 - along with the ability to control and access much more RAM and much faster processors - much more desireable.

BTW, Windows 7 diagnostic tools are MUCH better than Windows XP. Get to know the OS, and you'll find yourself looking at XP as "simplistic".
 
boiseengineer said:
There's a Windows 98 PC at a transmitter site (not owned by us). Last time I turned it on it was immediatly busy on the internet. Pulled the power plug & walked away.
Click to expand...

Omg! You found the brain of the botnet! That's the reason world spam levels dropped by 90% recently! =)~
 
ChiefOperator said:
If I have a problem with the XP system, I can Google and almost always find a solution.Given the age of the system, someone has had the same problem, found the fix, and posted that fix on the Internet.
Click to expand...

Agreed! XP is like the Ford Pickup 5.0L V8 pickup truck of the OS world.

I recently ventured into vastly customizing my Windows XP Installations with nLite & HFSLIP. I created a Windows XP install package with all current Microsoft service packs, and even all the drivers for all the motherboards & hardware we use. I've seen nothing like this for the new OSes.
 
SirRoxalot said:
XP is fine for single core or dual core processors. It doesn't support quad core or higher CPUs. That was the primary reason for Vista/Windows 7.

XP will fade away as the old machines die, and newer hardware takes its place. The other big change is the evolution from 32-bit processing to 64-bit processing. Expect the software manufacturers who actually spend development money to take advantage of the greater power and capability of the new generation of both hardware and operating systems.

Realistically, audio is a simple task for modern CPUs. Those companies who are going to stick purely with audio are likely going to start moving more toward Linux in order to save money. Smart content companies are ultimately going to incorporate video and other multi-media streams, which will make the power & complexity of Windows 7 - along with the ability to control and access much more RAM and much faster processors - much more desireable.

BTW, Windows 7 diagnostic tools are MUCH better than Windows XP. Get to know the OS, and you'll find yourself looking at XP as "simplistic".
Click to expand...

XP will work on 4 cores. As a matter of fact, it will see the 4 physical and 8 logical processors in a Core i7.

I agree with all your other points. I can not wait until my automation supports Windows 7.
 
Timmy said:
Let's keep this going! I've searched for a good broadcast-centric list of tweaks for winxp or even win7. What about services, anything to disable or set to manual there? Thanks!
Click to expand...

Hmmm... Well, here are some that I've done:

  • remove the "Logoff" option from the start menu
  • diabled "Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to log in
  • set auto-login anyways just in case
  • put Nexgen in Startup group with username & password on command line
  • disabled Windows sounds
  • unregistered SHMEDIA.DLL to disable graphics & audio "preview"
  • enabled FTP username/password in URL
  • installed purposely "damaged" versions of iTunes to prevent install of new versions =-)
  • enabled the McAfee option "prevent executables from running in temp folders"
  • lots of tweaks like putting "Services" and "Event Viewer" on the My Computer context menu
  • explicitly deleting/remapping all network drives at boot time (with un/pw on command line)
  • set the BIOS boot order to hard drive only and "turn ON after power failure"

Basically I wanted my systems to be able to have the power cord yanked and then have them boot automatically with little/no user intervention. That way if someone calls me at 3am, I can have him/her cycle the power, and hopefully the rightful order will be restored and I can go back to playing poker with the sandman. =-)
 
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