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First post, by BEEN_Nath_58

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For the longest time, the first thing I would do on Windows boot is a right-click > Refresh since I was said it would make the computer smoother. Didn't bother doing it much since the time I started using SSDs

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 1 of 53, by Grzyb

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I think defragmentation.
Doesn't make sense for SSD, and even for HDD the profit is marginal - you only can see a difference if you *believe* you can see it...

Zaglądali do kufrów, zaglądali do waliz, nie zajrzeli do dupy - tam miałem klimatyzm.

Reply 2 of 53, by Namrok

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Once upon a time, the first thing I did when I got onto my computer every day was check my webcomics. I still have the bookmark tab for them. But they haven't been worth reading for almost a decade. I truly don't know what happened. Some ended, some jumped the shark, some just tapered off as the creator lost interest or had life happen. Some just got awful. I remember actively quitting some, others I have no idea what the last straw was.

But the era when webcomics were a thing on the internet seems decisively over, as is my habit of compulsively checking them each day.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
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Reply 3 of 53, by Joseph_Joestar

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I rarely browse the internet on my PC nowadays.

It's simply more convenient to do it on my iPad or phone.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Core 2 Duo E8600 / Foxconn P35AX-S / X800 / Audigy2 ZS
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 4 of 53, by Standard Def Steve

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Shutting down is actually the first thing that comes to mind. The computer probably hasn't been off off since we were out of town a couple of months ago.

Win+L to lock before I step away, and the machine sleeps after 10 minutes of inactivity. It's all good!

"A little sign-in here, a touch of WiFi there..."

Reply 5 of 53, by BitWrangler

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Grzyb wrote on 2024-12-03, 18:36:

I think defragmentation.
Doesn't make sense for SSD, and even for HDD the profit is marginal - you only can see a difference if you *believe* you can see it...

It made more sense when storage wasn't keeping up with the space demands of software, and your small, yet still expensive HDD was sitting at 90% full most of the time, and to try a new thing you had to delete something.... only keep a couple of games installed and rotate... The benefit was twofold then, getting your system files to the fastest part of the disk, and not leaving orphaned space so use was maximised. These days, since noughts, most machines have ample HDD space and you never really use more than the fast bit of the disk. I haven't done any space recovery deletions in years on modern machines. Also there's that NTFS being better than FAT for managing not to get fragmented thing.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 6 of 53, by Shponglefan

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Deleting temporary files.

Back in the Win9x days, I was religious about cleaning out temporary files. These days with SSDs and huge drives, I don't feel nearly as compelled to do that.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 7 of 53, by Shponglefan

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Namrok wrote on 2024-12-03, 18:49:

Once upon a time, the first thing I did when I got onto my computer every day was check my webcomics. I still have the bookmark tab for them. But they haven't been worth reading for almost a decade. I truly don't know what happened. Some ended, some jumped the shark, some just tapered off as the creator lost interest or had life happen. Some just got awful. I remember actively quitting some, others I have no idea what the last straw was.

But the era when webcomics were a thing on the internet seems decisively over, as is my habit of compulsively checking them each day.

Oh man, I almost forgot about webcomics. I agree with this, I used to read a lot of web comics on a daily basis back in the early-to-mid 2000's. But I found the same, ones I read either ended or stopped updating as frequently, or just became less interesting over all.

Along those lines, I also don't browse gaming sites nearly as often. I used to visit sites like Blue's News, RPG World, etc, on a regular basis. But that has been replaced by other media including just Steam.

(I was also surprised to learn Blue's News is still in business and even looks exactly the same.)

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 8 of 53, by chinny22

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I no longer really care.

I used to tweak windows to squeeze every bit of performance out of my hardware and even do a clean install of Windows once a year. I took pride in having a clean streamlined OS.

Now that computer performance is really an issue, I'll just install windows, only make cosmetic changes and typically never reinstall unless I've done something really bad.
As much as I don't really like newer OS's (which is another reason I don't bother) I'll admit they require a lot less maintenance.

Reply 9 of 53, by badmojo

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I recently stopped reading news of any kind, which for years was the first thing I did whenever I booted up a computer or picked up my phone, and then I'd obsessively check it during the day.

Ignorance is bliss!

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 10 of 53, by Unknown_K

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Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-04, 00:59:

Deleting temporary files.

Back in the Win9x days, I was religious about cleaning out temporary files. These days with SSDs and huge drives, I don't feel nearly as compelled to do that.

I use Glary Utilities to ditch temp files from my OS/SSD mostly because they take up room and my OS drive isn't that large.

I also used to defrag a lot during DOS and Windows 9x days but quit when I switched to NT.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 11 of 53, by andre_6

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Namrok wrote on 2024-12-03, 18:49:

Once upon a time, the first thing I did when I got onto my computer every day was check my webcomics. I still have the bookmark tab for them. But they haven't been worth reading for almost a decade. I truly don't know what happened. Some ended, some jumped the shark, some just tapered off as the creator lost interest or had life happen. Some just got awful. I remember actively quitting some, others I have no idea what the last straw was.

But the era when webcomics were a thing on the internet seems decisively over, as is my habit of compulsively checking them each day.

Webcomics, totally, used to have the same ritual too. Not a webcomic per se (I guess it is now), but I really miss Get Fuzzy. Darby Conley just plain stopped one day, no known public reason, and apparently is just living a normal life out of the comics field. Maybe he just pulled a Watterson?...

Also, I really miss having RSS news feeds in a ticker format on the browser. Having the ticker in the browser going through the latest news from everywhere, somehow it made me truly feel "online", like I did in the late 90s/2000s. Managed to have one until a few years back, then poof. I should try and search for new stuff... If I had the skills and knowledge I would totally make an RSS Feed based on the Sim City 3000 news ticker, now that would be the dream

Reply 12 of 53, by Jo22

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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-12-03, 20:20:
Grzyb wrote on 2024-12-03, 18:36:

I think defragmentation.
Doesn't make sense for SSD, and even for HDD the profit is marginal - you only can see a difference if you *believe* you can see it...

It made more sense when storage wasn't keeping up with the space demands of software, and your small, yet still expensive HDD was sitting at 90% full most of the time, and to try a new thing you had to delete something.... only keep a couple of games installed and rotate... The benefit was twofold then, getting your system files to the fastest part of the disk, and not leaving orphaned space so use was maximised. These days, since noughts, most machines have ample HDD space and you never really use more than the fast bit of the disk. I haven't done any space recovery deletions in years on modern machines. Also there's that NTFS being better than FAT for managing not to get fragmented thing.

Afaik, defragmentation of an SSD does make sense. But it's more about the underlying filesystem (hi NTFS).
If there are too many files that are not in one piece, but fragmented, the filesystem must work a lot to keep things together.
So a cleanup, a defragmentation, is recommended at one point.
So that means that a defragmentation is recommended after once in a while, say once a year or half a year or so? 🤷‍♂️
We don't want to wear the piece of silicon out too much, after all.

Here's a statement about how Windows does automatically handle this on SSDs once a month or so.
Not sure if it's limited to server use, though.

"[..] It’s also somewhat of a misconception that fragmentation is not a problem on SSDs.
If an SSD gets too fragmented you can hit maximum file fragmentation (when the metadata can’t represent any more file fragments) which will result in errors when you try to write/extend a file.
Furthermore, more file fragments means more metadata to process while reading/writing a file, which can lead to slower performance. [..]
"

Source: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/the-real-and-c … agment-your-ssd

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 13 of 53, by konc

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I used to customize Windows looks and settings to my liking. Since updates that change, restore and override user choices became a thing I switched to the complete opposite: change the absolute minimum I can, so that updates are a seamless process and don't disturb anything in my small world.

Reply 14 of 53, by gerry

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-12-03, 18:57:

I rarely browse the internet on my PC nowadays.

It's simply more convenient to do it on my iPad or phone.

i still like the computer for browsing, i think its a mouse & keyboard thing, and the larger screen, i do think the proportion of 'content' going through non pc devices must be higher than for pcs now though

Reply 15 of 53, by gerry

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Grzyb wrote on 2024-12-03, 18:36:

I think defragmentation.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-04, 00:59:

Deleting temporary files.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-04, 01:18:

I used to tweak windows to squeeze every bit of performance out of my hardware and even do a clean install of Windows once a year. I took pride in having a clean streamlined OS.

yes (and i'll add any registry tinkering there too), all these relate to maintenance and optimising computers of the past, now if there's a big ssd, quad+ cpu and lots of ram doing all the maintenance and performance tasks just doesnt seem to have any practical return.

I also don't "set up" the desktop or features to my liking now, I just work with the defaults mostly

badmojo wrote on 2024-12-04, 07:51:

I recently stopped reading news of any kind, which for years was the first thing I did whenever I booted up a computer or picked up my phone, and then I'd obsessively check it during the day.

Ignorance is bliss!

Interesting as there is a strong computer usage connection - one thing with windows i dont like is that it seems that if you hover in the wrong place it wants to reveal the latest global misery mixed in with celeb banality as a pop up

I would never have wanted to agree with the statement ignorance is bliss when young, but it is true to some extent. new reporting has changed in the last decades anyway, from updates of facts and attempts at explanation to a kind of click-bait and invasive filming of traumatised people, with scant explanation, and so on (and its all so partisan now too)

on habits i have gained - cleaning the inside a bit more! at least the fans, no wonder some of my early PC's got so hot!

Reply 16 of 53, by Azarien

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I used to require a so-called "big ass Enter" keyboard (which combines the shape of horizontal Enter with vertical Enter to one big reversed L shape), to the point that I started stockpiling my favorite Chicony KB-9810 keyboards (an ordinary membrane keyboard except it has the one and only "perfect" layout).

Nowadays I don't care that much about the keyboard's layout. I can happily use an ordinary ANSI keyboard, not so happily an ISO keyboard, and the overall subset of keyboards that I deem "usable" is much larger than it used to be (I still have some strong opinions like there must be a Print Screen key, Insert key etc.)

Why the change in attitude? Several reasons: big-ass Enter keyboards are now very rare (or not really made anymore), not having too much of a say about the keyboard I get at work (usually ISO), and getting interested in mechanical - and what not - keyboards where ANSI seems to be the norm.

Last edited by Azarien on 2024-12-04, 12:14. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 17 of 53, by megatron-uk

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Azarien wrote on 2024-12-04, 12:03:

I used to require a so-called "big ass Enter" keyboard (which combines the shape of horizontal Enter with vertical Enter to one big reversed L shape), to the point that I started stockpiling my favorite Chicony KB-9810 keyboards (an ordinary membrane keyboard except it has the one and only "perfect" layout).

Nowadays I don't care that much about the keyboard's layout. I can happily use an ordinary ANSI keyboard, not so happily an ISO keyboard, and the overall subset of keyboards that I deem "usable" is much larger than it used to be (I still have some strong opinions like there must be a Print Screen key, Insert key etc.)

There are some fairly fundamental layout differences between US/ANSI and ISO layout keyboards... much more so than the shape of the Enter key. Having spent 35 years typing on ISO layout keyboards, with ", \ and # all in a completely different location to the ANSI version - all fairly fundamental keys if you are a programmer; there's no way I could swap between the two on them.

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Reply 18 of 53, by Carrera

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I try to avoid any hardware upgrades anymore.
"back in my day" if i searched whether memory type X fitted in board Y I had an answer within 15 minutes. That was 2006.
In 2020 my son wanted a gaming rig and after days of searching I gave up and went to a ma and pa PC shop (they still exist) and paid several hundred €€€ more to have him do it.

The joy of putting things together and knowing it will work 80-90% of the time was gone.
I also dreaded getting the OS (Windows ) to work with all the internet activation etc.

I was shocked when I swapped the spinning platter HDD for an SSD in our family laptop and it worked...

Reply 19 of 53, by wbahnassi

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Sanning for viruses. Every day pull a bunch of disks and pass them against the latest version of scan.

Now, is it ok if I answer the reverse? What new computer habits have you developed? Yes, chasing every freaking process/service hanging out to collect data, check authenticity and do telemetry 😅 If I wasn't needing Win11 for my development needs, I would have happily stayed back with WinXP or even Win2K with software that didn't care about its own health as much as it does today.

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