🚀 go-pugleaf

goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:

>Hi everyone,

>I am doing a bit of work for an office with a bunch of 386SX 16MHz machines.
>They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
>some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
>extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
>these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:

>1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
>   this make them?
Though Windows is an graphic-oriented-shell the speed of the graphiccard is not
important, a Herculescard might be faster than a vga-card, but a colorscreen
makes more fun working with Windows.(of course expensive)

>2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
The best way to tune the system with Windows is to buy as much RAM as possible.
A Cachecontroller makes the system much faster,too, but this is not very cheap.

>3) Invest in coprocessors?
A coproc has hardly influence on the speed of Windows. There are only few
apps like Winword that use this coproc.

>4) Try something else (suggestions anyone???), or
First of all, the WIN.INI and the SYSTEM.INI should be optimized.
E.g.: You can use the SWAPFILE which makes Windows faster using the tempfiles.
Do not load any pictures in the Background and start Windows with "win :" which
suppresses the Windowslogo at the beginning.
A fast Harddisk is very important,too. It should be a fast SCSI-HD, cause the
datatransfer is very important.(SCSI is about 2times faster then IDE)
The configuration of the system, like HD-Cache,Buffers,...to speed up DOS.

>5) Give up and go home?
Of course the best way to make Windows faster is to sell the 386SX (UUGH)
and buy 486/50MHz, 256 Cache, 32MB RAM(50ns), 70HzSVGA-Card, 24``Monitor,
1GB SCSI (12ms,1500Kbps),etc

>Please keep in mind that cost IS a factor.  I would appreciate hearing what
>your opinions are - if there is sufficient interest (ie. if this question
>isn't too trivial) I'll summarize on le net.
"There are no trivial questions" (don`t know who said that)

>Later,

>Majeed.