My new toy and Windows 2008 Server - First Impression - eForce - the elite force
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 11:41 PM eforce

My new toy and Windows 2008 Server - First Impression

After many months of living without a PC @ home, I finally bought my brand new machine.RIP to my 6 years old P4.

This time, the total damage for this new PC is 1 K! :(

Specifications:

  • Intel E4600 Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
  • MSI P35 Neo2-FR-LGA775 - got a very nice heat sink
  • 2 X 2 GB Kingston DDR2-800 RAM
  • Seagate SATA2 500GB (32M cache) Harddisk
  • LG SATA 20X DVD-RW
  • P/CO AX3850 512MB PCI-E (RADEON)
  • CoolMaster Centurion 3 Casing
  • OCZ 500W Stealth X Stream Casing

From the configuration, you can tell that I am not looking for a powerhouse machine. Instead I am trying to assemble a value-for-money playground.  

For a start, I installed the evaluation copy of Windows 2008 Server Standard Edition. (Thanks to the complimenary DVD given during the recent Heros event).

Overall, my 1K machine managed to perform well. Except the following:

  1. Unable to use the latest version of MSN live - So I ended up installing Version 8.1
  2. Confusing naming conventions.
    Start-> Server Manager will open Computer Manager. In the control panel -> admistrative tools, you will find both Computer Manager and Server Manager!
    Time to improve good naming convention.

What I like (thumbs up):

  1. Security - very well lock-down configuration. Took me a while to find out how to enable media player.
  2. Performance - pretty fast boot up. A bare Windows 2008 Server requires around 500MB of ram to run. Cool!! That means more resources are reserved for the real services needed (IIS, Domain controller)

I understand that I should not be using Windows 2008 Server as a desktop OS. If you have any comment or suggestion on how I can improve my experience with Windows 2008 Server, feel free to enlighten me.

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# re: My new toy and Windows 2008 Server - First Impression

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 11:48 AM by cruizer

i think Windows Server 2008 can be a good desktop OS.

# re: My new toy and Windows 2008 Server - First Impression

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 2:33 PM by eforce

Indeed, so far I love the security lock-down and the speedy start-up. It is good to know that Windows 2008 Server does not have Windows Aero feature. Phew.

# re: My new toy and Windows 2008 Server - First Impression

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 4:15 PM by cruizer

well it does, but you have to install it specifically and you need to have a capable video card too :P

# re: My new toy and Windows 2008 Server - First Impression

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 9:43 PM by kitkai

Who says no aero...

But I found out that aero is the cause of unstability...