Windows Server 2008

[Guest]

[charliest]

As you may know, Windows Server 2008 can be configured for desktop use rather easily. Its benefit over vista is that the basic installation is extremely lean and therefore much faster than Vista. There are a number of accounts of people successfully using Server 2008 on their desktops and notebooks. It requires a few steps to install the necessary services, but it is a heck of a lot simpler than trying to lean-down Vista (and much faster when all is said and done).

Having said this, I went ahead and installed it on my OQO 02. It almost works -- the deal-breaker is OQO Manager, which will not run correctly. I don't see any way to toggle wireless and bluetooth without it. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would like to continue my experiments, but without a way to use wireless, I am dead in the water.

Charlie

[galtoid]

I tried this myself, but the S3 drivers didn't work as expected either (no zoom)... probably because the OQO manager didn't work though.

You could use devcon to disable and enable bluetooth/wireless from a script.  I don't know of any way outside of the OQO manager to switch to interpolated resolutions, though.  Otherwise I'm fine without the manager.

[charliest]

Thanks for the suggestion re Devcon. I di dnot realize that it was as simple as changing the device status in the Device Manager. Now I need to decide whether I can survive without the screen zoom. My eyes are not as good as they used to be.   

[charliest]

I spoke to soon -- if I enable the wireless adapter from the device manager, it does not turn on the radio. Ideas?

Thanks

[kyone]

I wouldn't have thought you would need OQO manager for wireless.  You will need it for zoom.

Keep trying I would like to also try and install server 2008 (for the same reasons you did)

[charliest]

I solved the problem. Rather than installing the Atheros application, I just installed the wireless drivers. I can now activate wireless through the device manager.

Charlie

[kyone]

Use it for a week or two and report back on your opinions of the install.

I'd like to know what do you lose by going to server 2008, as from what I know it is less bloated.

Is it faster ? in what ways ?

[charliest]

Progress Report -- I've been using Win 2008 Server with the OQO for a week or so and am very happy with the results. It is much faster than Vista and there are just a few incompatibilities:

- OQO Manager will not run (a blessing?).
- There is no way to adjust brightness.
- There is no way to use screen magnification.

I think the latter rest with incompatibilities with the display driver. VTTRAY will not install.

I recommend that if you can live with the above missing features, or better yet, if you can help me regain the lost functionality, Windows Server 2008 is worth a try.

Charlie

[newworld666]

Can you post some crystalmark benchmark ... I feel surprise that there is a difference with vista....
Till now with oqo and many other computers I never found vista was slower then XP, after installing all applications (Office, VLC, Pdfcreator,Klite,...) ... and of course no anti-virus.. (it's almost useless on a UMPC like OQO just waste of money and CPU )...

[charliest]

Minor correction -- the keyboard screen brightness adjustment keys work fine. All I miss is a way to magnify the screen.

[zanesmurf]

What about going into Screen Properties (something like that) and changing the screen settings & resolution? Wouldn't that work?

[charliest]

If you change the display resolution, it changes the hardware resolution which is less than useful on a 800x480 LCD screen. The magnification is an interpolated resolution and is a function of the display driver or the OQO Manager, I''m not sure which.

[Ronc]

All I miss is a way to magnify the screen.

Perhaps I don't understand what you really want to accomplish.  I find the zoom-IN option to be useless as it forces me to do a lot of horizontal scrolling.  Sometimes (when I'm not using my external monitor) I do need to zoom OUT in order to access some off-screen buttons.  However, my eyes do prefer very large fonts.  So I simply make the fonts big (even huge) without ever having to scroll horizontally which drives me nuts.  In IE I choose the option to ignore font sizes specified on web pages and set the text size to "largest".  When that doesn't work well, I copy the text to notepad set to a font size of 20.

[newworld666]

  ...still no benchmark with server 2008 ? it would be interesting ...

For me crystalmark is exactly representative of the use of my 2 OQO's .... One is OQO O2 with 15000 and OQO E2 SDD more than 23000 ... and OQO E2 is perfect for an every day use.... O2 ... is basicaly to slow for Pdf newspaper, or watching TNT or using large speadsheet (200Mb or more) ....

[kyone]

I've read that 2008 server kernel is exactly the same as Vista except that it has a number of services turned off so it does run faster.  So you should be able to run Vista with the same results as Server if you set it up the same.