"you can just plug in a USB hard drive and COPY THE FILES"
One problem is that Windows spews user files all over the place. It still takes time to go through and find the files you are trying to backup. Windows will not let you copy the entire contents of the main hard drive since you do not have permission to access certain files, so it stops. These two issues make it annoying to find the files you are trying to backup.
I do agree with you that MS Backup works decently and there are many other possibilities.
I agree that it is a royal pain to backup a Windows system. All the user files are thrown around all over the place like mail messages being stored in the Program Files folder, which is where applications are supposed to go. You could blame it on the software, but the OS should enforce the rules about where the user files should go, namely into the user's folder. To make matters worse, Windows won't let you copy some files, so just doing a drag and drop copy of the entire contents of a main hard disk will fail - it tells you you don't have access to certain files and stops. (By the way, Mac OS X and Linux/Unix do not have this problem - all user files are in a single folder, so if you back up that folder, all of your stuff is guaranteed to be copied. This also makes upgrading a system very easy to do.)
Now that I have agreed with you about backing up being hard, I will tell you what I know. A guy in my lab said that there is a utility called Backup that ships with Windows XP Professional. I haven't used it, but he says that it works well enough for backing up files and even has an incremental feature. So, I would suggest looking into that utility.
Slightly off topic, but in line with some of the above posts, I would mention that there are very easy ways to synchronize the iTunes music folder between multiple machines running OS X (this works for other folders, but I use it for this and the OP mentioned music particularly). This makes a good backup and it syncs both ways. You just have to be careful to run it the right way if you use both machines.
Or better yet, something that paints the image directly onto the rods and cones in our eyes.
Actually, that would result in incredibly low resolution. The resolution of the human eye is somewhere around 512by512. The reason you can make out so much detail in what you see is because the eyes are constantly moving back and forth and integrating all the knowledge together. It requires the brain the know how the eyes are moving along with what it is seeing. There is also a huge amount of assumed knowledge that your brain uses to fill in the gaps.
As a "crazy American" who has lived overseas, I get completely confused by this and never can remember how I am supposed to write it when I sign documents.
As for sorting in a list, I think dd/mm/yy would be really confusing, you'd end up with the following list: 10/11/03 11/11/01 12/11/06 13/11/97
Since I'm cunfused about how to write it anyway, on the computer, I write the date as yyyy/mm/dd, which will actually sort to a chronological list. It's confusing to others who see it, but it's my documents, so at worst it will confuse people who shouldn't be looking at them anyway.
Interesting side note about sorting on computers. Some OSes will actually ignore the leading 0 and treat the number as a whole number, while some don't. Compare the two following lists: 8.jpg 9.jpg 10.jpg 11.jpg
or 10.jpg 11.jpg 8.jpg 9.jpg The second list is comparing only the first number while the first looks at the whole number and then compares it.
This is why the Mac originally did not use extensions. They used meta data in the file to identify what kind of file it is to the OS. Then the icon would display what kind of file it is to the user. OS X still uses this, but can also associate the file based on extension so it knows what to do with files from the internet.
In Windows and OS X, there is an option to not show what the extension is. Not necessarily a good idea, particularly if you know what you're doing. For someone who doesn't know about computers, this is tricky - on one hand, they will ignore many messages warning them that this file might be dangerous and on the other hand, they shouldn't be opening many of these files that they randomly downloaded from the internet.
If you are a stockholder you are in for a wild ride for the next couple of years. Unlike a real rollcoaster, I would get sick from all the ups and downs!
Yeah, but I don't tend to get sick on the rollercoasters that only go down....
Yes, OS X has dd, so that also works for copying an entire disk bit for bit. But, there are many other uses in Carbon Copy, like the ability to sync, so it only copies changed files. Also, Carbon Copy Cloner is donationware and only $5.
From the developers website (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html):
CCC is considered donation-ware (uncrippled shareware). I worked hard developing CCC and its methodology and documenting it on the internet for the rest of the Mac OS X community. If you find CCC indispensable, please consider making a donation. Please note that if you are using CCC for an educational institution, you should NOT donate to Bombich Software. My heart is in Education and all software that I write shall always be free to Education.
To 'Ghost' a disk to another, just use Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html). It will make an exact bootable copy of your hard disk with all applications and settings. It can even make a disk image out of it so you can put it on the network and install from there. It even has an option to synchronize one disk to another.
I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my entire desktop and laptop drives to an external hard drive. This works very well and if something happens, I can simply boot from the external drive and everything is exactly as I had it on the other disk. I've tested it a few times and everything worked exactly as expected. So, the ghosting software you talk about is very easy to do on Macs, unless I am missing some other aspect of what you want to do.
Or, you could use rsync (installed by default) to sync two computers over the network. I use this to sync various things on my laptop and desktop.
Yes, you are right on both accounts - I wasn't thinking when I typed it and got the negative siign and I use renice. I actually type: "renice 19 process_id" to make it more nice (positive number). Negative numbers are less nice.
I use it on my own system all the time. I've got a dual processor Mac, but once in a while I have too many things running in the background (encoding a movie, analyzing my data in Matlab, etc) and want to keep manipulating some images in the foreground, so I set Quicktime and Matlab and whatever else to -19 priority. They still finish, but when I need the processor to open/close/resize/apply a filter to my image, it takes it and then lets the rest work on the past stuff. I find that it can greatly increase the amount I get done in a day and makes my Mac feel as fast as it is when I'm not doing anything else.
I also tend to increase the priority on httpd processes on the same Mac since I host my website from it. It doesn't take much CPU time, but when a request comes in, I want it to respond as quickly as possible, so if I'm doing a lot, it will give priority to it.
Also, Boinc (the grid client for distributed computing) always sets all the jobs to -19 when they are run. I barely even notice if they are running in the background.
8. What if I miss a show? Can I get VHS tapes, DVDs or electronic copies (via streaming or download) of FOX Network Primetime Shows sent to me?
ANSWER: The FOX Network does not directly send out VHS tapes, DVDs or electronic copies of any of shows, specials or movies that currently air on the Network, but you may be able to catch a re-run or buy an earlier season of your favorite show on VHS or DVD from an online store or at your local retailer. Especially on a go-forward basis, you may have additional options for acquiring an electronic copy of a missed show either from your cable or satellite operator or from an online store.
Also, you could find a co-worker, friend, family or neighbor who may have made an analog tape or a digital copy (on a DVD or DVR) of the show off-the-air so they could watch it later. You could watch it with them (go on, invite yourself over!) or maybe they will let you borrow their tape or DVD if you promise to return it! Programs that have been recorded off the air cannot be sold or rented or forwarded to you via the internet without authorization from their copyright owner, so don't be fooled if someone offers to sell or rent you a copy they've made - it's an illegal transaction.
From what Fox says, it is legal to lend a copy to a friend, but not to sell or rent.
MS has serious pressure from businesses to get Vista out in 2006. In 2002, they started the Software Assurance Program that allowed all updates to their software for three years. Many companies signed up in 2003 since they assumed the next generation OS and another Office update would be released by then. Here's an article explaining more about it: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1619960,00.as p
It's coming close to the end of 2006 and if Vista is not shipped before, these businesses are going to be quite angry. MS has major pressure to get Vista out this year and as such, quality is quite possibly going to be lacking at time runs out.....
For the most part it works great. Once in a while there are some issues, but I can generally help them out from wherever I am, as long as I have access to the internet. I tried for the first three months to use Windows, but I couldn't keep the machines running more than 2 weeks before they were bombarded with popups and other spyware. With Linux, I was able to prevent them from running certain apps. I have it setup so they can mess with whatever settings they want, but each night, the settings are reset while keeping (and backing up) their documents. The prevents them from getting the systems in an unusable configuration. Linux can take snapshots of the screen and save it to the hard disk so the program coordinator can keep an eye on what they are doing. There was no way any of this could be done in Windows. This system has been running for about 1.5 years and pretty much the only big things I do anymore are update the machines (mainly just to get OpenOffice 2 and the new versions of Firefox) and replace broken hardware. These computers are upwards of 7 years old, so components tend to break once in a while.
The kids use Windows at school and Linux at the tutoring program and they don't seem to care much about it. It took them about a week or two to figure things out, but now they don't notice at all. I guess they do notice one thing - they aren't allowed to run any chat program, but that is the directors choice.
I went through the list and couldn't find anything that OSX doesn't already have. Keep in mind that OSX (10.4) was released in April 2005. Vista seems to be at least 2 years behind and it's still not shipping yet....
His top ten reasons to get Vista compared to OSX (10.4): 1. Security, security, security: Yeah, I've got that in OSX. 2. Internet Explorer 7: "IE gets a much-needed, Firefox-inspired makeover." Yeah, I've got Firefox in OSX, but I much prefer Safari anyway. 3. Righteous eye candy: Yeah, I've got that in OSX. 4. Desktop search: Yeah, I've got that in OSX. 5. Better updates: "Vista does away with using Internet Explorer to access Windows Update, instead utilizing a new application to handle the chore of keeping your system patched and up-to-date." Yeah, I've got a separate app to deal with updates in OSX. 6. More media: Yeah, I've got plenty of media in OSX - Macs have always dominated this market. 7. Parental controls: Yeah, I've got that in OSX. 8. Better backups: Yeah, I've got that in OSX. I've been using Apple's Backup and also rsync to backup to an external computer for my essential stuff. 9. Peer-to-peer collaboration: Yeah, I've got that in OSX - Bonjour comes to mind. 10. Quick setup: Beta code alert: Hmm, the setup time might beat OSX.
You'll likely want to put Windows (Fat32) as the first partition since it has issues booting up from a different partition. OS X can boot from anywhere, so you'd put the HFS+ partition second. Assuming the Intel Macs support Windows, then this should work fine.
In Windows, you'll see only a C drive and will not be able to access the OS X partition because Windows can't handle any file system other than it's own native format. When you boot into OS X, you'll see the Mac partition as well as the Windows partition with read and write access.
I'm more hoping for a solution like WINE or VM/Ware that will let me run OS X and boot Windows inside of it for the one application that I actually would need from it.
Because you can....and trying out different ways to cool down a computer may one day lead to a better solution than noisy fans. I just ran across another method people are trying to cool down graphics chips using Liquid Metal.
Depends on where you get your Windows installer from. I just wasted a weekend messing with the partition tables in Knoppix because the Windows installer from IBM would only restore it to factory settings and did not let you customize the partition tables or anything like that. You put the disk in and it does it's thing. Not that the MS Windows disks give you many other options though.
Yes, this is from a different vendor, but it is still part of the Microsoft experience and this one really irritated me. MS could make vendors do it a certain way, but they choose to let them mess with the user experience.
The Windows installer is pathetic when you compare it to something like the Fedora installer though. Fedora gives you many choices, but the defaults are pretty good and there is a good explaination for beginner users. You could argue that this is because the Fedora installer is only 6 months old while the Windows XP installer is almost 5 years old (Yes, Windows XP was released in 2001 - 5 years ago), but that would be pathetic to justify it based on MS not being able to release an OS update.
I've had a series of Mac's that go back to a 7300. The 7300 is currently in storage with Panther installed on it. It works fine with it, but was too slow. I used it as a web server for a couple years, but got a new G5 that took it's place. In the mean time, I had an iBook. Only two things went wrong with it. One was that the firewire port broke - I took it in and they fixed it within three days under the one year warranty. Next, I dropped it. The only thing that broke was the latch, but it was after the warranty expired so I didn't take it in. After two years of owning that, I bought a PowerBook. Only had one issue with it, which also was that I dropped it. This messed up the video card, so I took it in and, under Applecare, they replaced the video card and logic board (definitely made the Applecare worth the money). It's been working fine since then, although the battery is down to about an hour runtime after 2.5 years. I'll probably buy a new battery soon....
You should try Safari on the Mac and see if that is what you are looking for. I've been using it for several months and barely ever go to the front page of any websites anymore. Safari tells me how many articles I have not looked at from groups of RSS feeds and when I click on it, it opens it. It's quite easy to use and does what I expect. Very simple and it saves me time.
Slashdot Mirror
One problem is that Windows spews user files all over the place. It still takes time to go through and find the files you are trying to backup. Windows will not let you copy the entire contents of the main hard drive since you do not have permission to access certain files, so it stops. These two issues make it annoying to find the files you are trying to backup.
I do agree with you that MS Backup works decently and there are many other possibilities.
Now that I have agreed with you about backing up being hard, I will tell you what I know. A guy in my lab said that there is a utility called Backup that ships with Windows XP Professional. I haven't used it, but he says that it works well enough for backing up files and even has an incremental feature. So, I would suggest looking into that utility.
Slightly off topic, but in line with some of the above posts, I would mention that there are very easy ways to synchronize the iTunes music folder between multiple machines running OS X (this works for other folders, but I use it for this and the OP mentioned music particularly). This makes a good backup and it syncs both ways. You just have to be careful to run it the right way if you use both machines.
copy music to the current machine:copy music to the other machine:
Actually, that would result in incredibly low resolution. The resolution of the human eye is somewhere around 512by512. The reason you can make out so much detail in what you see is because the eyes are constantly moving back and forth and integrating all the knowledge together. It requires the brain the know how the eyes are moving along with what it is seeing. There is also a huge amount of assumed knowledge that your brain uses to fill in the gaps.
As a "crazy American" who has lived overseas, I get completely confused by this and never can remember how I am supposed to write it when I sign documents.
As for sorting in a list, I think dd/mm/yy would be really confusing, you'd end up with the following list:
10/11/03
11/11/01
12/11/06
13/11/97
Since I'm cunfused about how to write it anyway, on the computer, I write the date as yyyy/mm/dd, which will actually sort to a chronological list. It's confusing to others who see it, but it's my documents, so at worst it will confuse people who shouldn't be looking at them anyway.
Interesting side note about sorting on computers. Some OSes will actually ignore the leading 0 and treat the number as a whole number, while some don't. Compare the two following lists:
8.jpg
9.jpg
10.jpg
11.jpg
or
10.jpg
11.jpg
8.jpg
9.jpg
The second list is comparing only the first number while the first looks at the whole number and then compares it.
I would love for it to even get close to that point....
This is why the Mac originally did not use extensions. They used meta data in the file to identify what kind of file it is to the OS. Then the icon would display what kind of file it is to the user. OS X still uses this, but can also associate the file based on extension so it knows what to do with files from the internet.
In Windows and OS X, there is an option to not show what the extension is. Not necessarily a good idea, particularly if you know what you're doing. For someone who doesn't know about computers, this is tricky - on one hand, they will ignore many messages warning them that this file might be dangerous and on the other hand, they shouldn't be opening many of these files that they randomly downloaded from the internet.
Yeah, but I don't tend to get sick on the rollercoasters that only go down....
From the developers website (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html):
Here's 14 reasons to buy a Mac:
http://www.apple.com/getamac/
One definite reason would be that you can either run OS X or Windows or Linux - that seems like a lot more choice than only being able to run Windows.
To 'Ghost' a disk to another, just use Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html). It will make an exact bootable copy of your hard disk with all applications and settings. It can even make a disk image out of it so you can put it on the network and install from there. It even has an option to synchronize one disk to another.
I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my entire desktop and laptop drives to an external hard drive. This works very well and if something happens, I can simply boot from the external drive and everything is exactly as I had it on the other disk. I've tested it a few times and everything worked exactly as expected. So, the ghosting software you talk about is very easy to do on Macs, unless I am missing some other aspect of what you want to do.
Or, you could use rsync (installed by default) to sync two computers over the network. I use this to sync various things on my laptop and desktop.
Yes, you are right on both accounts - I wasn't thinking when I typed it and got the negative siign and I use renice. I actually type: "renice 19 process_id" to make it more nice (positive number). Negative numbers are less nice.
It does come with "OS X" by default.
I use it on my own system all the time. I've got a dual processor Mac, but once in a while I have too many things running in the background (encoding a movie, analyzing my data in Matlab, etc) and want to keep manipulating some images in the foreground, so I set Quicktime and Matlab and whatever else to -19 priority. They still finish, but when I need the processor to open/close/resize/apply a filter to my image, it takes it and then lets the rest work on the past stuff. I find that it can greatly increase the amount I get done in a day and makes my Mac feel as fast as it is when I'm not doing anything else.
I also tend to increase the priority on httpd processes on the same Mac since I host my website from it. It doesn't take much CPU time, but when a request comes in, I want it to respond as quickly as possible, so if I'm doing a lot, it will give priority to it.
Also, Boinc (the grid client for distributed computing) always sets all the jobs to -19 when they are run. I barely even notice if they are running in the background.
From what Fox says, it is legal to lend a copy to a friend, but not to sell or rent.
Why? Are you writing one?
Sorry to respond to my own post, but MS Office is under the same pressure to be released to businesses as Vista is. http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Office+2007+to+be+la te%2C+too/2100-1012_3-6053504.html
I have no doubt that Vista and Office will be released to businesses in 2006 in some form or another.
MS has serious pressure from businesses to get Vista out in 2006. In 2002, they started the Software Assurance Program that allowed all updates to their software for three years. Many companies signed up in 2003 since they assumed the next generation OS and another Office update would be released by then. Here's an article explaining more about it: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1619960,00.as p
It's coming close to the end of 2006 and if Vista is not shipped before, these businesses are going to be quite angry. MS has major pressure to get Vista out this year and as such, quality is quite possibly going to be lacking at time runs out.....
I've been using it on OS X and it seems faster than previous versions. Renders everything just fine. I'll be looking forward to the final version.
Previously, I'd favored Safari over Firefox, but this version might start to change my mind, unless Apple comes out with Safari 3....
At a nonprofit afterschool tutoring program, I have setup the computers running Fedora Core 2,3,&4.
http://asianyouthservices.org/computers.html
For the most part it works great. Once in a while there are some issues, but I can generally help them out from wherever I am, as long as I have access to the internet. I tried for the first three months to use Windows, but I couldn't keep the machines running more than 2 weeks before they were bombarded with popups and other spyware. With Linux, I was able to prevent them from running certain apps. I have it setup so they can mess with whatever settings they want, but each night, the settings are reset while keeping (and backing up) their documents. The prevents them from getting the systems in an unusable configuration. Linux can take snapshots of the screen and save it to the hard disk so the program coordinator can keep an eye on what they are doing. There was no way any of this could be done in Windows. This system has been running for about 1.5 years and pretty much the only big things I do anymore are update the machines (mainly just to get OpenOffice 2 and the new versions of Firefox) and replace broken hardware. These computers are upwards of 7 years old, so components tend to break once in a while.
The kids use Windows at school and Linux at the tutoring program and they don't seem to care much about it. It took them about a week or two to figure things out, but now they don't notice at all. I guess they do notice one thing - they aren't allowed to run any chat program, but that is the directors choice.
I would highly suggest giving Linux a try.
I have setup the computers running Fedora Core 2,3,&4 at a tutoring program.
http://asianyouthservices.org/computers.html
I agree that Linux is a great choice. I choose Fedora cause it was so easy to install and update.
I went through the list and couldn't find anything that OSX doesn't already have. Keep in mind that OSX (10.4) was released in April 2005. Vista seems to be at least 2 years behind and it's still not shipping yet....
- TheRealVista1_Fixed.mov- TheRealVista2.mov- TheRealVista3.mp4
His top ten reasons to get Vista compared to OSX (10.4):
1. Security, security, security: Yeah, I've got that in OSX.
2. Internet Explorer 7: "IE gets a much-needed, Firefox-inspired makeover." Yeah, I've got Firefox in OSX, but I much prefer Safari anyway.
3. Righteous eye candy: Yeah, I've got that in OSX.
4. Desktop search: Yeah, I've got that in OSX.
5. Better updates: "Vista does away with using Internet Explorer to access Windows Update, instead utilizing a new application to handle the chore of keeping your system patched and up-to-date." Yeah, I've got a separate app to deal with updates in OSX.
6. More media: Yeah, I've got plenty of media in OSX - Macs have always dominated this market.
7. Parental controls: Yeah, I've got that in OSX.
8. Better backups: Yeah, I've got that in OSX. I've been using Apple's Backup and also rsync to backup to an external computer for my essential stuff.
9. Peer-to-peer collaboration: Yeah, I've got that in OSX - Bonjour comes to mind.
10. Quick setup: Beta code alert: Hmm, the setup time might beat OSX.
Check out these three movies to see a shipping version of Vista:
http://smartdelivery.watchmactv.com/mactv/mp4/102
http://smartdelivery.watchmactv.com/mactv/mp4/103
http://smartdelivery.watchmactv.com/mactv/mp4/105
You'll likely want to put Windows (Fat32) as the first partition since it has issues booting up from a different partition. OS X can boot from anywhere, so you'd put the HFS+ partition second. Assuming the Intel Macs support Windows, then this should work fine.
In Windows, you'll see only a C drive and will not be able to access the OS X partition because Windows can't handle any file system other than it's own native format. When you boot into OS X, you'll see the Mac partition as well as the Windows partition with read and write access.
I'm more hoping for a solution like WINE or VM/Ware that will let me run OS X and boot Windows inside of it for the one application that I actually would need from it.
Because you can....and trying out different ways to cool down a computer may one day lead to a better solution than noisy fans. I just ran across another method people are trying to cool down graphics chips using Liquid Metal.
Depends on where you get your Windows installer from. I just wasted a weekend messing with the partition tables in Knoppix because the Windows installer from IBM would only restore it to factory settings and did not let you customize the partition tables or anything like that. You put the disk in and it does it's thing. Not that the MS Windows disks give you many other options though.
Yes, this is from a different vendor, but it is still part of the Microsoft experience and this one really irritated me. MS could make vendors do it a certain way, but they choose to let them mess with the user experience.
The Windows installer is pathetic when you compare it to something like the Fedora installer though. Fedora gives you many choices, but the defaults are pretty good and there is a good explaination for beginner users. You could argue that this is because the Fedora installer is only 6 months old while the Windows XP installer is almost 5 years old (Yes, Windows XP was released in 2001 - 5 years ago), but that would be pathetic to justify it based on MS not being able to release an OS update.
I've had a series of Mac's that go back to a 7300. The 7300 is currently in storage with Panther installed on it. It works fine with it, but was too slow. I used it as a web server for a couple years, but got a new G5 that took it's place. In the mean time, I had an iBook. Only two things went wrong with it. One was that the firewire port broke - I took it in and they fixed it within three days under the one year warranty. Next, I dropped it. The only thing that broke was the latch, but it was after the warranty expired so I didn't take it in. After two years of owning that, I bought a PowerBook. Only had one issue with it, which also was that I dropped it. This messed up the video card, so I took it in and, under Applecare, they replaced the video card and logic board (definitely made the Applecare worth the money). It's been working fine since then, although the battery is down to about an hour runtime after 2.5 years. I'll probably buy a new battery soon....
You should try Safari on the Mac and see if that is what you are looking for. I've been using it for several months and barely ever go to the front page of any websites anymore. Safari tells me how many articles I have not looked at from groups of RSS feeds and when I click on it, it opens it. It's quite easy to use and does what I expect. Very simple and it saves me time.