Horribly OT - PC Advice

[Andy Hall]

If they bundle Windows, that is the case...... :-)

[Bob Eager]

Lats time they bundled nothing at all...and the time before..and the time before. I fear it's changed, though..

[Stuart Noble]

Isn't there some utility with a big numpty button saying, "create bootable cd" to include OS, installed updates, address book, mail folders and my docs? Slipstreaming and the rest are all too complicated for the type of user that would benefit most.

[Steve Firth]

Not really. It's possible to create sites that appear essentially the same across a wide range of browsers almost entirely in as HTML. Yes the user has the ability to override any element of the display but that that's not a bad thing and not default behaviour.

More sensibly, a good designer can create a PHP/CSS site that will look identical or as close as matters across non-broken browsers, taking into account known browser/platform peculiarities.

I think your thinking about web design is rooted in Ye Olde Ages.

[Steve Firth]

Untrue for many of us, there are still non Monopoly suppliers taking a fresh look at where the leading edge is and should be. FWIW, RISCOS was never at any leading edge it was a Johnny come Lately that failed. We had a few RISCOS advocates at a company I worked at, and bless them they all thought RISCOS was terribly new just because it was the the first experience they had with a GUI, overlooking the fact that there had been GUIs and better developed GUIs long before RISCOS and unsurprisingly those same GUIs continue to flourish long after RISCOS has died the death.

[Grunff]

Your knowledge of the subject is simply not sufficient to have a meaningful conversation about it.

[Paul Herber]

Bear in mind that it becomes increasingly more difficult (besides the decreasing financial rewards) to maintain old software versions and compatability. At what point does a software vendor stop supporting W98 and ME, remember that to be able to support these OSs you need one or more boxes, maybe more with different configurations. It may not be easy now to get boxes with the original W2000 installation. If you are creating a device driver, firewall or other software with a very close relation to the OS then the exact configuration can be very important.

I create and sell Visio addons and stencils. I can still create stencils for Visio 5 but having had only a handful of sales for Visio

5 so far this year it's no longer worth my while creating V5 versions for new stencils. Occasionaly I get a request for a Visio 4 version. Regretfully, I have to reply that I can't produce V4 versions and it's not worth doing so: I would need to buy (secondhand) an appropriate version of Visio, a new box on which to install it, physical space for it etc, etc.

[Andy Hall]

So if they did this time, it would still be asymptotic to nothing at all ;-)

[Mike Halmarack]

I have friends who are stuck in a cul-de-sac with Acorn computers. Some of them will never forgive me for moving on to PC use. These Acorn users seem to spend a lot of time desperately trying to construct rational arguments as to why it's more intelligent to stick with their obsolete technology, rather than to adopt "inferior" systems. It's like a religion with them and interestingly a lot of them are practicing Christians, which is also quite an exclusive group too. John Cartmell isn't a Christian though, he's a "Scientist". Different banner, same shaky zealotry.

[Bob Eager]

What I do is make a floppy (could be a CD, but a floppy was quicker to debug) that was a bootable, network capable DOS. Boot from that and use DriveImage to image the hard disk to a server.

Then make a bootable CD containing the image and a copy of DriveImage. Good basic, easy recovery CD.

[Grunff]

Yes, I've met a few of them.

I've used RISC OS at various points in time, and while I appreciate the exposure I've had to it, it isn't something I'd be tempted to look at now.

[Stuart Noble]

The basic process is described ad nauseum on the web but it's just too fiddly for novices. Download this, get hold of that etc. I can't believe there isn't a user friendly utility that can put the essentials on a bootable cd, and give you options as to what else it should include.

[Bob Eager]

In my case it's my standard CD burning program. Copy the hard drive image, the floppy image and the utility program all to the drive letter assigned to the burner. Hit the Bootable button and hit Finalize. That's it!

[Colin Wilson]

I was always in awe of the Chess program in 1k for the ZX81 that actually played a game against you.

[Colin Wilson]

While I don`t have a bootable recovery disc for mine, I do keep my emergency CD updated regularly with pretty much everything I list on my site for keeping spyware and other assorted malware at bay.

One thing you end up doing by "flattening" a system to a bare install again is to leave yourself open to the myriad of hacks patched since the recovery CD was created.

In your friends case, did you simply reinstall and leave him to it, or did you "harden" it a little to give him slightly more than a cat in hells' chance of getting the patches before he got re-hacked ?

[John Rumm]

A "games machine" will run a tiny subset of the games that are available. Many genres of game are simply not represented on them. Hence if you want to run a large number of particular games you need a recent PC with Win2K or later. End of discussion.

I would say this is true for any platform that is currently be developed aggressively. Supporting old software is a expensive process for any developer. Unless the new users are prepared to pay ever increasing prices for their software to support this activity, or existing users are prepared to pay for maintenance, then this is the way is has to be (unless you can get the developers working for nothing).

If you want the productivity gains to be had from the latest version of Photoshop and you currently run Win98, then you buy new hardware and OS. The cost of the hardware and OS is irrelevant anyway when you compare it to the thousands of man hours that you have invested in learning to get the best from the application, and the hours of productivity you can gain by being able to exploit the most recent developments. Sometimes it really is only the result that matters and not how you get there.

i.e. it is not at all comparable unless you fix the criteria first...

Yes and?

[John Rumm]

The leading edge is defined by a vast legion of hardware and software developers, most of whome have nothing to do with the usual suspects.

You buy yorself a copy "Doom Ultra 3D Son of the Sequal Part II", and find it gets a frame rate of 3 fps and other online players keep fragging you before you even see them move. Is this the fault of a monopolist? Do you need a new OS to boost performance, quite possibly no. Do you need Intel to sell you a better chip? probably not, there are better alternatives for many gamers. Need a lower ping DSL connection? or a better video card, do you need to go to Microsoft for them? Doubt it.

[John Cartmell]

A web site in a public forum needs to be seen by those with the commonest, latest, fastest, slowest machines across a range of platforms and a range of browsers AND for those who have set up their systems to cope with a range of visual disabilities - including partially sighted and blind AND for those excluding facilities that they consider unnecessary and/or insecure AND those accessing from public/company machines with other restrictions AND those using mobile phone or similar technology AND much more.

Anyone who says they design a web site to look the same or similar across the range don't know what they are doing. A designer who promises that for a client is misleading them.

[John Rumm]

Look at either Ghost or a virtualisation program then.

With ghost you can image a complete machine to a file. When you want to restore to that known state, boot off the ghost CD and image the drive from the file. That will deal with all user induced goofs, and all but the most hardcore malware that bungs root kits into writeable bits of flash on your motherboard.

If you want bombproof "go back to where I came from" technology, then VMWare or one of the other technologies will do it.

[John Cartmell]

Then close your eyes. Most of the best of current computer development is based on the sort of stuff developed by Acorn - not to mention the PVR technology.