Sure... But PC's have a long longevity these days too.
My dad has a Dell Inspiron 8000 which was bought in 2000 or so. A few minor hardware upgrades he did. He loves it because the screen is 1600x1200.... Try finding such a resolution on one of the laptops of today.
My wifes computers (which is our primary home computer) is from fall 2003. It is still working, still perfectly adequate. (Okay, this one got a few minor upgrades too...)
Between 01/2005 and 01/2007, my primary laptop was a second hand P-III 600MHz... It had already served a good 4 years, as far as I know. It stayed with me for another two, when it physically started to fall apart. The electronics were still okay, but the plastic broke everywhere.
Compare that to my iBook G3 600MHz.... Bought it in 12/2001... Broken 06/2005. I treated that laptop like my firstborn! That's a mere 4 and a half years. Pretty much all my PCs have done longer service than that.
Hmmmm... That entirely depends. My wifes computer was bought in fall 2003, which is before I knew her. It was a virus-infested cesspool, especially because that PC was the only one with an Internet connection and her little brother used it for what teenage boys do on the Internet.... Without a up to date antivirus, using Internet Explorer and downloading anything and everything because he knew nothing about the Internet.[1]
Anyway, I reformatted that machine, locked it down, gave everyone concerned a Limited User account (including me, Admin is for configuration only) and set Firefox default everywhere. From that point on: pure stability and no problems at all.
This machine is still working to this day and is thus 6 years operational with only one day of hard work on it. (The reinstallation) I think that a pretty decent return on investment.
[1] I won't blame him alone, because later after the reinstall my wife called me once and asked me why the download wasn't working. She had been looking for clipart for her classes. What was on the screen was an animated gif doing as if it was downloading something and I bet that if she had gone to that site with Internet Explorer (while being Admin, which she wasn't) the machine would have been owned. So saying porn alone is the root of all rootkits is alas not true.
Oh, that surprises me. I used to have an iBook and it had this specific configuration too. I however somehow expected that the laptops for professionals would be fully expandable. My fault.
That I didn't know at all. It's been a while since I bought DDR RAM, and indeed, DDR doesn't seem to come in 2GB variants.
Sorry, should have looked that stuff up before drawing conclusions.
The machine only has 7GB flash and 512 MB ram so is not suitable for Windows
Huh? In 2005, I used a second hand laptop which specced P-III 700MHz / 512Meg RAM / 4GB 4200RPM harddisk. It ran Windows XP SP2 just fine, and I serveral productivity applications on it. Sure, I didn't have to overdo it and eventually I upgraded the 4Gb 4200RPM harddisk with an 80Gig 5200RPM harddisk which did wonders to performance.
However saying that 7GB flash and 512Meg RAM is not enough for Windows (XP) is not exactly correct. It's sufficient, not comfortable (post SP2) but sufficient for many tasks.
I used to have a 12" PowerBook. Great machine, but the battery packs wore out every 18 months or so (modern machines have more advance Li-ion technology and seem to have better longevity).
And the new batteries don't fit? That's sad.
My dad uses to this thay his Dell Inspiron 8000 (this is a machine bought around 2000, I can't remember exactly) and the batteries have worn out. He recently bought a new set and those are Li-ion. The power adapter does get a lot hotter than before, but he now has insane battery times.
My dad is now looking for a replacement laptop, but he is very reluctant to replace it because that Dell Inspiron has a 1600x1200 display. I have yet to find anything comparable on modern laptop.
The simple question is: have you tried? I recently got my hands on an Intel board with a Core2Duo on it and I refurbished it for my sister who is a The Sims 3 addict. Assuming, wrongly, that The Sims 3 would require a lot of horsepower, I wanted to know how much RAM the board supported. The documentation at Intel was unclear. Some sources said "Max 2G", others said "Max 4GB". The last errata said something like "correct all reference to 4GB to 2GB". Anyway, having those conflicting information and forum posts that said it worked anyway, I bought two sticks of 2GB DDR2 RAM and tried.
It worked... Well, you got the typical 3.5GB on a 32-bit system, but that's still a lot better than 2GB.
If you don't want to spend dough, try to find one with a comparable system and temporary install their RAM to see if it works.
Don't forget that XP is now 8 years old, and XP Home is kinda like using Windows 3.11 instead of Windows NT, instead of XP when it first came out,
XP Home and XP Pro are much closer related than that (XP Home = XP Pro minus a couple features), and you know you're spewing utter bullshit.
The fun part is: to get into "Safe mode" you need to reboot the figgin computer. What a waste of time. If at least the Administrator account could be unlocked as in XP Pro, I might not have a problem with it.
Anyway: the XP Home version is what most peoples computers came with. I can't just say to people I help out: "Go and buy Pro, because Home sucks". That's not a valid way of helping somone. I also don't want to pirate XP Pro just because it has a few more features (of which pretty much only this one is useful in a home setting)
This was before Microsoft thought maybe security prompts/dialogs was a better way in keeping newbies out of where they probably shouldn't go.
I frankly doubt that... They're now just trained to click "Allow". Hardly a better way. I vastly prefer that my users (including me, if I'm not paying attention...because I do run Limited User and only log into Admim when required) get a bland old dialog box saying "Access Denied". It's useful, it's straightforward and doesn't allow squat without logging in as Admin (or use RunAs) and actually think about your actions.
However "thinking" has become undesirable in our society. Back in the olden days, if you wanted to use a computer you knew what you did.
Why? Because she doesn't know much about computers and asks me? Let me put this clear: this has nothing to do with gender. If you're a man and know few things about computers, it's better to ask for help too.
I don't know where the "controlling" comes from? Because I changed one setting on her digital camera? For her own good? You have a weeeeeird idea of controlling....
Funny is that all this shit really happened, and I don't see what is condescending about it. It happend, I didn't make shit up. I don't even make fun of them, I understand they cannot be bothered with technicalities.
So, me taking a bit of time to help these fine ladies out is "condescending" now? I'd call it "helping out" and "being nice".
I know it makes Linux guys shit puppies but NOBODY uses limited user in Windows,okay?
I do.
Because too damned much Windows software breaks horribly and takes three fricking forevers to fix if ran as a limited user.
Nope, it's easy. The most likely culprit is that the application writes in its installation folder. Give full access to "users" and it works. In very rare cases, it's when the app tries to write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and the subtree required for the application can be set to full access to "users" too.
This technique could even be automated... The only thing this automation must know is the installation directory (which is known by the uninstaller) and the used registry subtree (which, I admit would be a bit more difficult to find out, but as I said these applications are so rare, I haven't encountered one in years).
Programs written in the last 4 years usually do work for Limited User out of the box.
if you gave them control of it they would just fuck shit up so bad they could even access their own stuff.
Simple solution: make it an option to activate it. Just like "Simple File Sharing". I'd settle for that.
Linux guys think "open up bash and type" is easy because it is easy FOR THEM, but for the home users CLI=total failure.
No, it's an easy way to communicate how to fix something. The end-user doesn't need to understand it. They should come to us when they need help, just as they should go to their mechanic when their car does weird stuff. That's the part people like you do not understand: leave it to the people in the know or learn it yourself.
Just for the record: Windows users who think they can fix their own computers are the worst. Their machines are usually those beyond repair. Especially, because they "know better".
A fully patched XP SP3 running as Limited User is not secure? I have some workstations who beg to differ. Not even a slowdown over the years is noticable on those. They're locked down, but that's technically what Vista and 7 do too...
To give your example even a bit more weight. My wife is a kindergarten teacher and at the end of the year she burns a CD (actually, I do that because her computer literacy is very low) for all the kids with the pictures of the year. With the cameras of today, typically set on 10 megapixel or more, a CD is quickly filled. Of course, I make sure her camera is set to 3 megapixel.... (Definitely enough for on-screen viewing. Enough for normal printouts) Her coworkers also seem to burn CDs with pictures, but they don't have someone taking care of the technicalities for them.
He coworkers know what I am, and so one of them approached her and said... "I tried to burn my pictures on a CD and it says it can't because it needs two megabytes". Yes, she said "two megabytes", meaning of course "two gigabytes". I pretty much immediately knew what the cause was when: 10 megapixel camera. Yay... The inevitable question was: "How can I fix it"? So I should have explained how to resize all those photos without her screwing up, without knowing what software she has, without going over there and spends some of my precious time...
What I did was very simple: I let the woman copy all the pictures she wanted on that CD on a 4Gig USB stick and told her she's get them back in a usable format. What I then did, was simply run a command on my Linux system, waited some time. Copied the resulting files to a CD as a "master", plus the new files on a USB stick and I was done with it.
The command line for this task was the only viable option.
Also do note that the reaction of the woman was exactly what we want users to do: ask help when they don't know what to do instead of wasting hours and hours and hours of time. If she had run Linux, I could have told her the exact command to type, or sent her a script or even remotely take over the machine. It would have been even more easy that way.
to get them to remember something like "%homepath%/%userprofile% %appdata% %allusersprofile%, cacls, attrib, or to use " | more " so 30 pages of shit doesn't go wizzing by.
I highlighted one in your list.... The one command line too I can't live without when using Windows XP Home. The fuckers left out the GUI interface to set File Permissions and Ownership. If you don't have those you cannot run Windows XP in Limited User configuration.... Well, yes, unless you use cacls.... on the command line... for a "Home" product.
25 days + holidays here in my country (Luxembourg).... Banking and Insurance have 33 days + holidays, alas I do not work in those industries. The number of days depends on the country, but sometimes you get weird situations like where the work week is officially 38hours, but everyone does 40hours and accumulates them to additional days of "recuperation". That would be in Belgium. If I recall correctly they have 20 days + holidays, but this system adds up another 12... making it a grand total of 32.
Someone who has been taught philosophy or so-called "business administration" is not going to accept the job of a receptionist or waiter.
Bull.... If I'd lose my job and coudn't find anything to do in my field, you know what I'd do? Become a bus driver. Actually, I have often cursed myself having done years of University, just to earn a few euros more than a bus driver.... and I'm a well paid IT guy. (IT still is one of the "better paid" white collar jobs)
For the record..... My wife comes from a family of carpenters and metalworkers. They earn much more than me.... If one of my kids wants to pursue such a job, I'm definitely going to encourage them, because, guess what: they may not be as "glamorous", but in the end it's the money in your wallet that counts.
Do not underestimate your earning potential if you're a "Master of $TRADE".
That's not true.... I bake my own bread (not with a bread-baking-machine) and I know you can leave out the salt. It will taste band. I have done this accidentally since I was in a hurry and forgot it.
To get the bread to "raise", the only thing you need is yeast (and obviously, water)
:-D I didn't actually expect you to know about it. On my visits in the States, when I said I came from Luxembourg most people assumed that it was a city in Germany. After explaining for the umpteenth time, I gave up and said yes. In which invariably, I got told "we did save your asses in WWII". That got old pretty quick too.... Resulting in the fact that I just said "I'm from Europe".
Luxembourg is a pretty strange place.... For example, it's a place where nationals complain about traveling 50km. I don't get into that mindset either, but I have witnessed it many time.
Well, as a big fan of Pink Floyd, where artificial breaks are deal killers, I just set my players to "no-breaks"[1]. The problem for you is probably that at that point you are missing breaks where there were some. Personally, that has bothered me much less than artificial breaks where there were none.
I can't really help. For me the system works with only one file. [2]
[1] When I burnt "Operation Mindcrime" by Queensryche album with iTunes (before my FLAC days), I forgot to disable the artificial break resulting in an awful CD. Yech!
[2] "Hooray for Boobies" by Bloodhound Gang was a problem though.... Tracks 19 through 46 are all 4 or 5 seconds of silence. I removed those, which of course changes the layout of the album.
Just a question: why do you rip to a single file? I've started ripping my CDs in FLAC just recently, and I want them in individual files. Rhythmbox does exactly that, in an iTunes like directory structure (which is customizable, so if you don't like it you can change it)
While I agree with the premise... Making read/writeable by both systems implies using either FAT (bad idea on such large drives) or NTFS. You can't use open source file systems. (There are Windows drivers for ext2, but they suck hard.... )
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Sure... But PC's have a long longevity these days too.
My dad has a Dell Inspiron 8000 which was bought in 2000 or so. A few minor hardware upgrades he did. He loves it because the screen is 1600x1200.... Try finding such a resolution on one of the laptops of today.
My wifes computers (which is our primary home computer) is from fall 2003. It is still working, still perfectly adequate. (Okay, this one got a few minor upgrades too...)
Between 01/2005 and 01/2007, my primary laptop was a second hand P-III 600MHz... It had already served a good 4 years, as far as I know. It stayed with me for another two, when it physically started to fall apart. The electronics were still okay, but the plastic broke everywhere.
Compare that to my iBook G3 600MHz.... Bought it in 12/2001... Broken 06/2005. I treated that laptop like my firstborn! That's a mere 4 and a half years. Pretty much all my PCs have done longer service than that.
Hmmmm... That entirely depends. My wifes computer was bought in fall 2003, which is before I knew her. It was a virus-infested cesspool, especially because that PC was the only one with an Internet connection and her little brother used it for what teenage boys do on the Internet.... Without a up to date antivirus, using Internet Explorer and downloading anything and everything because he knew nothing about the Internet.[1]
Anyway, I reformatted that machine, locked it down, gave everyone concerned a Limited User account (including me, Admin is for configuration only) and set Firefox default everywhere. From that point on: pure stability and no problems at all.
This machine is still working to this day and is thus 6 years operational with only one day of hard work on it. (The reinstallation) I think that a pretty decent return on investment.
[1] I won't blame him alone, because later after the reinstall my wife called me once and asked me why the download wasn't working. She had been looking for clipart for her classes. What was on the screen was an animated gif doing as if it was downloading something and I bet that if she had gone to that site with Internet Explorer (while being Admin, which she wasn't) the machine would have been owned. So saying porn alone is the root of all rootkits is alas not true.
Windows should adopt Chrome OS? I don't think Windows qualifies as a good parent, the adoption service is never going to allow that.
Hint: "adapt" is the word you're looking for. ;-)
Sorry, should have looked that stuff up before drawing conclusions.
Huh? In 2005, I used a second hand laptop which specced P-III 700MHz / 512Meg RAM / 4GB 4200RPM harddisk. It ran Windows XP SP2 just fine, and I serveral productivity applications on it. Sure, I didn't have to overdo it and eventually I upgraded the 4Gb 4200RPM harddisk with an 80Gig 5200RPM harddisk which did wonders to performance.
However saying that 7GB flash and 512Meg RAM is not enough for Windows (XP) is not exactly correct. It's sufficient, not comfortable (post SP2) but sufficient for many tasks.
And the new batteries don't fit? That's sad.
My dad uses to this thay his Dell Inspiron 8000 (this is a machine bought around 2000, I can't remember exactly) and the batteries have worn out. He recently bought a new set and those are Li-ion. The power adapter does get a lot hotter than before, but he now has insane battery times.
My dad is now looking for a replacement laptop, but he is very reluctant to replace it because that Dell Inspiron has a 1600x1200 display. I have yet to find anything comparable on modern laptop.
It worked... Well, you got the typical 3.5GB on a 32-bit system, but that's still a lot better than 2GB.
If you don't want to spend dough, try to find one with a comparable system and temporary install their RAM to see if it works.
XP Home and XP Pro are much closer related than that (XP Home = XP Pro minus a couple features), and you know you're spewing utter bullshit.
The fun part is: to get into "Safe mode" you need to reboot the figgin computer. What a waste of time. If at least the Administrator account could be unlocked as in XP Pro, I might not have a problem with it.
Anyway: the XP Home version is what most peoples computers came with. I can't just say to people I help out: "Go and buy Pro, because Home sucks". That's not a valid way of helping somone. I also don't want to pirate XP Pro just because it has a few more features (of which pretty much only this one is useful in a home setting)
I frankly doubt that... They're now just trained to click "Allow". Hardly a better way. I vastly prefer that my users (including me, if I'm not paying attention...because I do run Limited User and only log into Admim when required) get a bland old dialog box saying "Access Denied". It's useful, it's straightforward and doesn't allow squat without logging in as Admin (or use RunAs) and actually think about your actions.
However "thinking" has become undesirable in our society. Back in the olden days, if you wanted to use a computer you knew what you did.
Why? Because she doesn't know much about computers and asks me? Let me put this clear: this has nothing to do with gender. If you're a man and know few things about computers, it's better to ask for help too.
I don't know where the "controlling" comes from? Because I changed one setting on her digital camera? For her own good? You have a weeeeeird idea of controlling....
Funny is that all this shit really happened, and I don't see what is condescending about it. It happend, I didn't make shit up. I don't even make fun of them, I understand they cannot be bothered with technicalities.
So, me taking a bit of time to help these fine ladies out is "condescending" now? I'd call it "helping out" and "being nice".
That's what I meant. I was thinking ssh ;-)
I do.
Nope, it's easy. The most likely culprit is that the application writes in its installation folder. Give full access to "users" and it works. In very rare cases, it's when the app tries to write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and the subtree required for the application can be set to full access to "users" too.
This technique could even be automated... The only thing this automation must know is the installation directory (which is known by the uninstaller) and the used registry subtree (which, I admit would be a bit more difficult to find out, but as I said these applications are so rare, I haven't encountered one in years).
Programs written in the last 4 years usually do work for Limited User out of the box.
Simple solution: make it an option to activate it. Just like "Simple File Sharing". I'd settle for that.
No, it's an easy way to communicate how to fix something. The end-user doesn't need to understand it. They should come to us when they need help, just as they should go to their mechanic when their car does weird stuff. That's the part people like you do not understand: leave it to the people in the know or learn it yourself.
Just for the record: Windows users who think they can fix their own computers are the worst. Their machines are usually those beyond repair. Especially, because they "know better".
Only if you used smartdrives write caching functionality, and that wasn't turned on by default.
A fully patched XP SP3 running as Limited User is not secure? I have some workstations who beg to differ. Not even a slowdown over the years is noticable on those. They're locked down, but that's technically what Vista and 7 do too...
To give your example even a bit more weight. My wife is a kindergarten teacher and at the end of the year she burns a CD (actually, I do that because her computer literacy is very low) for all the kids with the pictures of the year. With the cameras of today, typically set on 10 megapixel or more, a CD is quickly filled. Of course, I make sure her camera is set to 3 megapixel.... (Definitely enough for on-screen viewing. Enough for normal printouts) Her coworkers also seem to burn CDs with pictures, but they don't have someone taking care of the technicalities for them.
He coworkers know what I am, and so one of them approached her and said... "I tried to burn my pictures on a CD and it says it can't because it needs two megabytes". Yes, she said "two megabytes", meaning of course "two gigabytes". I pretty much immediately knew what the cause was when: 10 megapixel camera. Yay... The inevitable question was: "How can I fix it"? So I should have explained how to resize all those photos without her screwing up, without knowing what software she has, without going over there and spends some of my precious time...
What I did was very simple: I let the woman copy all the pictures she wanted on that CD on a 4Gig USB stick and told her she's get them back in a usable format. What I then did, was simply run a command on my Linux system, waited some time. Copied the resulting files to a CD as a "master", plus the new files on a USB stick and I was done with it.
The command line for this task was the only viable option.
Also do note that the reaction of the woman was exactly what we want users to do: ask help when they don't know what to do instead of wasting hours and hours and hours of time. If she had run Linux, I could have told her the exact command to type, or sent her a script or even remotely take over the machine. It would have been even more easy that way.
I highlighted one in your list.... The one command line too I can't live without when using Windows XP Home. The fuckers left out the GUI interface to set File Permissions and Ownership. If you don't have those you cannot run Windows XP in Limited User configuration.... Well, yes, unless you use cacls.... on the command line... for a "Home" product.
Just saying....
25 days + holidays here in my country (Luxembourg).... Banking and Insurance have 33 days + holidays, alas I do not work in those industries. The number of days depends on the country, but sometimes you get weird situations like where the work week is officially 38hours, but everyone does 40hours and accumulates them to additional days of "recuperation". That would be in Belgium. If I recall correctly they have 20 days + holidays, but this system adds up another 12... making it a grand total of 32.
Of course, you could take a look at this list.
Bull.... If I'd lose my job and coudn't find anything to do in my field, you know what I'd do? Become a bus driver. Actually, I have often cursed myself having done years of University, just to earn a few euros more than a bus driver.... and I'm a well paid IT guy. (IT still is one of the "better paid" white collar jobs)
For the record..... My wife comes from a family of carpenters and metalworkers. They earn much more than me.... If one of my kids wants to pursue such a job, I'm definitely going to encourage them, because, guess what: they may not be as "glamorous", but in the end it's the money in your wallet that counts.
Do not underestimate your earning potential if you're a "Master of $TRADE".
Because the margins are too thin.
Nope... Not required at all... Just try it if you don't believe. Or, Google it ;-) People with blood pressure issues often make bread without salt.
Because I use more than only Windows and Linux.... Not every operating system supports NTFS.
That's not true.... I bake my own bread (not with a bread-baking-machine) and I know you can leave out the salt. It will taste band. I have done this accidentally since I was in a hurry and forgot it.
To get the bread to "raise", the only thing you need is yeast (and obviously, water)
:-D I didn't actually expect you to know about it. On my visits in the States, when I said I came from Luxembourg most people assumed that it was a city in Germany. After explaining for the umpteenth time, I gave up and said yes. In which invariably, I got told "we did save your asses in WWII". That got old pretty quick too.... Resulting in the fact that I just said "I'm from Europe".
Luxembourg is a pretty strange place.... For example, it's a place where nationals complain about traveling 50km. I don't get into that mindset either, but I have witnessed it many time.
Well, as a big fan of Pink Floyd, where artificial breaks are deal killers, I just set my players to "no-breaks"[1]. The problem for you is probably that at that point you are missing breaks where there were some. Personally, that has bothered me much less than artificial breaks where there were none.
I can't really help. For me the system works with only one file. [2]
[1] When I burnt "Operation Mindcrime" by Queensryche album with iTunes (before my FLAC days), I forgot to disable the artificial break resulting in an awful CD. Yech!
[2] "Hooray for Boobies" by Bloodhound Gang was a problem though.... Tracks 19 through 46 are all 4 or 5 seconds of silence. I removed those, which of course changes the layout of the album.
Just a question: why do you rip to a single file? I've started ripping my CDs in FLAC just recently, and I want them in individual files. Rhythmbox does exactly that, in an iTunes like directory structure (which is customizable, so if you don't like it you can change it)
While I agree with the premise... Making read/writeable by both systems implies using either FAT (bad idea on such large drives) or NTFS. You can't use open source file systems. (There are Windows drivers for ext2, but they suck hard.... )