Needlessly long day. I just got home. Did a few hours of paperwork, then was just playing on the computer when the engineer told me he couldn't access Mega. After playing with it a minute, I concluded that it finally doesn't support xp, or the old ass firefox anymore. Decided a virtual machine would be the way to go, and downloaded a bunch of light distros to try out, Settled on BunsenLabs, and did a proof of concept install on the boss' computer that has similar specs. Runs like shit, but it runs.
Now I have to get a ssd for the engineer's computer, and do the same on his box. Dunno why it runs so shittily. I had a vm on my old machine that was exactly the same as the boss', aside from running xubuntu, and it ran a vm great. I guess it's just windows. Shocker... I'll see what I can do to boost performance. It would be useful aside from mega having updated computers, if nothing else, for security. We're stuck on xp unless the boss wants to spring for new autocad licenses($$$$). Someone stole the boxes with the keys, so when the hardware dies, autocad dies. Windows throws a shitfit if you just swap drives to new hardware. I think it's technically doable, but also technically challenging, and technically "illegal". Otherwise, I'd install gnu/linux on the machines, and turn the current installs into virtual machines. That would be ideal.