CoffeeFiend

There's no need to do any of that. Using WSUS, your computers will fetch updates from your server instead of Microsoft's site (so you only download them once, then clients can all get them at full LAN speed w/o using your internet connection). WSUS will also download the updates for all the [supported] SP levels of all the OS'es for you (no need to manually create update lists, download them, modify scripts and all that extremely time consuming stuff) I don't really see how powershell would help for this in particular. If anything, I'd probably use vbscript for this (that's if I was going down that "manual patch installation route", which I see as a ultimate last resort). WSUS is one of those "set and forget" things. Set it up once, and for the most part all your boxes (new and old) will get updated without having to do anything. I never tried. There might be ways to set that up but I've never looked. Google may have the answer. Well, I'm not sure what else you want to know. Your best bet would be reading the official licensing infos. I hadn't answered because I couldn't totally make sense of the questions. To cover what? And how could we guess if you need it on your servers? We can't really answer that. No idea. Why would you not have BITS in the first place? As for version/OS support, PowerShell 2 supports XP/2003 and everything newer.

I know. But it will fully patch all your operating systems -- a great start for sure. Keeping all apps fully updated would just about be a full time job anyway (and they all use different installers, different ways to patch, different patch cycles/schedules, different methods of announcing & obtaining updates and so on) A CAL is a Client Access License. Your clients (users *or* devices) need a CAL each.

You mean using the server to update clients (desktops/laptops)? If so, just use WSUS. It'll feed the updates to all your clients.

Utter nonsense. Perhaps you don't understand how anti-aliasing works, or how LCD's sub-pixels make up their pixels (rather different than CRTs). What you're saying is 100% the same as saying "this line at a 45 degree angle only needs anti-aliasing because it's badly designed". It simply doesn't work that way. It makes use of the subpixels to anti-alias fonts FAR better than the old grayscale method which could only do anti-aliasing at the pixel level (more precise/sharper -- and actually a better representation of the font's bezier curves). That alone is quite nice, but the other thing I personally appreciate quite a bit (as a typography lover/geek) is the much improved spacing between characters (far more precise kerning) as you're not forced to stick to actual pixel boundaries for placement (3x more precise, aligning to sub-pixels) which looks fantastic IMO. It's not what we would call a standard in the first place But it does consistently looks great IMO. And the big name foundries (like Adobe) are also behind those technologies and some even have their own implementation of it (e.g. Adobe's CoolType). You'd think they know a thing or two about type Even Microsoft is quite knowledgeable about fonts in general -- they even designed the OpenType format (the "new" standard) with Adobe and they have came up with several nice fonts over the years too (calibri, candara, segoe, verdana, cambria, trebuchet, etc)

I know. I willingly included those as we are comparing against XP (seemingly none of this matters to him, it seems to be all about running on second-rate hardware). Vista was ok, but Win 7 is a nice improvement over that. XP is really starting to show its age.

What's wrong with it? Not that I'm a big notepad user in the first place (notepad++ fits my needs better most of the time) Again, if you actually don't care for any of the new features (there's LOADS of them too), and that your idea of progress is running on substandard hardware, then Win9x is the main "upgrade" path for you.

That low-end hardware performs poorly (except when you use a 10 year old OS on it)? Netbooks aren't normally expected to perform as good as a "traditional" computers (they're mainly for portability) If you have a good enough CPU and good enough GPU, win 7 will be fantastic compared to how it would run on XP. However, if you have a low end or fairly old machine (doubly so if the CPU *and* GPU are both low end much like in your machine), the latest and greatest OS doesn't necessarily perform great -- this has been true for any OS released so far. It does, except for the really old or slow, low-end CPUs. Besides, running on underpowered, anemic hardware isn't what I would call a leap forward. If that's the kind of leap forward you're looking for then wait no more, your answer lies here. If that's the way you see things, you will be deceived by every single OS that will come out in the future. Personally, I'm happy with the vastly improved interface and usability, the start menu search, the new task bar (love it), the GPU-accelerated GUI and window composition (Aero in general), the fantastic performance on any modern/decent machine, the countless new features, the security improvements, power management that works better than ever, the nice keyboard shortcuts, the multi-monitor improvements, the 64 bit-ness (that actually works), the improved task manager and resource monitor, SSD TRIM support, the many apps that have been greatly improved (like media center), the new built-in technologies that aren't a separate download anymore (PowerShell, .NET FW 3.5, etc), the new network stack, DirectX 11, great touch interface support, being able to hide annoying tray icons, jump lists, libraries, desktop gadgets, great themes out of the box (then again, anything beats XP's teletubbies/fisher price default theme -- or the "search dog"), the new IIS version, the breadcrumbs nav in explorer, the sidebar, UAC's added security, IE protected mode, the service hardening done, the built-in shadow copy feature, the new and more "stable" video driver model, windows update that doesn't need/use IE, Direct2D, improvements to WMI classes, new deployment methods that aren't based on NT3.x-era stuff, the far better firewall, the improved group policy, MUI support that rocks, exFAT support, the ribbon interface in some apps, the more secure remote desktop, the new file copy dialog, the new audio mixer that actually works, sensible defaults for mostly everything (doesn't need 6 million reg tweaks to be tolerable unlike XP), SPTI, ... The list is just about endless. It's a GIGANTIC leap forward compared to XP.

Hardly. In terms of performance at least. In passmark, the T2050 scores 762, whereas the Celeron 900 scores 766. That's a whooping 0.5% faster (in fact, it's likely slower in many tasks). It's hardly what I would call an "average" processor these days (it's not even dual core for starters). And that's almost certainly paired with a sub-par GPU (Intel GMA) too, and Win 7 benefits quite a bit from having at least what I would call an "adequate" GPU (doubly so if the CPU could use the extra help). If your old laptop had a half-decent GPU, then it probably was faster/better overall. Long story short, don't expect miracles out of low-end, netbook-class hardware.

How about MSFN then? Powershell to the rescue: Get-Service will list everything (status, name, full name, etc), or if you just want the "short" names: Get-Service | Select Name which on this box returns (I removed some of the obvious 3rd party ones but there may be some extras left -- running Win 7 x64): Then again, you can display other properties of your choice. To see what else there is, try: Get-Service | Get-Member then it's only a matter of comma separating them e.g. Get-Service | Select Name, DisplayName Powershell is great for things like that, and it's not too hard to learn either

It makes a lot more sense now... That isn't "fixed" on other OEM's boards. It's not so much the board design to blame, it's merely a limitation of the chipset (so yes, it is still Intel's fault). Intel is behind AMD when it comes to chipsets and PCI-e lanes/bandwidth -- that's actually my main gripe with them right now (well, besides offering less bang for your buck). The aging X58 chipset is the only one they have which isn't too limited, and even then... It has 36 PCI-e lanes max usable by video cards (2x16, or 4x8), and up to 6 x1 lanes (non-2.0) off of the ICH10[R]. So that chipset could give you two real PCI-e 2.0 x16 (electrically) slots, and still have a few left for other stuff. In this case, it's not so much the video cards that are limited, it's the "how much you have left for everything else". The other 6 lanes aren't 2.0 so it's really like having all of 3 lanes of the 2.0 kind which isn't a lot. And this is what you have left to connect all of your hard drives (RAID, SSDs, etc), your super-fast USB3 ports, firewire, gigabit ethernet cards, various expansion cards (all of them besides the x16 vid cards), etc. So if you want to have enough bandwidth to all your "other stuff", you basically have to steal some away from the video card(s). Some companies even use fancy ICs (PLX 86xx series switch or nForce 200 bridge) to make this configurable (how many lanes of your video cards you're willing to sacrifice to make everything else not slow) on the most high-end X58 boards. All their other chipsets have far less total PCI-e lanes: P55 has 16 lanes total for video cards (1x16 or 2x8)... That's all you're getting. There's 8 more non-2.0 lanes for "other stuff" which isn't as bad, but still not a whole lot. H55 also has 16 lanes for video cards (but only 1x16 possible, no 2x8 option). Then another 6 non-2.0 lanes... That still wouldn't be too bad if it was just that. But it so happens that everything besides their video cards goes through the QPI bus, which is limited to 2GB/s. That means all of your USB 3 ports (about 400 MB/s each real-life speed, per port), all your SATA 3 ports for your RAID arrays and SSDs (600MB/s per port), your Gigabit ethernet (125MB/s per port), all your extension cards (500MB/s per x1 slot, etc) and several others all go through this... AMD's 890FX has more lanes than X58. There's plenty of it for two full (electrically) 2.0 x16 slots (or 4 at x8) and still plenty of it left after that (about twice as much as the X58). And PCI-e switches are fairly common on such boards too (like the P13PCIE) which lets you configure how to attribute them. X68 will finally fix that sometime (in Q3 2011 last I heard) -- for a pretty penny (along with $$$ 6 and 8 core i9's) I'm sure, but you lose the "6 memory slots option" in the process... Once it's out and if you can actually afford it, it'll be a great option I'm sure.

Late reply, somehow I hadn't seen seen your reply (just stumbled across it somehow) In any way, shape or form yeah. And if you look at the mainstream offerings (socket 1156 right now), then you can forget about some more common stuff too (like having 2 PCI-e x16 slots) There's dozens of them, even if you limit yourself to the Intel chipsets/sockets. MSI alone has at least three (P55A-GD65; P55A-GD85; P55A Fuzion), whereas Gigabyte and ASUS probably have over a dozen such models each In desktop class hardware, pretty much every single OEM beats Intel at this. Like I said, just name any Intel mobo and I'll come up with several better/nicer boards from different OEMs (won't even be hard) And why is that? They often provide a far better feature set at the exact same price point (like dual PCI-e x16 slots, or having USB3 ports, etc), and if you go with an OEM like ASUS or Gigabyte, you also get a better quality motherboard (the PCB itself, components used, the voltage regulator, the BIOS options, the cooling, the layout, etc) and everything else. Intel isn't leading in any significant way. ...which totally isn't what I was asking for (a "mainstream" socket 1156 board with a good featureset -- something Intel doesn't actually offer). Your answer is seemingly to buy a $230 motherboard which requires spending extra on the CPU too (and has far less offerings), yet which offers zero tangible benefits over a ~$100 board from competitors. Heck, let's even compare it to a $90 board from MSI: both have 2 PCI-e x16 slots, both have 4 slots for DDR3 with 16GB MAX (except the MSI board can actually run it faster), same amount of SATA ports, both 7.1 audio, both GigE, ... The only meaningful difference apart from the Intel board costing 3x as much is that it has 2 eSATA ports, whereas the MSI board lets you use the GPU from the newer i3's and i5's. The MSI board also has some other nice stuff over the much pricier Intel board: like better laid out slots (or the oddly placed power connector on the Intel board by the x4 slot), having a PATA port (just in case), the right-angle SATA connectors, using solid polymer caps throughout (unlike the Intel board with plenty of electrolytics) and nicer chokes too. And if you go with the Intel board, you can forget about getting something "alright" like a $125 i3 550 altogether. Or if you want a quad core decent performance without breaking the bank, with the MSI board you can get a $200 i5 760. With the Intel board, the absolute cheapest CPU you can buy is the i7 950 at $300... It adds up quickly. At $230, I'd expect a LOT more out of a board. I mean, a pricey 1366 board, with only 4 memory slots, are they joking? Not only it limits how much max memory you can have (that's half the point of socket 1366 in the first place though) but using the 4th slot will actually decrease your memory bandwidth (so it's more like a 3 slot board, almost). And still no USB3 or SATA 6Gbps (at $230, it would be nice to have such features which are quite common on ~$100 boards). At that price point, even just sticking to 1366, there's no shortage of (far) better offerings: -EVGA 131-GT-E767-TR with its 3 PCI-e x16 slots, 6 memory slots, USB3 and SATA 6Gbps and far nicer board overall (despite actually being $20 cheaper) -Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R with its 4 PCI-e x16 slots, 6 memory slots, USB3 and SATA 6Gbps, better set of ports, far better quality and nicer overall -- it thoroughly PWNS the Intel board (and it's also $20 cheaper) -SuperMicro MBD-C7X58-O: not impressive, but at least you're actually getting 6 memory slots (triple channel) and they don't skimp on things like capacitors (no electrolytics)... -ASRock X58 Extreme 6 with its 3 PCI-e x16 slots, 6 memory slots, 6x USB3 ports and 6x SATA 6Gbps,etc. -ASUS P6X58D-E with its 3 PCI-e x16 slots, 6 memory slots, USB3 and SATA 6Gbps and all that other nice stuff... -ASUS Rampage III Gene: see the line directly above (3, 6, yes, yes...) -ASUS P6TD Deluxe: 3 slots, 6 memory... and if you don't actually need the 6 memory slots (so 1156 it is), then you can find TONS of much better offerings for far less. Only Intel forces you to get a 1366 socket based board in order to get 2 PCI-e x16 slots. Which like you said doesn't fit the bill either (workstation board, not a desktop board), and it seems to be discontinued too. Mind you, it's still thoroughly unimpressive (even for a workstation board, I'd much sooner buy a nice SuperMicro board or similar). It's not about getting support for the OS as a home user or such indeed, but here you'd have to buy a Xeon W3600/W3500 series CPU like a $650 Intel Xeon W3565 which is actually slower than a $275 i7 870 (a massive waste of money for most people), then ECC RAM and all that fun stuff. Still no USB3, no SATA 6Gbps, still only 4 memory slots, etc. For most people, the $90 MSI board still wins hands down. What I was asking for is something more like a $150 ASUS P7P55D-E: 2 PCI-e x16 slots, 4 memory slots, USB3, SATA 6Gbps, ... great features, great quality, decent price -- for an Intel setup at least. Mind you, if I was buying something right now it would likely be a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3. 2 PCI-e x16 slots (and plenty of others), 4 DDR3 slots, 6 x SATA 6Gbps (8 external total) + 2 eSATA, 2x USB3 and 8x USB2 at the back, toslink and spdif outs, etc. And a really high quality board overall -- all for $100.

Well, there's your problem. You hardly need the latest OS (Win 7) for that. It also works just fine on Vista, XP, Win 2008 R2/2008/2003 R2/2003, FLP, probably some more which I'm forgetting, and last I tried it worked fine on the decade-old Win2k editions too. If you insist on using a long unsupported OS (both by the OS vendor *and* the browser vendors) that's over a decade old, along with various non-standard 3rd party modifications, you can't be surprised you're going to run into some troubles. For those not using such an OS with a sub-0.1% market share (pretty much everybody), it's a complete non-issue, and for the most part bundling lots of unnecessary/unwanted stuff wouldn't be such a great idea. And even if a company did came up with such a everything-and-the-kitchen-sink included browser, it most likely still wouldn't solve your issues (most likely it wouldn't run on Win9x) It's ridiculously simple: cost. Pre-installing the full blown MS Office would add a LOT to the cost. Office 2010 Pro (the not so "limited" version, although that still doesn't include Visio nor Project) would add $300 to the cost of a new PC which is basically as much as some PCs go for these days.

Who gets to determine what is "required" or not? The only thing I could see being bundled myself is Flash. I definitely don't need nor want Sun/Oracle Java anywhere near my PC! Most browsers make "finding" the plugin as easy as clicking a couple of times (it's fairly trivial to get flash installed) I'd rather have a Java-less installer (this way I don't have to manually uninstall it afterwards). But including anything extra would require more frequent updates on their website: any single time the browser or anything bundled is updated, they'd have to release a new version. More frequent downloads of much lager size (due to all the bundled stuff) would mean using a lot of extra bandwidth (which isn't free) and a general perception of it being bloatware too. Most companies making 3rd party plugins (like flash) for browsers wouldn't want to rely on 3rd parties to enforce/provide/check for updates. Nor would most browser companies would want the responsibility and associated costs. I just don't see this as being a problem. Every time I reinstall (every couple years or so), it just takes a couple clicks to get Flash installed then I'm set for another while. The flash update process is FAR more of a time sink. It seems like we get that update popup every week or so.

Server farms are pretty much the only way. You're REALLY far from it 2 boxes would get you absolutely nowhere. For something with as many users, even a couple hundred high end boxes wouldn't be much. Try 13250 server blades (which is not bad -- facebook had 30000 a year ago, just to serve some web pages), totaling 75000 CPU cores and 112.5TB of RAM (as of sometime last year). Nevermind the small army of programmers, sysadmins and everything else (like money) you need to make something like this happen. Parallel processing clusters (HPC) and gaming server farms are 2 different worlds. And if you look at most systems on the top500 list, you'll see very few using sucky CPUs (there's plenty of 6 and 12 core monsters though -- often paired with fancy GPUs too) That was actually a demo. Nobody is actually using that kind of stuff in a HPC cluster. That's pretty darn slow for a HPC cluster too: a mere 1.8 teraflops, whereas a single Radeon 5970 GPU can do 4.64 teraflops in FP32 by itself (or a mere 0.928 for FP64). Sandia actually uses Sun x6275 blades running a total of 10610 Xeon X5570's ($1386/ea in qty of 1000 -- hardly Pentium Pros), yielding a performance of 433.5 teraflops. If you want impressive, look at Tianhe-1A (2566 teraflops)

Oh, OK then. No point in upgrading that then. That number is pretty much bogus when it comes to Intel 3100 video like your computer has. A lot of the thing it does (like vertex shaders) aren't actually done by the video card itself, but are rather done by your CPU (slowing it down). It's pretty far behind anything else basically. A Radeon 4650 performs several times faster (without needing the CPU's assistance -- it's still not a "gamer's card" though), doesn't use your system's RAM, has far better video decoding features, would give you at least a DVI output, etc. Intel video does the very basic stuff OK, but that's about it. Anyway. It would help, but the faster CPU is still the main thing.

Crystal Rreports For Visual Studio 2010 (by SAP) was just released (well, about a week ago actually -- blog entry over here). And it's FREE! Download links over here (the complete package is 278MB)

I'd find out which IIS application pool is using that much memory. appcmd is your friend. "appcmd list wps" will let you see what app pool each worker process belongs to. Here you see the worker process with Process ID 9180 uses 786,596 KB of RAM, so see which app pool matches it, and from there which site/application is causing the trouble (IIS mgr is also very helpful; powershell is pretty powerful too -- just "Import-Module webadministration" first). I would also look for virus protection that doesn't use anywhere near that much resources too (seriously, this is amazing)

By knowing what CPU the computer has, what video card, how many drives and so on. If you multitask a lot, more memory would help (especially since your 2GB is "shared" i.e. used for video so you have even less available), even if it's just a cheap yet decent kit like this one @ $35. A E6800 would make the computer significantly faster too. Such a kit of RAM and a E6800 would be around $150 taxes in and would provide quite a boost. If anything, beyond that I'd look into getting a basic video card (that doesn't use system memory, has better performance, does H.264 decoding in hardware, have a better set out outputs, etc) -- you can get something alright for quite cheap like a Radeon 4650 at $50, which would bring all 3 upgrades (CPU/RAM/Video) at ~$200. That's what I'd call "bang for your buck". E2200 + less than 2GB (shared) + Intel video -vs- E6800 + 4GB + Radeon 4650, there's simply no contest. That would give you far better overall performance than that $275 CPU alone (reinstalling your OS clean would likely help quite a bit too)

Yeah, $275 + taxes + shipping, plus the extra 4GB of DDR2 RAM you wanted to add, plus perhaps a new PSU... You've just spent at least $400 on a system that still has very low end video (and only with a VGA out, no DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort), still doesn't have USB3, etc. For that much money, plus whatever you'd get for selling your old box, you could buy something new and pretty much all-around better. Nope. Windows cannot tell. But it's not too hard to guesstimate

Microsoft.Exchange.ContentFilter.Wrapper.exe 7964 52,884 K 57,884 K CoreXT base ATL7 service exe test Microsoft Corporation MSExchangeADTopologyService.exe 2288 12,400 K 16,580 K ACTIVE DIRECTORY TOPOLOGY SERVICE Microsoft Corporation store.exe 2328 590,932 K 113,884 K Microsoft Exchange MDB Store Microsoft Corporation mad.exe 2448 21,596 K 29,812 K Microsoft Exchange Server - System Attendant Microsoft Corporation Microsoft.Exchange.AntispamUpdateSvc.exe 5996 32,356 K 26,432 K Microsoft Corporation MsExchangeFDS.exe 6108 52,108 K 50,008 K Microsoft Corporation MSExchangeMailboxAssistants.exe 5784 53,404 K 60,668 K Microsoft Corporation MSExchangeMailSubmission.exe 6224 52,792 K 48,636 K Microsoft Corporation Microsoft.Exchange.Cluster.ReplayService.exe 6352 1.14 54,988 K 48,712 K Microsoft Corporation Microsoft.Exchange.Search.ExSearch.exe 6492 54,460 K 47,352 K Microsoft Corporation Microsoft.Exchange.ServiceHost.exe 6612 126,860 K 98,536 K Microsoft Corporation MSExchangeTransport.exe 6848 47,540 K 39,248 K Microsoft Corporation EdgeTransport.exe 6312 300,568 K 230,344 K Microsoft Corporation MSExchangeTransportLogSearch.exe 6940 96,224 K 65,812 K Microsoft Corporation That's Exchange Server (for email) sqlservr.exe 2564 124,200 K 117,936 K SQL Server Windows NT Microsoft Corporation sqlservr.exe 2588 363,592 K 287,976 K SQL Server Windows NT - 64 Bit Microsoft Corporation sqlservr.exe 2724 58,664 K 47,920 K SQL Server Windows NT Microsoft Corporation sqlservr.exe 2912 514,924 K 433,532 K SQL Server Windows NT - 64 Bit Microsoft Corporation That would be instances of SQL Server, serving various databases. One likely for sharepoint, another for backup exec, likely SAP, ... (a few other processes are related) SAPB1iEventSender.exe 2596 172,736 K 89,748 K A command line tool to wrap a Java program into a Windows service SAP AG SAP Business One Server -- several more processes, likely including: tomcat5.exe 5248 304,064 K 143,112 K Service Runner Apache Software Foundation w3wp.exe 7908 11,272 K 18,060 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation w3wp.exe 8468 10,836 K 17,584 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation w3wp.exe 8576 230,196 K 210,124 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation w3wp.exe 9180 786,596 K 788,552 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation w3wp.exe 9776 113,420 K 96,196 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation w3wp.exe 10028 130,860 K 122,604 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation w3wp.exe 8896 113,744 K 105,116 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation w3wp.exe 6248 8,224 K 14,912 K IIS Worker Process Microsoft Corporation A lot of IIS worker processes. Almost 1.5GB total, which is incredibly high for a small box with 4 users. There must be something wrong with the configuration or the apps it's serving (more SAP/java stuff perhaps)... I'd find out which site is using that much resources and look into it for sure Trend Micro is also using quite a bit of resources seemingly: Ntrtscan.exe 3332 43,612 K 8,848 K Trend Micro Common Client Real-time Scan Service (64-bit) Trend Micro Inc. OfcAoSMgr.exe 3656 5,600 K 8,796 K Plug-in Manager Server Windows Service Trend Micro Inc. OfcService.exe 3732 140,428 K 163,844 K ofcservice.exe Trend Micro Inc. DbServer.exe 4116 91,104 K 94,300 K DbServer Trend Micro Inc. svcGenericHost.exe 4468 1,712 K 4,016 K svcGenericHost.exe Trend Micro Inc. SMEX_Master.exe 4560 363,088 K 389,488 K SMEX_Master.exe/SMEX_RemoteConfig.exe Trend Micro Inc. svcGenericHost.exe 4544 1,712 K 4,020 K svcGenericHost.exe Trend Micro Inc. SMEX_SystemWatcher.exe 4568 75,868 K 91,352 K SMEX_SystemWatcher.exe Trend Micro Inc. TmListen.exe 6184 17,672 K 7,240 K Trend Micro Common Client Communication Service Trend Micro Inc. CNTAoSMgr.exe 10332 2,180 K 4,836 K Trend Micro OfficeScan Client Plug-in Service Manager Trend Micro Inc. svcGenericHost.exe 10528 1,712 K 4,028 K svcGenericHost.exe Trend Micro Inc. SMEX_RemoteConfig.exe 10544 3,400 K 7,944 K SMEX_Master.exe/SMEX_RemoteConfig.exe Trend Micro Inc. iCRCService.exe 10744 185,880 K 187,468 K iCRCService Trend Micro Inc. TmProxy.exe 10964 15,620 K 23,148 K Trend Micro Proxy Service Trend Micro Inc. PccNtMon.exe 3196 8,052 K 3,020 K Trend Micro Client/Server Security Agent Monitor Trend Micro Inc. tmicAgentSetting.exe 9096 3,216 K 8,420 K Trend Micro Inc. 16 processes total (!) and almost 1GB of RAM... Norton clearly has nothing on this bloated pig

First of all, I would see what process uses the RAM (task manager works, but process explorer is better) Some programs are actually meant to basically use all the available memory to speed things up such as Exchange, and that is part of SBS (not sure how it's tuned by default on SBS 2008 though) If you post a screenshot of process explorer (or task manager), then we'll be able to tell what's going on instead of just guessing.

Absolute nonsense. I know what's beautiful! I have to admit that in some cases beer helps... Anyway. You broke our "Absolute nonsense" streak

There's more to it than just that. The cheaper quad cores also have slower single-core performance than the Pentium E6800 and similar. That means most apps would actually run slower. The Q9550 is the only C2Q you can buy right now that actually has faster single threaded perf than the E6800 (which won't make your computer slower than running a $100 C2D most of the time) but it costs $275... Yet it performs on par with an AMD CPUs that cost $100 less: the Phenom II X4 970, and on other sockets Intel has ~50% faster offerings at the same price: the i7 870, so it's a total ripoff. The job is the exact same regardless. That's one thing that'll make use of them. Keep in mind running something like that will raise your power bill by a fair amount so it better be for a good cause Y = Yorkfield W = Wolfdale K = Kentsfield C =Conroe Not that I would really bother with that list. HP probably hasn't updated this page in ages. Usually you can't rely on companies like Dell or HP to provide you with updated and meaningful upgrade information because they never update it. The Pentium E6x00 are all Wolfdale-3M based and should work. Anyway. I wouldn't personally get a low-end quad core, nor spend $275 on one. At that point you may as well do a "real" upgrade (probably wouldn't cost more either): one where you're not stuck with socket 775 (and where you can get nice fast CPUs for a fair price), where you can buy cheaper and faster DDR3, where you could have something better than a plain old VGA (analog) output, ideally some USB 3 ports and so on. And if possible, getting rid of that 250W PSU in the process... I couldn't see myself spending $100 on that kind of computer (I'm stuck on a Core 2 Duo E7500 myself, with no sane upgrade option short of replacing motherboard/CPU/RAM)

Your best bet IMO is scripting something according to your needs using mkiofs.exe

Absolute nonsense. Are you saying we should spend countless hours writing and maintaining hundreds of crappy batch files manually for every single possible combo of OS installed/OS "bitness"/OS language/particular set of applications installed/particular versions of the said apps, whereas basically any cleaner app will do a better job in 2 clicks (when not outright set to run automatically which means still doing a better job while being no work at all)? No monetary or time expense required. Hiring IT staff to perform this work for you routinely would actually cost a lot (The 2MB of disk space CCleaner uses at today's storage prices is 1/1000th of 1 penny, vs a consultant working at $150/hr with a certain minimum of hours), and would be more work to take care of (hiring, payments, etc -- time invested) than it takes to use a cleaning app too. If I could hire a consultant for about the same as CCleaner costs me in disk space (nothing) and time (pretty much zero too), while doing at least as good of a job, I definitely would! Long story short, the no expense, no time wasted option is using a cleaning app. That was a very poor analogy