Windows Updates

[hbdragon88]

Oh, why do I have to be tortured? My dad bought me a crummy HP, and I now just discovered that no updates had been pre-installed on that computer. I say "crummy" because it lacked several things, like 256 RAM and a cd-burner. It was 1.4 GhZ but it was running REAL slow until I installed 128 MB more ram.

What's worse is that I have a dial-up. There are 27 critical updates & service packs, 10+ Recommended updates, and 1 driver update. It's 27.7 MB altogether, and 3 hours to do it (3KB/per second, 9MB an hour - )

 

[gael]

Merry Christmas

 

[damunzy]

Welcome to the joy of owning a computer.

I want to see your reaction when you find out that you can only download certain updates and then you have to reboot your computer and download more, ad naseum.

 

[hbdragon88]

I got it in September, not for Christmas.

And another thing...I have to download the Windows XP service pack and that's 30MB just that!

 

[Lucky]

Better get prepared for Win XP Service Pack 2, which will probably give you 300MB to download. Where only a small fraction of that is really useful.

 

[Pillager]

I got the XP SP1 on a magazine cover DVD, can't you do the same?

 

[hbdragon88]

Originally posted by Pillager
I got the XP SP1 on a magazine cover DVD, can't you do the same?

Explain that a little better?

 

[Sanaz]

Originally posted by hbdragon88
Explain that a little better?

In England (and other places I'm sure), all computer magazines come with a CD or two of good SW - usually demos and downloadables. This is totally unheard of in the US (and probably some other places), hence the confusion.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Computer magazines in the US don't give away free CD's? Damn that sucks.

 

[Zelig]

If you dowonload the updates from the corporate page they come as exe files that you can install later and you don't have to redownload or reconnect.

 

[Sanaz]

Originally posted by Crazy Eddie
Computer magazines in the US don't give away free CD's? Damn that sucks.

Yep. I've never bought one here, I only buy them when travelling. Not much point when the magazines are out of date by print time. With good broadband connections, I download whatever I want anyway so I wouldn't need the CD's - maybe that's why we don't have them here, because the target market mostly has high speed internet anyway?

 

[damunzy]

Originally posted by Sanaz
Yep. I've never bought one here, I only buy them when travelling. Not much point when the magazines are out of date by print time. With good broadband connections, I download whatever I want anyway so I wouldn't need the CD's - maybe that's why we don't have them here, because the target market mostly has high speed internet anyway?

Not quite true about American mags not having Cds with them and also not quite true about the CDs being free. There are several Mags that I know of, one being Maximum PC, that has CDs. I only get the mag itself since the CD isn't free (without the CD the mag is half-price - I have cable so I can download all that they offer). I will say that British mags, and also one German one I saw, do have a lot of CDs on them and they weren't a bad price for all of the stuff you got - about 9 USD for the British one - I pay $12 for a year subscribing to Maximum PC with out the CD.

 

[hbdragon88]

Well, good news:

After two months of on-and-off automatic updates, I finally have downloaded all but 1 of the critical updates. From 10/2/02 to 1/1/03, I got everything downloaded

Then I downloaded most of the recommended updates.

 

[Smash]

Ain't it just a joy?

I knew it as I got in on XP from day 1 pretty much,but those that have followed probably expected better.They don't mention all the problems involving security when they sell comps with XP installed.I doubt they mention the 30 odd MB of d/ls just to get started ..and it keeps growing