Posts by Wayne Stallwood

Help a hack: What's in your ultimate Windows XP migration toolkit?

Golden Image

I'd be making and debugging and syspreping a golden image with all their software preconfigured before I left. This means you don't get rushed on the config/tuning and all the machines are configured in exactly the same way, you can also patch it up to the latest and minimise what each machine needs to download once you are there.

It also means that once the locals have been given suitable instructions, if a machine is virus infected or otherwise broken then they can just revert back to their "master" image.

I'd also make sure I have the following things with me.

Extra Ram (Windows 7 needs at least 2GB really even as a Web surfing box) Do you have a hardware audit of the machines to be able to determine what Ram they have/might need ?

UBCD on both Optical and Flash media (includes several partitioning/imaging tools plus things like memory tests etc in case you get a rogue machine)

Spare Optical drives (one of each pATA and SATA, if you go down the route of installing form optical media)

Two portable hard drives with the master image on.

Some spare internal hard drives (no point installing to buggered hardware, so I'd be running the smart tools against each hdd before installation and replacing it if it is suspect)

I'd also have a go at convincing someone like ESET to see if they will donate some decent AntiMalware protection. If you can't manage that then I think probably Microsoft Security Essentials is the best of the freebies, but make sure it is installed and fully up to date on your master image.

'There may come a day when Hobbits promote slot machines ...'

Erm

http://www.fruitmachineworld.com/ekmps/shops/darrenlink/images/lord-of-the-rings-25-jackpot-pub-fruit-machine-123-p.jpg

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet

Ok but overpriced

I've had my 16GB 3G version with the folio keyboard since UK launch day (pre-ordered from Lenovo)

We trialled it with users and now it lives with me because nobody else wants to use it.

All I get is cries of how they'd prefer an ipad or a smaller laptop. For me it works quite well...but only quite well. It should be better for the money. The USB host thing would be nice but the USB copy utility is cumbersome so plugging in a USB stick and opening a document is not as easy as it should be. The folio keyboard is nice but the bulk it adds just makes you wonder why you didn't pick up your laptop. The stylus is intermittent in operation and not as useful as it sounds...that said the handwriting recognition on the bundled notes app is pretty good.

Docs to Go is only just good enough for a quick edit of something...just...pretty much the same functionality as wordpad and only intermittent compatibility with MS office documents. Please someone port Libre Office to Android !

I want to love it...I have never regretted buying something with the Thinkpad logo on before...I use and love Android on my phone...but this isn't quite there and not truly deserving of the Thinkpad brand.

HP Pavilion dv6 15.6in quad-core notebook

Pavilion is a Consumer Series

Agreed with Kevin I am not sure why Reg readers would care about a series of laptops really only intended to be punted out cheap by PC World. HP's Business and Pro Book ranges are good enough but the Pavilion range is just cheap tat, regardless of the screen resolution.

PayPal dispute ends in 'violin destruction'

par for the course

Sadly this is par for the course where ebay and paypal are concerned. Any dispute favours the buyer unless the seller is sufficiently large in turnover.

With paypal, if you get into a dispute as a Seller then forget it you've lost by default unless you happen to spend 1000's a year on paypal commission. Oh and never ever ever do local pickup for something paid for by paypal because if the buyer disputes they collected it then you have zero recourse (no proof of delivery, you lose, game over)

Oh except you can't take payments via any method other than Paypal for some auctions (I had this when trying to list a PS3)

They know a buyer can potentially pull a chargeback on them and a seller can't

Panasonic releases more capacious, less explosive laptop battery

@ Michael C

I think the main issue with LiPo at the moment is the electrical fragility of the cells, They hate regular full discharges (which let's be honest is a typical usage scenario for many devices including laptops), they hate being left in a discharge state and they are even more temperature sensitive (particularly whilst charging).

At this point I think you'd have to end up severely educating the general public to get anything close to say a 300 cycle life out of LiPo

Fujitsu M2010 netbook

Some Innovation please!

This isn't significantly better than my Acer which cost me less than £200 ages ago, It has bluetooth and better battery life (unless I spent £50 on the bigger battery for mine).

On the minus side, rubbish keyboard, a bigger screen that wastes space because of the pathetic resolution (which is bad enough on an 8.9" screen so why the hell stretch it out to 10") and a Windows XP Home installation I would have to replace with something useful.

Before the netbook movement dies completely someone needs to produce something that

a. is offered with Linux (hint moblin is looking pretty fine now)

b. and/or has a 1280x something screen

c. hmm is ION overkill for a netbook ?

d. or is sub £200 or at least less than £250

HTC Snap

So pretty much an E71

But with Wincephone software.

I am not even sure the hardware looks as nice...the E71 is almost perfect in that regard.

I think I will stick with tried and trusted S60 thanks...it has it's flaws but at least it tries to be a phone first. Every wincephone I have sampled (various HTC devices up to the Touch Diamond) have had horrible stalls, crashes, out of sync sound events and massive usability issues

About the only thing that will get me giving up the 71 is when Orange wake up and start offering an Android phone.

Microsoft, Asus launch anti-Linuxbook campaign

This should be a hoax but it isn't

That site is just way way to amateurish even for this campaign, however the video is fairly well put together if still very very cheesy.

But a Website made of a single background image (inc the text so search engines will struggle to index it) nasty nasty jpeg compression, on a domain registered to a Michael Sharp in Washington ?

Surely even a marketing department stupid enough to approve this campaign would be capable of putting something together that looks a little more convincing.

But then I noticed that it is linked from here

http://www.asus.co.uk/eeepc/1008HA/features.html

So it is endorsed by Asus ! Hilarious

Microsoft! bids! $44.6bn! for! Yahoo!

What about the MS shareholders

"So the plan is we are going to spend almost 50bn on a dying internet search portal and crappy messenger"

MS stock was down 6.6% by end of trading on 1st of Feb, look at the graph on Yahoo Finance :)

VoIP is Dead. It's just another feature, now

Skype was a deadend business plan from the start

But not for the reasons mentioned in the article.

Skype was the most braindead web2.0 business plan ever.

Their potential revenue is inversely proportional to the number of members they have because member to member calls are free.

So the more members the higher the likelihood that both will have skype and therefore one will not have to use any skypeout credit to call the other.

They have already demonstrated that their ultimately scalable p2p network doesn't scale if a good portion of clients try and log in to their authentication servers at the same time. Also p2p or not new members translate to higher support costs etc.

The only reason skype is still here is that ebay can't face the embarrassment of shutting it down after paying so much for it.

Hyperic charges after disgruntled Ubuntu upgraders

Novice users shouldn't upgrade at the point of release

We have this every time Ubuntu release a new version. "It looks shiny but the upgrade failed"

Novice users should wait for a bit for others to find the bugs and perhaps watch the forums for mention of their particular hardware. No OS (any OS) upgrade can go smoothly all of the time on all of the hardware due to the massive diversity of the platform and the endless possibilities of configuration etc that may have been done to the existing OS.