I refuse to upgrade older machines on our network to Win7. We skipped Vista altogether, and are busy replacing the older machines one after the other. I see no point in installing Win7 on a machine that is five years old (yeah I know, long upgrade cycle, let's just blame Vista okay?) and due to be replaced entirely within a few months at most in any case. Some of our Graphics designers and Code monkeys cling to XP though because they have older versions of Photochop and their IDE's that work best with XP, thems the pains of a staggered upgrade plan...
Haha I probably shouldn't tell this story, but what the hell the client is no longer with us. I once had a tech at a client far away from us (a 300mile drive) on the phone who insisted a PC was not accessing the network, and blaming our Linux proxy/gateway on it, he was busy upgrading the PC's in the school to Win7 and for some reason was hard setting the DNS for them in network manager.
I was ssh'd in, and could ping several pc's on the subnet where he was on (the primary school IT lab). Eventually I uploaded that handy network share BSOD for Win7 script that was floating around, this was when it was still new and nifty, no patches for Win7 available yet. I took an educated guess ( was running a tcpdump and tailing squid log to try and figure out where his connection was failing) of the machine he was working on and nuked it. Lucky for me the genius had enabled sharing and left it open.
He was busy explaining to me something about how Linux was the issue, not really sure because I was busy fiddling with the script to get it to work right, when suddenly it went quiet on the other side of the line.
"The PC just bluescreened huh?" I asked, and he just went "Yeah..."
I said "I just nuked it bro. You were connected to the network after all. Now fix that PC's DNS server settings like I told you..." and hung up the phone.
Good times.
They were a lot of hassle and eventually my boss just advised them to get IT support closer to home, just in case you guys think that I cost us a client...
I am sorry if I misunderstood you, but an MCSE cert is not indicative of a tech's ability to upgrade from XP to Win7/Whatever. I noted you mentioned Linux as well, so maybe you meant get yourself certified and then GTFO which I absolutely agree is the best option.
We will not get the great dream phones we all want until the current patent mess is sorted out. As soon as HTC brings out a proper iPhone competitor, Apple will sue the crap out of them, making sure that at least they drag the new product into a mire of fud and drawn out proceedings.
Net result? The customer doesn't get a better device.
I think it has a lot to do with the layers between the user and what the user needs to do. One way of measuring the layers are the amount of clicks (steps) are needed to do a simple task.
Hence I believe my method is valid.
Ease of functionality is also important, hence if you read my follow on post you will see that I am going to include that as well.
Coming from an avid Linux advocate I agree, Linux "help files" are sorely lacking. I submit though that "Linux Help" is much more available than what you might think.
There are also tons of free publications out there of high quality i.e.: Full Circle Mag (Ubuntu Centric) http://fullcirclemagazine.org/ ; PCLinuxOS has their own magazine http://pclosmag.com/ ; there is the Ubuntu Pocket Guide if you are so inclined www.ubuntupocketguide.com/
If you dig a bit you will get the Ubuntu user guide and a google search returns any of a number of hits for Linux user guides.
The problem was historically that these guides were written by geeks, hence not very end user friendly in language use and approach. Only recently did people with a talent for writing understandable and idiot proof documents and books get enough exposure and interest in Linux to produce handy and well written guides.
Linux help is doing a lot better than only a few years ago.
Interface wise Win7 is a lot better than XP in *some* areas, but is seriously beginning to trail behind popular Linux distros. I did a comparison of Win7, Ubuntu, PCLOS, Linux Mint, Kubuntu with 6 everyday tasks and found it wanting a bit.
Given it's performance I think a book such as this will help out some users. I often buy books like these for the techs in our office to help them out, I use Ubuntu full-time myself since I am more involved with the servers atm, but given some confusing task layouts like checking connection info (in XP it used to be three clicks of a mouse, not it is a road-trip) it helps having something to refer to handy.
I guess privacy is an expectation of generations past. People in high places keep pushing for less privacy, and right now the sheep-like public is not not doing near enough to combat that, they eat the cake of "but it is for our own safety!"
Well to qoute some wall scribbles I just ran past: THE CAKE IS A LIE!
I agree, but the popcorn eating non-geek who does not understand these finer nuances will for once have the piracy battle shoved into his face and this time it will not be WB that will be setting the terms for how piracy is being portrayed.
Idea: Hows about patents have an expiry date of a few years. That way the big guns can make their money from the patent for 5 or so years and then the rest can actually USE the tech to benefit society.
Yes and there was actual software available. You could download bumptop until recently. A friend at work showed it to me just this week. Nice but still in early development. There is a video of a demo at TED where the creator showed it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder, it takes pressures to make diamonds, but the resulting material is not under pressure. I think the correct term is under stress?
So the material might be made by using pressure, but the resulting product is not under pressure stress?
I refuse to upgrade older machines on our network to Win7. We skipped Vista altogether, and are busy replacing the older machines one after the other. I see no point in installing Win7 on a machine that is five years old (yeah I know, long upgrade cycle, let's just blame Vista okay?) and due to be replaced entirely within a few months at most in any case. Some of our Graphics designers and Code monkeys cling to XP though because they have older versions of Photochop and their IDE's that work best with XP, thems the pains of a staggered upgrade plan...
Haha I probably shouldn't tell this story, but what the hell the client is no longer with us. I once had a tech at a client far away from us (a 300mile drive) on the phone who insisted a PC was not accessing the network, and blaming our Linux proxy/gateway on it, he was busy upgrading the PC's in the school to Win7 and for some reason was hard setting the DNS for them in network manager.
I was ssh'd in, and could ping several pc's on the subnet where he was on (the primary school IT lab). Eventually I uploaded that handy network share BSOD for Win7 script that was floating around, this was when it was still new and nifty, no patches for Win7 available yet. I took an educated guess ( was running a tcpdump and tailing squid log to try and figure out where his connection was failing) of the machine he was working on and nuked it. Lucky for me the genius had enabled sharing and left it open.
He was busy explaining to me something about how Linux was the issue, not really sure because I was busy fiddling with the script to get it to work right, when suddenly it went quiet on the other side of the line.
"The PC just bluescreened huh?" I asked, and he just went "Yeah..."
I said "I just nuked it bro. You were connected to the network after all. Now fix that PC's DNS server settings like I told you..." and hung up the phone.
Good times.
They were a lot of hassle and eventually my boss just advised them to get IT support closer to home, just in case you guys think that I cost us a client...
I am sorry if I misunderstood you, but an MCSE cert is not indicative of a tech's ability to upgrade from XP to Win7/Whatever. I noted you mentioned Linux as well, so maybe you meant get yourself certified and then GTFO which I absolutely agree is the best option.
Yea I also spied that. XP definitely came after Win2k.
No Klingon warsword?
We will not get the great dream phones we all want until the current patent mess is sorted out. As soon as HTC brings out a proper iPhone competitor, Apple will sue the crap out of them, making sure that at least they drag the new product into a mire of fud and drawn out proceedings.
Net result? The customer doesn't get a better device.
I think it has a lot to do with the layers between the user and what the user needs to do. One way of measuring the layers are the amount of clicks (steps) are needed to do a simple task.
Hence I believe my method is valid.
Ease of functionality is also important, hence if you read my follow on post you will see that I am going to include that as well.
Coming from an avid Linux advocate I agree, Linux "help files" are sorely lacking. I submit though that "Linux Help" is much more available than what you might think.
There are also tons of free publications out there of high quality i.e.: Full Circle Mag (Ubuntu Centric) http://fullcirclemagazine.org/ ; PCLinuxOS has their own magazine http://pclosmag.com/ ; there is the Ubuntu Pocket Guide if you are so inclined www.ubuntupocketguide.com/
If you dig a bit you will get the Ubuntu user guide and a google search returns any of a number of hits for Linux user guides.
Here is a wiki based Ubuntu user guide as well: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Lucid
The problem was historically that these guides were written by geeks, hence not very end user friendly in language use and approach. Only recently did people with a talent for writing understandable and idiot proof documents and books get enough exposure and interest in Linux to produce handy and well written guides.
Linux help is doing a lot better than only a few years ago.
Interface wise Win7 is a lot better than XP in *some* areas, but is seriously beginning to trail behind popular Linux distros. I did a comparison of Win7, Ubuntu, PCLOS, Linux Mint, Kubuntu with 6 everyday tasks and found it wanting a bit.
(Warning shameless blog punt ahead, proceed with caution...)
http://g33q.co.za/2010/06/01/usability-comparison-five-pc-operating-systems-compared/
Given it's performance I think a book such as this will help out some users. I often buy books like these for the techs in our office to help them out, I use Ubuntu full-time myself since I am more involved with the servers atm, but given some confusing task layouts like checking connection info (in XP it used to be three clicks of a mouse, not it is a road-trip) it helps having something to refer to handy.
At least they are working on finding bugs. The fact that they _found_ bugs shows that they are doing a thorough job.
This is A GOOD THING (TM)
Someone please mod this informative. Thanks for the link.
I guess privacy is an expectation of generations past. People in high places keep pushing for less privacy, and right now the sheep-like public is not not doing near enough to combat that, they eat the cake of "but it is for our own safety!"
Well to qoute some wall scribbles I just ran past: THE CAKE IS A LIE!
To wit, you can watch youtube in HTML5 for those who don't know already.
Linky: http://www.youtube.com/html5
I would like to see someone run a comparative benchmark on that puppy...
Yep. "Simplest tools" is not exactly true is it...
I agree, but the popcorn eating non-geek who does not understand these finer nuances will for once have the piracy battle shoved into his face and this time it will not be WB that will be setting the terms for how piracy is being portrayed.
Really, I hope this turns into one of those messy public court snafu's that really grab public attention and cause a real raucus.
This can only benefit from all the publicity it can generate.
Idea: Hows about patents have an expiry date of a few years. That way the big guns can make their money from the patent for 5 or so years and then the rest can actually USE the tech to benefit society.
I guess the Global Village metaphor for the world we live in is apt after all. You have the haves, and the have nots.
I don't think we will ever have a global economy where everything is available to everyone everywhere.
Axe: No I am not dead, I just smell funny.
Track? Loud yes, thinking no.
I for one welcome our new netbook killing overlords.
I thought that googlemail would automatically change to gmail. At least that is how I remember it, unless I mmisunderstood the summary...
Yes and there was actual software available. You could download bumptop until recently. A friend at work showed it to me just this week. Nice but still in early development. There is a video of a demo at TED where the creator showed it.
It's a _Linux_ release party, the few that are there will probably be secretly pining after some unattainable dude or be way smart.