Hello, new member to the boards, worked in IT for 24 years, built many high-end game machines for family and friends. do networking in several businesses and build servers for businesses to boot.
before we argue over OS or Processor, here is my humble opinion (Make it your own! <---thats a joke.)
for years the OS war has been going on. Apple vs. Windows. then linux came into the picture. Why don't we use DOS anymore?
here I go.
Are the apple OS's and Linux more stable than windows? No, and here is why. Have you ever tried to repair an apple when the OS breaks? It's just as bad as windows from that respect.
Apple controls the hardware their OS runs on for the most part. if you have an OS designed for specific hardware it works great.
windows has been adapted to be used by the masses. it has to work with practically all hardware through device drivers. All the extra hardware that the OS was not designed to work with out of the box causes the OS to become wonky. if you use good standard hardware (intel motherboards, ATI or NVidia video, Creative Labs sound, 3COM (older models) modems, intel network cards. then Winders (<---not a misprint I am southern) works fine and is stable.
Linux is good too, it can run forever on various hardware and be stable for months at a time. So can windows if the machine is built correctly.
In a nutshell, get the OS you know and trust and put it on good hardware and it will be fine (I follow this rule for a multitude of other OS's, there is even an XP clone that is freeware, google "windows clone" and it will be listed somewhere).
as far as processors go, I look at life expectancy on the processors, I use machines until they are used up. the one I am typing on now is 7 years old will run vista, and spanks prebuilt boxes being bought at chain stores right now. (I also spent $3000 on the motherboard, processor and ram 7 years ago.) it runs XP right now, it runs 24/7 365 days a year, stable with an intel processor. I tried an AMD processor a few years ago, if the fan fails (this is true with some Intel processors also) the processor cooks itself. Doing repairs it's rare to see a dead intel processor, it's not so rare to see a dead AMD processor. AMD processors are cheaper, won't argue that point. AMD processors are not faster the chip makers run neck-in-neck in speed. But is speed that important now? with multiple processing cores on a single wafer, is 1.8Gig slow? And does it make a processor better because it is 64bit compared to 32bit, not if nothing uses the extra 32bit's.
so you guys know, I like in a stick built house, have 6 computer running at various time, 1 the machine I wrote this on with XP Pro, a very-high-end game machine running XP Pro, a server running Debian Linux, an embedded Via Mini-ITX low power running windows XP Media Center, and an Apple running OS 8.something for fun. Last but not least is an Alienware M5500 Laptop for work. I even have an old P2 with Dos 6.2 on it just for fun and it is more stable than any of the modern OS's.
these are all toys to me, the via processor in the embedded works great and will be placed in the the RV with an LCD screen when we get an RV. because it is about the size of a 6 pack of coke cans. and consume only about 40 watts when running wide open. Why so many Windows machines, simple most software is written to work on windows (microsoft holds like 70 percent of the market on home pc OS).
if you are a standard user not a power user who likes to tinker, get someone to build you a machine out of good parts, you pay more but it is worth it. If the person who builds the machine is knowledgeable about AMD processors and knows to install the drivers for the processor, use AMD (most people with RV don't Overclock so the AMD processor will work fine, if you don't mind a little extra wattage being used go full blown intel. do a little research, toms hardware is a great site as has been mentioned before, talking to other users about their machines helps a lot also. just take other peoples opinions (even mine) with a grain of salt, but after a while you will see the light of what you really want.
David
