Well, obviously we spoke to two different people, possibly at two different locations. You did not call the same number I did (I called a 1-800 number in the US that I was told to call and they said what I reported). As others have indicated with other vendors, it may depend on whom you talk to.
After seeing the original article, I contacted Lenovo and they said the same thing. So I guess my strategy would be to have an extra (small) hard drive with the original Windows on it just in case I had to walk through on the call with them the steps in Windows to prove that I truly had a hardware problem. I would also plan to send them the system without any hard drive anyway, but they are going to want to walk through steps following their canned procedures first usually on the phone. I guess you could pretend you were doing stuff in Windows, but they are going to ask "what do you see on this screen" and it might be pretty hard.
So not only am I going to have to pay a Windows tax (I plan to order with Windows XP home to reduce the cost of the "tax"), I am going to need an additional drive with Windows on it just in case I need to walk through a hardware problem with support. At least that is the way I look at it. BTW, like others have indicated, I think it is just a question of having trained people only to deal with the OS they are trained in more than any nefarious conspiracy.
On a somewhat similar note, I had a Dell extended warranty with on-site service and I was having a problem with the touchpad so I assumed THEY would send someone to fix it. Instead, they wanted me to open up the unit, lift out the keyboard and see if the cable was loose. I asked them about accidentally zapping something with static electricity. They said I should be properly grounded. This is what I paid for on-site service for? I understand they don't want to unnecessarily send someone but when I have to open the unit and start removing things, I think we are at the point they need to send someone. Needless to say, this factors into my future buying decision vis a vis Dell and their service.
I was on the chat, wanting to ask one question, but it someone else beat me too it. Nat was asked a couple of times about GPLv3. The first time he mentioned that Novell was one one of the committees (the corporate one). Later he was asked again about the fact that RMS and Moglen have stated that GPLv3 would prevent this type of agreement (the one just entered into between Novell and MS). I guess it is not surprising, but the answer was not real enlightening.
He said he heard what RMS and Moglen have been saying, but he said
"The way I heard their statements, they were more of a threat to Microsoft than to Novell." Well, I don't see how he figures that. I think Novell would be hurt much more than MS if this happens. He was asked about the possibility of having to fork gcc, etc. if the stuff changed to GPLv3. He said
"Obviously we don't want to spend our time forking and maintaining parallel branches of glibc, gcc, etc". He said this was all hypothetical and they would have to wait and see what happened.
Well, unless you decide RMS and FSF are bluffing, and they can do what they want irregardless of what committees Novell is on, this seems to imply that (1)Novell/SUSE is a dead end, and/or (2)Novell will indeed have to fork a whole bunch of stuff. Certainly the stuff that FSF owns completely (copyrights already owned or assigned to them) would be put under GPLv3. This would hurt Novell a lot more than say Tivo, since Tivo probably doesn't (or doesn't need to) distribute the tools, but a company producing a distribution sure does.
So again, unless you think RMS et al are just posturing or something, anyone using Novell/SUSE Linux is going to be stuck with something that doesn't keep up and/or is difficult to support. I guess at this point, they (Novell) are betting this isn't going to happen. But what user, be it individual or corporation, would want to make that same bet?
Actually I do the same thing. I am just too worried about the problems that can occur with an upgrade to take a chance, and this isn't based on just Ubuntu, but other distributions as well. Plus it gets rid of a lot of unwanted stuff. It is like a system clean-up every 6 months or so. Of course, you sure need to remember to back up or archive stuff you will need and you do have to remember to reinstall the additional packages that don't get installed with the initial (re)install.
Apparently, based on other replies you have gotten, a lot of others feel going the update route isn't so bad. But I suspect most of them are experienced users and know how to solve the problems that occur. A lot of the Ubuntu users are less experienced and doing an update is ideal for them, but only if it works (nearly) perfectly. I admit I don't know how realistic it is for new users to figure out how to save the proper stuff out of their home directory etc. so they can install from scratch but I suspect you have a much better chance of few problems in the long run. Yes, upgrades should work perfectly, but the number of permutations to consider just installing is bad enough. Now throw in all the upgrade permutations. Seems like a lot to ask. Yes, some will say they never had problems updating, but that is anecdotal, right? There are people who smoked all their lives and never got lung cancer, but what does that prove? Just that they didn't.
I guess what the article mentioned is the right thing. You have to back everything up in case there are major problems. If you run into problems, then you have to decide at which point you would be better off just installing clean rather than trying to get help on all the upgrade problems.
Personally, I installed yesterday. I saved must stuff away and installed clean, reformatting the disk. It did take a while to get stuff back the way I wanted it and I am still disappointed that they don't include ndiswrapper packages by default, but I am pretty happy with the way my laptop looks today. It definitely boots faster, so much so that I wondered if something important was just not happening. My wireless starts better (sometimes the ndiswrapper would hang on Dapper at boot, and I would have to reboot). Maybe if I had updated it would have gone clean for me; I will never know now. Preparing for and doing a clean install took be the good part of the day, but at least going that route I was pretty sure to bound the time needed to get the system up and running reasonably well.
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Well, obviously we spoke to two different people, possibly at two different locations. You did not call the same number I did (I called a 1-800 number in the US that I was told to call and they said what I reported). As others have indicated with other vendors, it may depend on whom you talk to.
So not only am I going to have to pay a Windows tax (I plan to order with Windows XP home to reduce the cost of the "tax"), I am going to need an additional drive with Windows on it just in case I need to walk through a hardware problem with support. At least that is the way I look at it. BTW, like others have indicated, I think it is just a question of having trained people only to deal with the OS they are trained in more than any nefarious conspiracy.
On a somewhat similar note, I had a Dell extended warranty with on-site service and I was having a problem with the touchpad so I assumed THEY would send someone to fix it. Instead, they wanted me to open up the unit, lift out the keyboard and see if the cable was loose. I asked them about accidentally zapping something with static electricity. They said I should be properly grounded. This is what I paid for on-site service for? I understand they don't want to unnecessarily send someone but when I have to open the unit and start removing things, I think we are at the point they need to send someone. Needless to say, this factors into my future buying decision vis a vis Dell and their service.
I was on the chat, wanting to ask one question, but it someone else beat me too it. Nat was asked a couple of times about GPLv3. The first time he mentioned that Novell was one one of the committees (the corporate one). Later he was asked again about the fact that RMS and Moglen have stated that GPLv3 would prevent this type of agreement (the one just entered into between Novell and MS). I guess it is not surprising, but the answer was not real enlightening.
He said he heard what RMS and Moglen have been saying, but he said
"The way I heard their statements, they were more of a threat to Microsoft than to Novell." Well, I don't see how he figures that. I think Novell would be hurt much more than MS if this happens. He was asked about the possibility of having to fork gcc, etc. if the stuff changed to GPLv3. He said "Obviously we don't want to spend our time forking and maintaining parallel branches of glibc, gcc, etc". He said this was all hypothetical and they would have to wait and see what happened.Well, unless you decide RMS and FSF are bluffing, and they can do what they want irregardless of what committees Novell is on, this seems to imply that (1)Novell/SUSE is a dead end, and/or (2)Novell will indeed have to fork a whole bunch of stuff. Certainly the stuff that FSF owns completely (copyrights already owned or assigned to them) would be put under GPLv3. This would hurt Novell a lot more than say Tivo, since Tivo probably doesn't (or doesn't need to) distribute the tools, but a company producing a distribution sure does.
So again, unless you think RMS et al are just posturing or something, anyone using Novell/SUSE Linux is going to be stuck with something that doesn't keep up and/or is difficult to support. I guess at this point, they (Novell) are betting this isn't going to happen. But what user, be it individual or corporation, would want to make that same bet?
Actually I do the same thing. I am just too worried about the problems that can occur with an upgrade to take a chance, and this isn't based on just Ubuntu, but other distributions as well. Plus it gets rid of a lot of unwanted stuff. It is like a system clean-up every 6 months or so. Of course, you sure need to remember to back up or archive stuff you will need and you do have to remember to reinstall the additional packages that don't get installed with the initial (re)install.
Apparently, based on other replies you have gotten, a lot of others feel going the update route isn't so bad. But I suspect most of them are experienced users and know how to solve the problems that occur. A lot of the Ubuntu users are less experienced and doing an update is ideal for them, but only if it works (nearly) perfectly. I admit I don't know how realistic it is for new users to figure out how to save the proper stuff out of their home directory etc. so they can install from scratch but I suspect you have a much better chance of few problems in the long run. Yes, upgrades should work perfectly, but the number of permutations to consider just installing is bad enough. Now throw in all the upgrade permutations. Seems like a lot to ask. Yes, some will say they never had problems updating, but that is anecdotal, right? There are people who smoked all their lives and never got lung cancer, but what does that prove? Just that they didn't.
I guess what the article mentioned is the right thing. You have to back everything up in case there are major problems. If you run into problems, then you have to decide at which point you would be better off just installing clean rather than trying to get help on all the upgrade problems.
Personally, I installed yesterday. I saved must stuff away and installed clean, reformatting the disk. It did take a while to get stuff back the way I wanted it and I am still disappointed that they don't include ndiswrapper packages by default, but I am pretty happy with the way my laptop looks today. It definitely boots faster, so much so that I wondered if something important was just not happening. My wireless starts better (sometimes the ndiswrapper would hang on Dapper at boot, and I would have to reboot). Maybe if I had updated it would have gone clean for me; I will never know now. Preparing for and doing a clean install took be the good part of the day, but at least going that route I was pretty sure to bound the time needed to get the system up and running reasonably well.