[OT - IT] hard drive in death throws

[Carwash]

Macs are as above but far worse.

In what sense? After all, the guts of the Mac OS are an open-source BSD fork. It doesn't get much less proprietary than that! Apple just made a bunch of modifications to it (and released them) and then slapped their own GUI on top of it.

Linux is showing real promise and has come a long way, but has so far failed to deliver the promise.

I think that depends very much on your point of view. But it's true that the GUI on most Linux distributions is poorly designed - but this is mainly because the designers take their cue from Windows rather than current usability research. Or even established usability research for that matter - to look at Ubuntu you'd think they'd never heard of Fitts' Law!

 

[peanut]

You keep using this word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

what does OS mean to you carwash ???


it means operating system to the rest of us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

 

[domtyler]

I have a feeling that the OS as we know it is about to be superseded in any case, so these types of arguments will soon be redundant.

 

[yello]

you can get a good laptop with Windows Vista for under £400.

Yes, you can buy one but at that price it won't be able to run anything at something like an acceptable speed! It's Vista that made me suss out the Linux alternatives. I don't want to spend a fortune in memory/hardware upgrades just to run a bloated OS!

Btw, SpinRite is still running... I'm anticipating it to complete in around 5 days!!

 

[Carwash]

what does OS mean to you carwash ???

it means operating system to the rest of us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

Er, yes... was there a point to that comment?

 

[marinyork]

Yes, you can buy one but at that price it won't be able to run anything at something like an acceptable speed! It's Vista that made me suss out the Linux alternatives. I don't want to spend a fortune in memory/hardware upgrades just to run a bloated OS!

Btw, SpinRite is still running... I'm anticipating it to complete in around 5 days!!

Won't be true forever though. Intel just need to ditch core and I think this will help a lot, but we're talking well into 2009 (and beyond for affordability).

 

[Carwash]

I have a feeling that the OS as we know it is about to be superseded in any case, so these types of arguments will soon be redundant.

If you mean web apps and all that malarky then you may well be right; the OS you're running may become much less relevant for most everyday things.

 

[red_tom]

If space on the partition is an issue, can you boot off the CD, mount a USB drive, then run dd_rescue but pipe the image to the external drive rather than your knackered drive?

This might help as well. http://www.debianadmin.com/recover-data-from-a-damaged-hard-disk-using-dd_rhelp.html

On a mac. Boot holding T, plug into another mac, retrieve files. Win.

 

[Danny]

Yes, you can buy one but at that price it won't be able to run anything at something like an acceptable speed! It's Vista that made me suss out the Linux alternatives. I don't want to spend a fortune in memory/hardware upgrades just to run a bloated OS!

You can get a Dell Inspiron with 2gb memory for £369, which I am sure will run straight out of the box.

I don't much like Microsoft, and hate Dell, as companies but the reality is that they have turned computers into simple commodities which don't require users to spend a lot of time fiddling with settings or finding drivers which will work with their version of the OS.

Yeah I know there were problems when Vista was first launched, as there were with XP, and 98, but these have now been overcome.

 

[yello]

If space on the partition is an issue, can you boot off the CD, mount a USB drive, then run dd_rescue but pipe the image to the external drive rather than your knackered drive?

Yes, that's one way (you don't need to pipe the output btw, you can specify a path to the mounted drive partition). You can also send it to a network address using SSH.

To be honest, I'll probably not bother (except maybe for the hell of it!) as I've reloaded and rebuilt (where necessary) all of my data from backups onto an old laptop. I'll just get a new drive for my laptop, reload Ubuntu and move the data back.

 

[marinyork]

You can get a Dell Inspiron with 2gb memory for £369, which I am sure will run straight out of the box.

I don't much like Microsoft, and hate Dell, as companies but the reality is that they have turned computers into simple commodities which don't require users to spend a lot of time fiddling with settings or finding drivers which will work with their version of the OS.

Yeah I know there were problems when Vista was first launched, as there were with XP, and 98, but these have now been overcome.

Not so sure on that one. The X3100s are an improvement on the original Dell vista inbuilt cards but I feel it'll be a bit longer before they run "well" like people say i.e. better graphics cards and waiting for nehalem which will slaughter core. I take your point though. It won't be the case of them running rubbish for that much longer.

 

[peanut]

I think by the time Longhorn is ready it will be redundant.

I think there is a desperate need to completely rethink the personal computer from scratch.It needs to be fully integrated with every other piece of digital technology in our lives
At the moment we are simply progressing what we already have and that technology is now 20+ years old.

We have amazing technology available right now and we are not fully utilizing it because we are stuck with antiquated hardware and incredibly crude ,antiquated and complicated software.

We should be thinking 3 dimentionaly not 2d ,....like The Minority Report.

Apple's Iphone interface is a step in the right direction

I can see a time when we will wear a digital interface on our arm like the predator and it will interface wirelessly with everything , 3D displays, our cars, our home appliances, screens/monitors everywhere we go. Constantly updating us with what we need ,immediately available for information. Nothing stored on us or in our digital interface gadget but stored elsewhere on servers and we access it like we do our ISP's but it will all be free 24/7
No more keyboards just spoken word and touchscreens

 

[red_tom]

I think by the time Longhorn is ready it will be redundant.

You were right.

 

[barq]

Oops didn't notice the OS
However it makes no difference to Ghost it will still clone whatever is on the drive to another drive.

Probably not relevent now, but just for future reference... Ghost isn't file system agnostic. Some versions of Ghost read ext3 as a broken file system (NTFS or FAT I can't remember) and tries to "fix" it. I suspect support for Reiserfs is even worse.

 

[Carwash]

I suspect support for Reiserfs is even worse.

OT: What's become of ReiserFS now that he's started serving his sentence?