Hi Cearbhal, Apoligies for my error in not providing the obviously important details:It is a win x.p. 2002 service pack Pentium 4 CPU 76 gb hard drive 3.00 ghz 1gb ram.
Not being a whiz at knowing the finer points I thought that it was just a case of unloading the windows o.s. and installing the linox and then adding the free programs. Of course, I didn't factor in the important detail that certain free software is only built for individual platforms i.e. n.v.d.a. and free office will only work on windows. You also pointed out that the age of the PC means that a certain element of fatigue could be setting into certain components which initself makes a hash of my theory to put new life into the hardware of PC'S that are being made redundant by ending of x.p. support. Thanks for your enlightening info. I was in a local recycling unit recently and the amount of old pc's etc had me thinking. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cearbhall O'Meadhra" <omeadhrac@xxxxxxx>
To: <vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 11:10 PM Subject: [vicsireland] Re: open source software
Gerard,You set quite a challenge with this age of computer. You would need to stateexactly what make of computer, what chipset, etc., before anyone could advise how well this computer might perform. Can you get hold of the fullspec? If not, then the name and model number on the front of it would help.What system is running on it at the moment? With regard to the programs you ask about i.e. Linox o.s. with n.v.d.a. Free office, free media player, mozilla, outlook express or similar email program, free virus checker and malware programs. Linux is a type of operating system called Unix and is not the same as windows. It probably would run well on this machine because it does not demand much processing power until running very complex programs. It usesthe Orca screen reader. All software on the unix platform is open source andfree. There are word processing, spread sheet and database programs which come as part of the OS but I have not very extensive experience of them. Open Office runs under windows but is not very accessible. I think you mean to run all these programs on a windows machine so I willignore the mention of Linux. You would have to use Windows 7 or 8 nowadays. As I said initially, it is doubtful if your ten year-old PC would be able torun them without running very slowly but you would need to describe the PCand its operation in more detail. NVDA will work perfectly in Windows 7 and 8. You could use Open Office for limited word processing but not for spread sheet work. There are many free virus guards that you could use and MS Mailcomes standard with Windows 7 and 8. The ability of any PC to run without crashing depends to a large extent onhow much memory it has for running programs. This is called RAM for "RandomAccess memory" and you would need at 1 GB of RAM but usually 2GB would be best. Then the size and condition of the hard disk is important as well.Hard disks don't last as much as ten years so you would probably find the itand power supply would start to give trouble and cause crashes.I hope this answer shows you why your proposed configuration is not in use!All the best, Cearbhall M: 0833323487 t: (01) 2864623 em: omeadhrac@xxxxxxx -----Original Message-----From: vicsireland-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx[mailto:vicsireland-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of GERARD SHANAHAN Sent: 08 April 2014 18:50 To: vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [vicsireland] Re: open source software Hi Cerbhail, My knowledge of what I'm going to say to you isn't great but anyway. In relation to an old pc (10years of age) which wouldn't have the capacity to utalise win 8 might it be a project to convert it to: Linox o.s.with n.v.d.a. Free office, free media player, mozilla, outlook express or similar email program, free virus checker and malware programs.Would such a setup be stable in that it would not crash regularly and if so,why hasn't it become popular in recent times? ________________________________I am using the Free version of SPAMfighter <http://www.spamfighter.com/len>. SPAMfighter has removed 559 of my spam emails to date.Do you have a slow PC? <http://www.spamfighter.com/SLOW-PCfighter?cid=sigen>Try a free scan! =========================================================== The vicsireland mailing list To unsubscribe at any time send a mail to: vicsireland-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxwith the word "unsubscribe", without the quotes in the subject of the message.To contact the moderator send mail to: tim.j.culhane@xxxxxxxxx For mor information on the Visually Impaired Computer Society visit: http://www.vicsireland.org
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