3rd February 2017, 12:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 3rd February 2017, 1:30 AM by A Black Falcon.)
So yeah, I've been away from here for a bit, and it's mostly because at long last I decided to get a new computer. The rate of how often you need a new machine has declined precipitously versus the '90s, as the fact that I had my last machine (the Vista computer) for a full decade (with some upgrades, but the same CPU and motherboard) and it's still pretty decent for a lot of things, but you eventually do need to upgrade still, and I've finally started on that process. After thinking about it, for the first time I chose to build it myself, instead of buying a prebuilt one. Everything I got worked fine once I got it set up -- I'm on it now, finally -- I had some issues making choices, as usual, so I didn't actually have a fully functioning main computer again until yesterday (it now is). Sure, I've got a tablet, and did use my old WinME machine some for the internet, but that machine's ... a bit dated... so it's not the kind of thing you want to be on for long...
But anyway, what did I get? Well, I chose to get a mostly new machine, but re-used my old video card, hard drives, and power supply; I will get a new video card and large storage hard drive eventually, and probably also a power supply, but I'll put that off some, this was expensive enough for now at the moment. So, I got a case (Thermaltake Core V51 Riing Edition -- it's green and black), motherboard (Asus Prime Z270-A), CPU (the new Intel 7700K), CPU cooler (a Noctua), SSD drive (M.2 style, since the motherboard supports it), and a BD/DVD/CD drive, but I'm using that new high-end CPU with my old GeForce 560 card for now. Heh. On the subject of that case, it was a bit pricey since they're getting hard to find since Thermaltake seems to have discontinued this green version of the case in favor of just a black-and-grey one, but of all the green and black cases I was looking at online, this looked like the best one on both features and looks, so I got it. It's a pretty big case, a good bit larger than my old computer cases despite still claiming to be a "mid-tower", but it's good. I particularly like how quiet it is; not only is it dramatically quieter than my very loud previous machine, I think it's even quieter than my WinME machine, which is impressive considering it has lots more fans in it! Bigger fans really are quieter, that's for sure. That's pretty nice; it's almost quiet enough to forget it's on, which again, is a huge huge change from the Vista computer's case. Good stuff.
The case is mostly good, but even so it is disappointing that no modern cases are all-green, like my dated and somewhat flawed, but awesome-looking, old case is! This case is nice, but what I really want is an all-green case, not this one that's as much or more black than it is green. Why is black back in as a computer case color, didn't we just get over that? I think of black computer cases as being the style of the '00s, but I guess it's back... and it could be worse, black cases are better looking than the old beige ones, but still. Colors are nice, and not only for people who want tiny little cases but also for those of us who want full-sized ones. Oh well.
Anyway, for an OS, I got Windows 10 (and installed the 64-bit version of course). From what little I've seen of it so far I'm not exactly a fan, but as a gamer what other choice do you have? It's not like many games support Linux, even now, and buying an old version of Windows is going to lead to compatibility problems for sure. On that note I did try installing Vista on this machine from my old copy that came with my last computer, to see what would happen, but unfortunately the motherboard doesn't have Vista drivers, so there's no ethernet and VERY flaky USB support, among other issues. Too bad, a Vista machine this powerful would me amusing. I'll need some way of running software that doesn't support a 64-bit OS, which I'm sure I have a lot of -- 16-bit Win3.1 games, all those '90s and early '00s games with their 16-bit installers, etc. Would something like VMWare work? I've never had a computer that supported it before. This is an issue I will need to figure out a solution to.
Otherwise, Windows 10 seems functional and fast, though I don't like this "flat" trend in OS graphical design. You know, everything is lines and boxes and boring fonts, with no detail. I've seen it before, since my tablet runs Windows 8, and it's the same here but on a regular computer... and yes, it's still pretty ugly, like always. I'm sure I'd be more used to this if I'd gone along with the changes in Windows over the years, but going from ten years on Vista to this, it's a huge change and I don't like it. The more curved design of Vista, the transparencies, and such, I like that look and always have. I will admit that it has some style, but in my opinion this whole "flat" aesthetic is a real downgrade from what we had before. I know that I'm not exactly one to change things I'm used to, but still... ... well, at least Seamonkey's "Modern" theme, with its style straight out of early '00s Netscape, still works, so that's good! :)
Besides that, in terms of how it works, well, I haven't used it much, but even just in Windows, the significant speed improvement is noticeable. I don't know if it's that websites or applications get more demanding over time or what, but web browsers, Flash, etc. all worked pretty badly on that machine, and I had to use Flash videos everywhere because HTML5 video was even worse, single-digit-framerate stuff most of the time. Another really annoying problem that I did not used to have on the Vista machine was that at some point in the least few years, when a Flash video/window was made fullscreen and then I click on the other monitor (since I have two, remember), to do something else on another web browser window while watching it... the browser would lock up, requiring me to open the task manager, close Flash, and reload the webpage. Then finally the video would allow me to click on the other window during the video. Weird bug, yes, and I don't know why it started but it was annoying... but with HTML5's awful framerates it was not an alternative. Needless to say, on this new computer I have none of those issues. That's awesome. And even with the same video card, since I was definitely quite CPU-limited in games before, I'm sure I'll notice huge improvements.
On that note, one other question I've been wondering about is, is the onboard Intel graphics chip in the 7700K better, or is my 5+-year-old GeForce 560? I've assumed that the 560 is the better choice, so it's in this computer now, but I don't know for sure.
Finally though... I'd not only been using my last computer for ten years, I've never re-installed the OS or anything. Maybe that was causing some of my problems such as the Flash issues I describe above, but I didn't want to have to start over with installing games, applications, etc, and the computer never messed up badly enough to need a re-install, so I never did it. Going from that sometimes annoying but familiar OS to a new one that has some similarities but a lot of differences, and with nothing installed beyond the basics, is not great... I don't like the idea of having to re-install everything just to get the OS to see that it exists, particularly when a lot of those games aren't going to be able to install anyway I'm sure (16-bit installers!). Steam, impressively, once installed seems to be able to just import over the folders with no re-installs needed, and that's great but for everything else, for both games and apps, this will take a while.
... And on that note, can anything be done to make this new Start menu not totally awful? It looks like the new Win10 Start menu and taskbar have very limited customization as well, unlike before -- I don't see a way to add a second row to the taskbar for a row of quick-launch icons like I had on Vista (useful thing!), the Sidebar is gone (having stuff like a clock and system monitor visible there was kind of nice, instead of only on the taskbar), and in the Start Menu... wow, this is bad. I mean, the Win8 Start screen, with its row of boxes for Windows Store apps and then atrocious unsortable list of applications, was a disaster, but I was hoping that 10 actually made things better since it supposedly brought back the Start Menu. Well... nope. That's not good. I want a real start menu with folders, not this atrocious abomination! I sort things by CATEGORY, not alphabetical order. The idea of having all of your things in one terrible alphabetically-sorted list is pretty much unusably bad. You can make folders, but what's all this stuff doing on that list by default that I don't see in the Start Menu folders? That's annoying, unless there's a third Start Menu folder somewhere in addition to the two that return from before... And for a desktop, the upper right two thirds of the Start menu's kind of useless, since that's mostly for Windows Store apps and not regular Windows programs, and most things you use are not going to be Store apps, unless you're playing some of those games MS is only selling there in order to force people to use their stupid store of course. You can pin some things to the bottom right part of the Start menu, which is something, but why are the icons along the left edge apparently reserved only for Windows folders and their stupid recommended folder setup (your personal Video, Music, etc. folders) that I have never used and don't think I'll start using now? That's pretty obnoxious.
Seriously,Vista had a near-perfect Start menu. They should NOT have messed with a great thing, not for a desktop OS. I know 8 did it first, but it's not fixed and is still awful! Have the fullscreen Win8 thing available for tablets, sure, but for a desktop this is still pretty bad.
But anyway, what did I get? Well, I chose to get a mostly new machine, but re-used my old video card, hard drives, and power supply; I will get a new video card and large storage hard drive eventually, and probably also a power supply, but I'll put that off some, this was expensive enough for now at the moment. So, I got a case (Thermaltake Core V51 Riing Edition -- it's green and black), motherboard (Asus Prime Z270-A), CPU (the new Intel 7700K), CPU cooler (a Noctua), SSD drive (M.2 style, since the motherboard supports it), and a BD/DVD/CD drive, but I'm using that new high-end CPU with my old GeForce 560 card for now. Heh. On the subject of that case, it was a bit pricey since they're getting hard to find since Thermaltake seems to have discontinued this green version of the case in favor of just a black-and-grey one, but of all the green and black cases I was looking at online, this looked like the best one on both features and looks, so I got it. It's a pretty big case, a good bit larger than my old computer cases despite still claiming to be a "mid-tower", but it's good. I particularly like how quiet it is; not only is it dramatically quieter than my very loud previous machine, I think it's even quieter than my WinME machine, which is impressive considering it has lots more fans in it! Bigger fans really are quieter, that's for sure. That's pretty nice; it's almost quiet enough to forget it's on, which again, is a huge huge change from the Vista computer's case. Good stuff.
The case is mostly good, but even so it is disappointing that no modern cases are all-green, like my dated and somewhat flawed, but awesome-looking, old case is! This case is nice, but what I really want is an all-green case, not this one that's as much or more black than it is green. Why is black back in as a computer case color, didn't we just get over that? I think of black computer cases as being the style of the '00s, but I guess it's back... and it could be worse, black cases are better looking than the old beige ones, but still. Colors are nice, and not only for people who want tiny little cases but also for those of us who want full-sized ones. Oh well.
Anyway, for an OS, I got Windows 10 (and installed the 64-bit version of course). From what little I've seen of it so far I'm not exactly a fan, but as a gamer what other choice do you have? It's not like many games support Linux, even now, and buying an old version of Windows is going to lead to compatibility problems for sure. On that note I did try installing Vista on this machine from my old copy that came with my last computer, to see what would happen, but unfortunately the motherboard doesn't have Vista drivers, so there's no ethernet and VERY flaky USB support, among other issues. Too bad, a Vista machine this powerful would me amusing. I'll need some way of running software that doesn't support a 64-bit OS, which I'm sure I have a lot of -- 16-bit Win3.1 games, all those '90s and early '00s games with their 16-bit installers, etc. Would something like VMWare work? I've never had a computer that supported it before. This is an issue I will need to figure out a solution to.
Otherwise, Windows 10 seems functional and fast, though I don't like this "flat" trend in OS graphical design. You know, everything is lines and boxes and boring fonts, with no detail. I've seen it before, since my tablet runs Windows 8, and it's the same here but on a regular computer... and yes, it's still pretty ugly, like always. I'm sure I'd be more used to this if I'd gone along with the changes in Windows over the years, but going from ten years on Vista to this, it's a huge change and I don't like it. The more curved design of Vista, the transparencies, and such, I like that look and always have. I will admit that it has some style, but in my opinion this whole "flat" aesthetic is a real downgrade from what we had before. I know that I'm not exactly one to change things I'm used to, but still... ... well, at least Seamonkey's "Modern" theme, with its style straight out of early '00s Netscape, still works, so that's good! :)
Besides that, in terms of how it works, well, I haven't used it much, but even just in Windows, the significant speed improvement is noticeable. I don't know if it's that websites or applications get more demanding over time or what, but web browsers, Flash, etc. all worked pretty badly on that machine, and I had to use Flash videos everywhere because HTML5 video was even worse, single-digit-framerate stuff most of the time. Another really annoying problem that I did not used to have on the Vista machine was that at some point in the least few years, when a Flash video/window was made fullscreen and then I click on the other monitor (since I have two, remember), to do something else on another web browser window while watching it... the browser would lock up, requiring me to open the task manager, close Flash, and reload the webpage. Then finally the video would allow me to click on the other window during the video. Weird bug, yes, and I don't know why it started but it was annoying... but with HTML5's awful framerates it was not an alternative. Needless to say, on this new computer I have none of those issues. That's awesome. And even with the same video card, since I was definitely quite CPU-limited in games before, I'm sure I'll notice huge improvements.
On that note, one other question I've been wondering about is, is the onboard Intel graphics chip in the 7700K better, or is my 5+-year-old GeForce 560? I've assumed that the 560 is the better choice, so it's in this computer now, but I don't know for sure.
Finally though... I'd not only been using my last computer for ten years, I've never re-installed the OS or anything. Maybe that was causing some of my problems such as the Flash issues I describe above, but I didn't want to have to start over with installing games, applications, etc, and the computer never messed up badly enough to need a re-install, so I never did it. Going from that sometimes annoying but familiar OS to a new one that has some similarities but a lot of differences, and with nothing installed beyond the basics, is not great... I don't like the idea of having to re-install everything just to get the OS to see that it exists, particularly when a lot of those games aren't going to be able to install anyway I'm sure (16-bit installers!). Steam, impressively, once installed seems to be able to just import over the folders with no re-installs needed, and that's great but for everything else, for both games and apps, this will take a while.
... And on that note, can anything be done to make this new Start menu not totally awful? It looks like the new Win10 Start menu and taskbar have very limited customization as well, unlike before -- I don't see a way to add a second row to the taskbar for a row of quick-launch icons like I had on Vista (useful thing!), the Sidebar is gone (having stuff like a clock and system monitor visible there was kind of nice, instead of only on the taskbar), and in the Start Menu... wow, this is bad. I mean, the Win8 Start screen, with its row of boxes for Windows Store apps and then atrocious unsortable list of applications, was a disaster, but I was hoping that 10 actually made things better since it supposedly brought back the Start Menu. Well... nope. That's not good. I want a real start menu with folders, not this atrocious abomination! I sort things by CATEGORY, not alphabetical order. The idea of having all of your things in one terrible alphabetically-sorted list is pretty much unusably bad. You can make folders, but what's all this stuff doing on that list by default that I don't see in the Start Menu folders? That's annoying, unless there's a third Start Menu folder somewhere in addition to the two that return from before... And for a desktop, the upper right two thirds of the Start menu's kind of useless, since that's mostly for Windows Store apps and not regular Windows programs, and most things you use are not going to be Store apps, unless you're playing some of those games MS is only selling there in order to force people to use their stupid store of course. You can pin some things to the bottom right part of the Start menu, which is something, but why are the icons along the left edge apparently reserved only for Windows folders and their stupid recommended folder setup (your personal Video, Music, etc. folders) that I have never used and don't think I'll start using now? That's pretty obnoxious.
Seriously,Vista had a near-perfect Start menu. They should NOT have messed with a great thing, not for a desktop OS. I know 8 did it first, but it's not fixed and is still awful! Have the fullscreen Win8 thing available for tablets, sure, but for a desktop this is still pretty bad.