Re: No MS account
What's so bothersome about setting up an MS account? You don't have to give any personal info, not even a mobile number. Too much effort?
63 publicly visible posts • joined 10 May 2010
Also - This vehicle does not get anywhere near "space" - not sure it can even achieve low earth orbit.
Nope, it definitely can't reach low earth orbit - that would require a delta-v of about 9.2 km/s vs about about 1.4 km/s for sub-orbital flights, plus Shuttle-style heat shields.
I wish I'd had you around when I tried out Linux Mint.... I could never get it to work properly without overheating grotesquely due to the fact that the proprietary GPU driver had been rendered obsolete by kernel upgrades and the open source one was quite frankly shite. It would have been fun watching you spend hours tackling that one.
"The same task on OS X is usually a walk in the park for anyone of any age, however - even nowadays Microsoft haven't managed to catch up in such fundamental areas."
Oh, really? That's assuming that the printer vendor has gotten around to releasing a driver for the latest version of OS X. We have a large Konica machine in the office here, for example, whose driver works fine under Mavericks but won't even install under Yosemite.... some walk in the bloody park. I told everyone to steer clear of Yosemite for at least a year, but did they listen? Nooooo of course they bloody didn't!
"If a Windows user (more likely to be lay computer user) has a good experience with things like The GIMP or Libre Office, they are more likely to try a Linux distro."
I suppose it's _possible_ someone might have a good experience with the GIMP or LibreOffice but I'm having trouble imagining what possible arrangement of contrived circumstances could possibly lead to such an event....
"Microsoft boldly states that if you have a Windows XP or Vista machine, chuck it out and get new hardware, because the new OS will run like a dead dog on it."
Here in the Real World (TM), Windows 7 and 8 run very well on any machine that could handle that old slug Vista, while XP era machines from 2005 on can easily handle Windows 7 given a little more RAM.
>What sort of shit heap have you got on your desk that means you have to get coffee while it copies files?
Probably a recent model Apple desktop.... got a 2013 i5 iMac right here and it is a pisspoor performer in every respect, the very epitome of style over performance :)
"Linux generally runs cooler than windows* in my experience. However I have heard of your situation with bad drivers running the graphics at full power constantly. It is the unfortunate joy of the card/chip makers not to support the users. If you are using AMD or Nvidia graphics you may want to try changing the driver in use. Mint should give you some driver options but if they dont work you may need to download drivers."
Genius! The damned thing has a Mobility Radeon - if that's running full tilt it would explain the whole thing quite nicely :(
Okay, I bit - I downloaded Linux Mint 15 at the weekend, burnt a disc, and installed in on a somewhat idle laptop.
First time I've tried Linux in ages - sadly, it'll probably be the last....
Mint ran fine and looked great, but the laptop's fan NEVER stopped running at full tilt! And looking at the temperatures reported by the sensors revealed why - the damned thing was 10-15 degrees hotter than under Windows 7!
What gives? I posted a plaintive appeal for assistance on the Linux Mint forums, but either nobody has a clue or they can't be arsed :(
"On a paperback you print it with the price, so it's stuck at that price. eBooks however you can change dynamically as time goes by."
If only there was a way by which those dratted prices on paperbacks could be covered up with some sort of self-adhesive paper-based product with a different price printed on it.....
Nope, sorry, the truth is that nobody wanted the original Linux netbooks, because they didn't run the users' familiar old apps; the average user wants MS Office, not half-baked tat like OpenOffice or LibreOffice or whatever that shoddy old abandonware calls itself these days. And neither did they "grind to a halt" when "the obligatory virus scanner" was installed; I had one of the Acer netbooks and it ran just fine under Win XP and just as well under Windows 7 as well, certainly better than the peculiar variety of Linux it came saddled with.
Sadly, the T400 was when the rot set in at Lenovo, and the renowned Thinkpad build quality began to head south. T400s are notorious for their bendy keyboards, dubious touchpads, and ropey USB sockets.
Oh, and the dual-graphics, 1440x900 screen T400s can be easily picked up here in the UK for £220 or so - no need to get them sent from Canada :)
Or on the other hand, chances are that someone who hasn't upgraded OS X for 4 years is actually an old and experienced Apple user, who knows very well that each new version of OS X means more applications and peripherals refusing to work, and who wishes to stick with something that *just works*.
This is one thing Microsoft has always been good at, and which Apple could care less about, namely backwards compatibility.