It's Alive!

Well I couldn't wait, and went and blew money locally to get my machine back up.

I purchased a dual processor AMD Supermicro motherboard, 2 Opteron 2.1 Ghz w/16 cores, 64 GB of ram, and 3 240GB SSD drives, plus a few other minor things.

The fans for the CPUs weren't available locally, so I rush ordered them from newegg (overnight, but it took 4 days, go figure).

So I got my machine up and running.  Sorta....

I installed Server 2012, as we are using it a bit at work, and since 2003 I've been using server as my primary OS at home over Vista/Windows 7/etc.  It installed ok, but everything I did had a lag.  It wasn't my computer's fault, as every machine I've used server 2012 on I've seen a lag in response.  I know Microsoft is trying to get administrators to stop using the GUI and move completely to powershell, but sheesh.  Anyway, after a lot of various issues, but mostly the slowness, I gave up on trying to run it.

So I installed Windows 8, which I've been using for a few months on my work Laptop.  I, like apparently everybody else, think the new metro UI is stupid.  Great for a Tablet/Phone perhaps, but for a workstation its idiotic.  Good news is there are start menu replacement apps out there that pretty much prevent it from popping up.  I also installed Office 2013.

Well first, I tried a few games, nearly all of them crashed to the desktop.  Did some research, turns out the entire gaming industry is looking at Windows 8 as garbage.  So forgetting that for a few, I jumped into Excel, which I use a LOT for various data input.  Its slow as hell.  I type 80wpm, and try to avoid using the mouse as it slows down productivity, but Excel 2013 is so slow as to be unusable for me.  I do some research, find out it isn't just me, and in fact even at calculations its slower.  You would think 32 cores calculations would be instant.  Nope.  Heck, even if its got high requirements that's fine, but a dual processor 32 core system with 64GB of ram running on triple raid 0 SSD should be overkill, not below minimum specs.

So, I gave up on the new MSFT OS's and Office 2013.  They just, well, suck.  This isn't just a quick opinion  of some noob either.  I've got over 20 years of DOS/windows experience and have supported it in some of the largest environments in the world.  I've used 2k3 for quite a few months, and Windows 8/Office 2013 since their CTPs.  However, their new direction isn't the right one, and if you own stock I'd sell it immediately.

So tonight I'll go back to Windows Server 2008 R2, which made a great previous desktop.  I'll pay attention to the news to see when Microsoft acknowledges Windows 8 as Windows ME 2.0, and Office 2013 as, well, an "oopsie", so I can have faith in that company again.  Since Gates left it hasn't done very well and I fear for the future of IT.

As for Battletech, I've done nothing in over a month.  Many of the forum topics, and most of the posts, are downright stupid.  Their only new product is an objectives book for the periphery, which never includes useful stuff like production numbers or all the conventional factories, and I'm not seeing anything new come out over there.  Perhaps they are all focused on the greatness that'll be Interstellar Operations.... sorry, didn't meant to make ya laugh :)

I'll soon get back into the swing of things, and be able to update everything.  Till then sorry for my lack of existence on the net, it'll get better.