Why can't my new Dell compile Flash CS4 files faster?

All the serious geeks at Adobe must use Macs.

I have a new Dell Studio XPS 1645 with 8GB of RAM, an i7 Q820 processor @ 1.73GHz, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS (giving it a 5.9 Windows Experience score). It takes 39 seconds for this beast to compile one of our CLIPS activities. My confreres running Macs get it done in about 15 seconds. Today, I tried compiling the same .fla on a 4.5 year old MacBook (not a Pro) and it took 18 seconds. Then I tried my 3.5 year old Dell running Windows XP and it took 28 seconds.

Why doesn't an upgrade feel like one?

I have looked around the web for ideas about how to get Flash to compile an .fla faster but haven't found anything helpful. Maybe I should use the XP virtualization that came with the Windows 7 machine or use DropBox to distribute my computing power.

Does anyone have any similar experiences and especially any that will speed up the process?

Sluggish and Lonely in PC land,

Mathfester

Virtual PC for the PC

I remember the first time I saw Virtual PC for the Mac - probably 10 years ago. An Apple rep came to the Board Office, plugged his Mac into our network and ran several Microsoft Office applications simultaneously and snappily. He even found one of our network printers and fired off a document to it. All this in a rabidly Windows environment. Magic!

I had a similarly satisfying experience this afternoon, downloading Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 onto my PC and running the disk image with Internet Explorer 6 bundled with it. When launched, I get a window with Windows in it and its own virtual hard drive with its own Program Files and plug-ins. The only non-authentic part of the experience is that the default desktop is not teletubby land. I am using it to test the CLIPS website on IE6, while I have IE7 installed on my non-virtual machine. I have been using javascript to allow CLIPS to have a draggable screen resizing widget and getting familiar with some of the cross-browser compatibility issues that that entails. It should go live shortly.

I wonder whether it would be safer to surf the web with the virtual copy of Windows, avoiding any viruses or nasties that way.

A Dummy Tax

When I taught computers, the site administrator was not too keen on wasting his valuable time resetting students' passwords, so we instituted a "dummy tax" of $2 (this was a decade or more ago - when two dollars bought stuff). Students who needed a password reset, maybe in January after vacation, paid $2 that went into a fund to buy treats at the end of the year. I only remember one student having to pay and just how incensed he was.


(I created this dummy at a South Park character site, though I am no fan of South Park)

Those of you who are considered technophiles by your friends will relate to my experience this weekend when a tower was dropped off at home for attention. The sixteen year old owner had forgotten his Windows password and needed back in to his system. I haven't had too much hardware experience but gave it the old college try. If it were easy to boot a system for which you don't have the password, there wouldn't be much point in having passwords, would there?

In the end, I installed a second copy of Windows on the box and created two new users (one for me and one for him). I then accessed his documents using a bootable Linux System Rescue CD (Gentoo, I think). The Linux experience that I have gained using the XO and the quick hints on the CD allowed me to mount an NTFS drive, and use Midnight Commander (reminds me of Michael Martchenko) to transfer the documents from the locked copy of Windows to the new copy of Windows. I then deleted the old Windows directory and the locked My Documents directory. A little messy (I deleted a bunch of drivers in the process, I think) but the end result was satisfactory. I don't know if I am brave enough to try booting Linux from the CD on my everyday laptop yet, but soon, I think.

My brother sent me a link to software that will allow an Intel-based Mac to run Windows or Linux.

Are you running Linux on a Windows box for any compelling reason? Can you tip your Fedora gentooly or your red hat ubuntuly towards a distribution that you particularly like?