I am so tired of Microsoft Windows

[BoredSysAdmin]

My next computer will be android, just waiting for the right model to come. Essentially exactly the specs of newly announced Asus Transformer Pad TF701 but with larger display - 11.6 at the least

 

[jinjuku]

Two disturbing trends that I knew would come about:

I see people talking into their phone, it converts to text. On the other end? The phone speaks out loud to the recipient. Make a friggin phone call!

I see people with large tablets with a kickstand keyboard: Purchase a laptop!

 

[jinjuku]

Let me ask you this:

I have customers call up with a machine that may have been compromised or it's just old and needs replaced. Their computer 'professional' calls me up asking what should be backed up. I'm at the point that I've said 'The entire hard drive you idiot'. What is it with a supposed computer pro not backing up the entire HD. So that way it doesn't matter. I'll have access to any thing my particular scenario requires. Plus often the customer is running other important software and data also.

Am I wrong on just getting the entire HD and putting it in an external enclosure or putting copy on the new machine for migration purposes?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I see people with large tablets with a kickstand keyboard: Purchase a laptop!

Thats exactly why I want the device above. Sometimes it's a tablet and sometimes a laptop
I need larger screen and resolution, physical keyboard and mouse to be productive then I connect to remote PCs
Laptop does not sound like a good idea to me. I don't want or need the extra power requirements of x86 or the extra baggage of windows...
As an alternative to clunky windows or more complex linux (yea, it's simple until something breaks) Chromebook is almost there, but it's still pretty limited for my usage

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Let me ask you this:

I have customers call up with a machine that may have been compromised or it's just old and needs replaced. Their computer 'professional' calls me up asking what should be backed up. I'm at the point that I've said 'The entire hard drive you idiot'. What is it with a supposed computer pro not backing up the entire HD. So that way it doesn't matter. I'll have access to any thing my particular scenario requires. Plus often the customer is running other important software and data also.

Am I wrong on just getting the entire HD and putting it in an external enclosure or putting copy on the new machine for migration purposes?

In my company we enforce a simple policy - we don't backup end user desktops. All data must be saved to network drives, sharepoint etc... In case of virus or bad hd we just replace/reflash the pc and do small profile adjustments.

The apps are not important as most are very typical and part of standard images.

If I wanted to be nice to my end user , I'd backup the browser favorites (which are in most cases local to pc) and if so requested, copy over the outlook cached address book (nk2 file)

But this is one specific case, may not be possible to apply to everyone.

 

[Irvrobinson]

I would never use a mac.

That's what I thought two years ago.

 

[Irvrobinson]

Am I wrong on just getting the entire HD and putting it in an external enclosure or putting copy on the new machine for migration purposes?

It's one way, but it's not what I do for myself or friends. Apps get reloaded, so I only backup user files. Lately a lot of people I know are getting Macs with Parallels; I'm not sure what I'd do with that mess.

 

[jinjuku]

If you were helping mom and pop business owner with problem computer? Why wouldn't a computer person catch the entire machine in a backup before migration?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

If you were helping mom and pop business owner with problem computer? Why wouldn't a computer person catch the entire machine in a backup before migration?

for moms and pops pc - yea, full copy is a good idea. most small biz would not have the IT expertise to run things the "corporate" way
It didn't say budget, since it doesn't have to be expensive.
I have a client with two employees. technically only one and the owner
I moved them from small biz windows box to MailStreet hosted exchange email (bes and activesync) and shared storage and backups to a qnap nas which backs up nightly to crashplan (not supported, but works fine)

With recent addition of Netgear UTM they get both SSL VPN and IP SEC Vpn for remote access to office

So you see, all these things are not terrible expensive and even tiny office could afford these

 

[Irvrobinson]

If you were helping mom and pop business owner with problem computer? Why wouldn't a computer person catch the entire machine in a backup before migration?

A mom and pop business? That's different; I was thinking a personal use system, like someone's personal laptop. I've found that many people have a mess on their HDs, and using a new computer purchase as a reason to "clean house" is a good one. Take what you know you want and leave the rest behind. For a business, however, I probably wouldn't take the risk, I agree that I'd back up everything. There could be legal and financial implications, to say the least.

These days with 1TB+ hard drives doing full backups is getting quite time-consuming, which is what makes me leery. That's certainly one of the reasons why many businesses don't back up clients any longer.

 

[Irvrobinson]

I upgraded to Win 8.1 last night. My goodness, what a process for a dot release! My Windows laptop is admittedly a bit antiquated, an HP Intel Centrino2 2.13GHz Core2 Duo system with an HDD, but I think a two hour plus upgrade process is more than one would reasonably expect. Most of MSFT's work appears be in an entirely new security and trust architecture, which also changes the entire sign-on process; it is much more Apple OS-X-like. As for the rest of the 8.1 upgrade, the addition of a Start button, well, there's something like Start button functionality that's been added. I don't like it as much, because rather than a pop-up of the menu hierarchy on the current screen, as in Win 7, it takes you to a dedicated application screen, which I assume was driven by the needs of the Surface product line. So far I haven't noticed any other significant differences between 8.0 and 8.1, so it does leave me wondering why a new security model was slipped in under the guise of a rushed-to-market dot release.

Perhaps I am also beginning to understand Microsoft's strategy. The Surface is the future for them. The PC as we know it is considered a legacy product line. For people who must still live in their PCs, so to speak, for business reasons, I'm thinking Win 7 can be considered in reality an end-of-life software release.

 

[Irvrobinson]

Well, after a day of use I have to give credit where credit is due, and IMO Windows 8.1 is a dramatic advance over 8.0 in some areas. The most noticeable improvement is in performance. I couldn't be more impressed. For most of what I do this old HP Core2 Duo is now indistinguishable in response time from the quad-core 3.1GHz i5 in my Mac. Open Office, which is a bit of a hog on Windows, runs impressively fast even on complex documents. 8.1 breathed life into my old hardware.

I am also impressed that not once during the past day has there been even one instance of a hang-up, slow response time, or any other annoyance for that matter. The user experience is now as flawless as I have experienced with the Mac. After fighting with 8.0 for so long, to the point that I wasn't using my notebook except for running OmniMic, it is such a pleasure to have a usable notebook again.

I have also noticed some nuances in the UI which improve the experience. For example, if you move the pointer to the upper left corner of the screen thumbnails appear of the apps you're running, and just by clicking on the thumbnail you can instantaneously switch between them. Very convenient.

I'm still not a fan of the mixture of touch and pointing-device interfaces in one OS. In this respect Apple got it right with the IOS / OS-X boundary, but Win8.1 is, I think, a step forward. And the performance increase is compelling.

Very nicely done, Microsoft. Very nicely done.