Banished was made almost entirely by one guy (not in a garage, presumably), released last month. It's pretty good, not without its flaws, looks pretty too.

Sounds like something's awry... I'm currently using about 2gb (of 8 available), and I have a tonne of stuff open. One thing you could try is disabling superfetch (and possibly readyboost) if you have it on (in services). Superfetch has a tendency to peg the hard drive, and I've yet to see any real evidence it actually does any good. Vista does have higher RAM requirements, I admit that, but 2gb should be enough to run ok.

My core2duo is 7 years old, and my system used to boot from BIOS to usable desktop in 15 seconds. It's now loads longer than that, because of all the cruft I've accumulated over the years, though still under a minute. 8gb of RAM is dirt cheap now...

Many such machines as yours made in 2005 to 2006 have XP.

I'd guess 99% of machines my machine's age originally had XP, since I was a very early adopter of Vista (first week, I think... still running it).

It is pegged at 30% because of overheating protection. Replace the fan and the problem will go away. You are slowly ruining your electronics if they get that hot and it will eventually die

I pegged it at 30% manually - prior to this, it got up to 105 degrees under load, then stopped recording temperature above that. After a little while, it would reboot, and pop straight back up. The fan is still ok, I think there's probably a problem with the heatsink/thermal paste. I realise it will eventually die at these temperatures, and I am going to sort it soon... it is 7 years old already, though.

For basic tasks, almost any computer from the Core2/Phenom era is sufficient.

I still game on my old core 2 duo (E6850)... I do have a gtx460 too, though. I'll bet it's better for gaming than at least 90% of new PCs sold.

Amusingly, it's currently pegged at 30%, because something's up with the fan/heatsink/thermal paste... it currently runs at a constant 95 degrees celsius under load, which is much cooler than before I pegged it. Yes, I'm going to sort it soon. It still runs games fine.

But I can tell you there is a world of difference in performance and bugs between the 2.

I've had over 6 months uptime on my Vista system... always performed fine, this is on a system I built at launch, ie. 7 years ago. Vista was sold on underpowered hardware, and plenty of services started as default which shouldn't have, compounding the performance issues... The only bug I've had was a bit of a stinker, whcih meant Vista would not install (at all, BSOD) with more than 4gb of RAM on certain (nvidia) motherboard chipsets (which admittedly were not that common). Installing with 4gb, grabbing a hotfix, then sticking the rest of the RAM back in fixed it.

It needs to end as XP is crap. After all it is based off of ME?!

Is this a joke, or do you really not know what you're talking about? 3.0 > 95 > 98 > ME. NT > 2K > XP > Vista > 7 > 8.

You can't do that, unless you can figure out how to make and file TWO resumes. Different ones, I mean.

Man, these data scientists are all pipe dreams.

That's hy we developed the Rot13 OTP. It's easy to use, and since it's a one time pad,it's absolutely secure.

Very clearly, long before we used up the lithium, we would shift the infrastructure to provide the electricity live, thus vastly reducing the Lithium required. Or we would make the cars electric-with-fossil-generator.
Only in a statist country would we define that 'everyone has to do the same thing'. and even then, other statist countries would do other things.
And that also ignores wind as a recharge mechanism.

Au contraire. It is NOT generally agreed that the purpose of a company is to make money. A company is a joint (corporate) venture whose purpose is whatever the organizing articles say it is.

You know, you sound like the jerks who bought into IOMEGA back when the standard hard drives were 20meg and IOMG was working on a 100-meg floppy, and said "stop the R&D, give dividends", when the vast majority voted for R&D.

They then SUED the company for several years, eating up its budget in legal defense, until they stopped the R&D, crashing the stock price from 16 to 2 for a dozen years--there's your malarky about minority protections-- and didn't come out with the zip disk until ten years later.

Yes, there are minority protections. Cook was very clear and specific about what they were. Clearly the conservatives so named were COMMUNIST conservatives, trying to use overweaning government to eliminate others' freedom.

Oh, the irony.

For receipts, it takes a little while to identify, so only binary compares are appropriate. Therefore, I'd go thru py pairs, sort the pairs, and stack them together crosswise on the bottom of the pile. That's sort groupsize one. Then take two groups, sort the groups with top-receipt compares, and join the groups and stack on the bottom. You're done when the receipts are all aligned correctly.

Sorting coins, I designate clock positions for each coin type, grab the largest group and slide the group to the quadrant. On the return, I drag back any stragglers, either to the pile if mixed, or to the appropriate quadrant if not.

Sorting feelings, I stop all direct thought on the matter, get some physical labor, and just work for a while. Then asevarious thoughts arise,I try to deal with each as rationally as I can. Which isn't very.

it is indeed quite possible that they didn't recognise how much it sucked because of inner-M25 London myopia

One thing to consider is that many more people live inside the M25 than do in the entirety of Scotland...

I never said that I thought national fiat currencies last forever. Venezuela and Ukraine both have currencies that are self-destructing as we speak. Argentina too.

The national currencies last as long as the mutual defense does ... or in other words, as long as the "full faith and credit" does. I long ago lost any trust I had in the faith or credit of the rulers of my government. They're liars.

Yes, there was. That is the moment bubbles burst: when the greater fools run out.

At that point, the market peaks, the current fools have to cover, the debts are called in, and then the market crashes. Greatest fools lose out.

Except with TARP, in which the greatest fools in the real estate / banker swaps bubble were the rulers and their friends, at which point they sold out the weak of their country, defining them [us] to be the greater fool.

Which makes us the greater fools, but only by definition. A lot of us were fully aware, but powerless.

Come Lord Jesus.

And you forget about the ever-present dockworkers unions, that note what goes in each container, and where it is located... this might make things much easier for the mafias.

That said, the biggest offense is that our wealthy and powerful are continually trying to find ways to eliminate -- and put to death -- the very people who have supported them.

In other words, they are traitors.