Slashdot Mirror
How To Make Dual Booting A (Bigger) Pain
the_phenom writes "Thinking of dual-booting your Windoze XP 17" Toshiba P25 laptop? Think again - this one 'uses a DVD with an already setup version of Windows XP Home and then transfers it to the notebook's hard drive,' preventing the normal setup procedure and thus, dual-booting." This reminds me of the unfriendly practice on some PC builders' parts of including an OS "backup" only on a hard-drive partition.
Since when are Windows CDs a requirement for dual booting? I've installed a dual boot solution just fine WITHOUT any Windows CDs. That's on 98se, 2k and XP Pro. Worked like a dream and I simply did NOT need the CD, nor can I think of any situation where I WOULD need the CD. (then again, it's 5 am in the morning, I think I can barely be qualified as sentient atm)
So to put it in a simple way:
What's the fecking problem!?
Hate me!
Since CDs are such a terribly expensive part compared to the cost of a laptop. This seems like a really silly way to cut costs, if you ask me. Sure, most people will never need them, but if they do, it becomes a pain to fix the problem....
there are other partition tools besides partition magic. such as parted, and even ones that come w/ various distros of linux.
imho, this whole article is BS. the reason computer makers utilise these "restore" disks is for their main customers, people who have no clue and just want to be able to point and click. They realise that those who know what they are doing will get around it, and do what ever they want anyways. quit bitching, its pointless, and stop acting like your wheaties just got pissed in or something.
also, since when do you need windows disks? resize the partion, and hell, you can even use the boot.ini to boot to linux, dont even need to screw with the drives MBR.
its not hard people, get over it, and constantly looking for reasons to jump on the "M$ sucks, DAMN THE MAN" bandwagon over every miniscule little thing. choose your battles, you just make us look stupid.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
Why do people think this is some sneaky move, and look at MS. It's simple WinXP pro, for example, is 1.6gig installed, thats almost a gig bigger then a normal disk. So install takes a long time as it resets everything up. Having it on a dvd not compressed and allready set up makes perfect sense. It's for a laptop, very static hardware. For a regular user being able to put a disk in and it copys everything over and your good to go is a great thing. I also bet this was more of toshiba idea then MS's. They arn't building these things with the intent of dual boot, just doesn't make sense to worry about something 0.01% of those who buy one will do. Why not make it nicer for the 99.99 percent that will use it like normal.
Also to other, I don't think any PC maker has included a straight off the shelf version of windows in nearly a decade. No computer I have bought or seen bought by someone had a true real version of windows with it. When you buy a computer from any OEM it comes with a quasi version of windows. This is no differant. Except if the HD crahses of have to re-install you can now do it in a few minutes instead of over an hour.
Back when I was a Windows admin (I've also cleaned the toilets at Burger King, which is almost as bad) it was very easy to create a scripted install so that you could just pop in a CD and it does the rest. You could (and probably still can) do this with the standard retail distribution CDs and the Windows resource kit. The real reason for these crippled "restore" CDs is to prevent people from copying them or selling them. It has nothing to do with making the installs any easier.
> Since CDs are such a terribly expensive part compared to the cost of a laptop. This seems like a really silly way to cut costs, if you ask me.
You're not used to dealing with manufacturing hundreds of thousands of something.
In those quantities, pennies count. In this context, a CD that's not needed almost all of the time is indeed an unwanted expense - multiply the cost of that CD by x00,000 and you've cut a big slice out of the overall profit of the product.
If lead time is an issue, use the CDs as an incentive to register your laptop. Check the box on the warranty registration form and you get the CDs in the mail.
Of course, requesting the CDs gives them permisson to send you tons of junk mail.
Here's some stuff you wouldn't realize until you made the mistake of buying one.
1.) Toshiba's now come with a "BIOS-less" system which means that windows controls all the hardware and you can change NONE of the settings, which makes installing linux a real pain in the ass, but it is still possible.
2.) Toshiba's have a problem of having their own "helping" software that when you boot with a net connection it will call home and download "updates" automatically for you. One such update was for my model to cut the clock speed in half.
3.) Every toshiba I've owned has horrible battery life, you might as well consider them a computer with a built in UPS and easy to move around, and not a "portable laptop".
4.) Toshiba has a little problem with laptops overheating (hence the lawsuit) and certain parts melting.
5.) Toshiba's only selling point is their spec sheets, but as far as being a good purchase you're in for some real problems down the road, I have yet to meet someone who hasn't had some part of their toshiba fall apart and cost less than $100 to fix.
All-in-all these laptops aren't that great, while they pack the latest and greatest they aren't exactly stellar machines. Overheating and hardware failures are certainly nothing new to toshiba's and I would recommend everyone read reviews of ANY laptop model out there.
Remember while it may be cool to have a laptop usually there is something sub-par (make sure you check the waruntee by the manufacturer and highest screen resolution). And ALWAYS remember that if you have the opportunity to grab an extended or three year waruntee for less than $150 then go for it. The battery WILL die, you WILL lose a key on the keyboard, you WILL drop it at least once in 3 years, and something WILL die in it. These are not model specific by any means, these are general laptop things.
Hope this helped ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
First of all, -1 Troll.
./ is all about, right? I have said it before and I will say it again, like Linux advocacy, Mac advocacy is an effort at ensuring the tools I want and need are available to me in the future given the overwhelming market forces arrayed against "alternative" platforms like Linux and OS X.
:-) I routinely make backup images of my hard drives to an external hard drive just in case something happens. A simple restore takes care of this issue.
:-)
Oh, please. Seriously?
Second of all, we don't all use Macs because we don't want to.
Fair enough. It's weird though, after trying OS X, I will never again use another OS for my work if I can help it. It is seriously efficient and has replaced in my workspace: 1) IRIX, 2) Win2k and 3) Classic MacOS doing everything in one box what the three OS's did in three boxes.
It's that simple and I wish you Mac zealots would get that through your thick heads at some point and quit bludgeoning us with your evangelism.
The parent post expressed a problem that is easily resolved by using OS X. It was a suggestion and a point for discussion. That is what
you can use Virtual PC on this Toshiba laptop just as well as you can on a Mac (it's a Mac and Windows product, you know),
Very true. But then you are using a Toshiba laptop and not a sweet little Powerbook that provides good run time and performance in an elegantly designed and functional package.
Why should you need to spend extra money just to be able to dual-boot your computer?
I agree with you. Ideally one should not have to spend any extra money to get a dual boot environment. I too was running a triple boot environment as of last year. However, this year I have consolodated all of my software libraries and standardized on a single environment that is more efficient for me and I still get a webserver and workstation running at the same time.
But the story posted here seems to be nothing new. Few PC's I've seen lately come with regular old Windows install disks like you can get in a store. Most of them come with "restore" disks that simply put the drive back in the condition it was when you bought the machine.
There has been a trend toward this for years. Remember when OS's came with paper manuals? These were replaced by (often inferior) online documentation. When Microsoft got so big, it made financial sense to attempt the scenario you describe by not shipping boot disks at all. After all when you have 95% of the market, 50 cents saved per license adds up.
Of course, this is of no help if you somehow type "rd windows" at a DOS prompt by mistake or something and don't need or even want to actually format the drive.
Routine backups are of great importance here.
Still, I confess that I don't quite understand how this actually prevents you from setting up a dual boot.
Marketshare.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.