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To: jim kelley who wrote (150628)	1/6/2000 8:30:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

Jim - It does not seem to be processor specific as Dog seems to believe I said it was related to the software load. The only "processor specific" part was that the boys at CPQ got a little carried away with their "super-hot" 750 machines and loaded even more stuff on them... the problem occurs on many machines and has nothing to do with processor speed or memory. The particular problem of the "soft keys" on Presario is also not new, it goes back several years. As I said in my post to Tigerpaw, it's not even a "problem" except that when the OS related programs which close files and so on to do a clean exit can not execute, the system appears to be "hung". This can occur on any system running Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98 and Win98 second edition - really even on earlier versions of Windows but there were not enough resource hogs in the early days to cause this to happen very much. In the last few years it has become almost a requirement to build consumer machines that are so loaded down with special and free stuff that they are already taking on water before the first programs are loaded. All in the name of "user experience". I doubt that you have ever unboxed a Presario and booted it up for the first time but it is a neat experience - full screen movies play to show what's available and how it works, a whole graphics "shell" makes it easy to do what many consumers do routinely without much chance of screwing anything up, etc. But that all uses available resource pool. Now add in the similar stuff from AOL, and the similar stuff from MSFT in second edition, and you have an accident waiting to happen. My son has one of the 5900 boxes - a 750MHz box with 16M graphics, 30GB hard drive, 128MB RAM, new out the door about $1800 - but we took all of the standard stuff off and loaded Win2000 RC3 since he is using it for program development. It has not had any "hang" problems, in fact has been down only twice since he first started using it in November and then only because he was moving it (Dorm to home at Xmas, then back to the dorm). I wouldn't get too excited about this as a deep quality issue - it's not. I would give whomever designed the startup package a D- for not allowing better headroom given what's going on in the market though.

To: jim kelley who wrote (150628)	1/6/2000 9:18:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

reporting freezes in that system as well. The lockup drifted in from a particular bug by Intel. (although Acer has it too, I don't know if they copy code or if that is a coincidence). It is related to processors only by speed (but is not a hardware bug per-se). I really don't want to say what it is because I would love to see Compaq squirm for awhile. I'm guessing they have cut back a lot on their fundamental development staff to rely on the handouts they get from vendors. But like all diseases, a bug gets really nasty if there is little variation in the genetic code. TP