The AM Forum

Sorry All,
I want to install a larger HDD in an existing computer. I would like the new larger drive be the main drive. I have heard that there is software to "image/ghost/mirror" the entire system over to the new drive. When done, you remove the old drive and the new drive becomes C:\

OR an uglier way. Backup ALL files. Install the new drive, format, re-install the OS and RE-load ALL of those programs I no longer have discs for.

OR install the new drive as an extra drive to handle the files. The c:\ drive runs the programs. I can't believe that our "main" computer at home is only 40GB.

Fred

Fred,

You can use either of these methods:

• Use Norton Ghost to create an image of the old drive, and then replace that on the new drive
• Use GNU/Linux to image one drive onto the other.

I hope this helps.

73,

Bill, W1AC

Install both drives in your puter, copy everything from your old drive to your new drive, then rename the drives and leave both. Then delete the stuff on your old drive or reformat it.
Bill

afaik,

unless you use a "ghost" type program to migrate, you will need to reinstall all your programs for them to run, or at least most of them. Some might run without an install, but most not, especially the ones that needed a key to activate...

it is easy enough to make the old drive the "slave" drive and then just put the installed programs on the new disc and use the old to hold your other files...

the drive usually has a set of pins on the rear with a label on top showing how to configure it as "auto", "master" or "slave". You want slave.

doing it this way, there is not much of a problem moving from one drive to the other when you want to move things from one to the other. IF you can put each drive on a separate IDE (assuming IDE) controller, I think that it runs faster than if they share the same cable & controller (on the board it is...

every time I have upgraded computers so far that's the way I have done it.

I usually have a folder where I save all my downloaded application programs. I keep the CDs of other application programs handy as well. That way making the new set up run like the old usually only takes a few hours (good grief, ya'd think they could do it better, eh??)

 ;D

                 _-_-WBear2GCR

The DELL I'm on now only has a 40 GB drive. Got it 8 years ago. To save a lot of P & M, the original drive remained the boot drive. All the data files and directories from whatever program, were moved to a newly installed additional 200 GB internal drive. Any new program installations are also being installed on the new drive. To me, this was the cheapest and least aggravating way to get more space without worrying about existing boot sectors, existing windows registry items, and probably several other less obvious possible issues. Watch the configuration of the new drive as identified in the drive's instructions.

fred the only thing i worry about is that if your pc came with a 40 gig drive that makes is quite old.  I am guessing win 98 maybe xp. northon ghost works ok fine but the real problem is that on the old machines the would not recognize a drive any bigger.  there was a bit of software that came with the drives that tricked the bios into thinking the drive was smaller but really told the os that it was bigger.  current versions of ghost dont like this very much.  My recommendation.  go to tiger direct.com and buy an empty usb harddrive encloser.  put the old drive in it.  when you are done transfering the important files off of it you now have a portable hard drive. (always handy)

second reason not to use ghost.  Microsoft actually sends out tech bullitens annualy stating that you should wipe your harddrive clean once a year and install windows from scratch.  If you ghost your old install to the new drive you bring along an old install that needs refreshed anyway.  hows that for confidence.

100 percent linux here for 4 months now.  no viruses not popups no reeboots.

Thanks to everyone.
I keep forgetting that this computer technology moves pretty fast. As long as this drive is operating and no problems with bad sectors or clusters, I'll get one of those USB external dirves and convert the USB ports to 2.0 for the speed and dump the pictures and files to the external drive.

I think that I can disable the on-board USB 1.0 through the bios and install drivers for the PCI USB 2.0 board I have. It will give me 4- 2.0 USB ports. There's a big difference in the transfer rate @ 2.0.

The last attempt was to disable the on-board 1.0 USB from the Control Panel. The next time the computer would boot up, it would re-install the 1.0 and then the IRQ wars began with the 2.0 board.
I'll give it a try, unless someone here has some thoughts on this.

Thanks

Fred

Why would you want to disable the USB 1.0 ports.  The more ports, the better.  You can use the slower ports for peripherals that don't need as much speed if you run out of the faster ports.  ???

Copying an image to a new drive is not too bad.  The real challange is moving an XP image to a different computer, and reactivating it.  (Requires rebuilding the hardware abstraction layer.) I recently did this before I sold my XP laptop.   I didn't have the time to figure out what programs and data I needed , so I now have an image of my old laptop I can boot on my desktop computer.

I deal with this issue on a daily basis.  There are several possiblilties, however the most important thing to consider now is that you probably don't have a good (or any?) backup.  Just thought I'd mention it also.

There are several ways to make the new drive bootable.

1) Ghost or Gnu Image (as was previously mentioned).  This is how I do it.

2) Run NTBACKUP and backup the system - probably saving the backup image on the new drive - including the system state (very important).   You then have some choices.  You can do a quickie install of the operating system onto the new drive, then do a "restore" of the original, backed up system and overwrite the new installation.  Nice thing about doing this or the image (ghost) is you don't have to resintall anything!

3) I've actually created duplicate systems using xcopy, however this CANNOT be done against a running operating system.  You would need to put both hard drives in another system, or somehow boot an alternative O/S.  Windows locks critical files against against all access (including reads) (files like the registry files), so your copy will not work if you attempt to copy a booted system.

Do your self a favor and spend a few bucks on a dedicated, external USB2 hard drive that is used solely for backups.  Use NTBACKUP to backup the running system.  Optionally, ntbackup can be used to back up all of the files, althrough I prefer to use XCOPY because I get a readable, usable duplicate of the original files and file system, and I do not need to use  NTBACKUP to read what I want from the backed up image file.  NTBACKUP will be required to back up the operating system and system state.

Regards,

Steve

While I have copies of ghost, I have not used it.  Two products I HAVE used are:

* Acronus (now called Acronus True Image)
* Norton Save and Restore 2

Both these products backup a true image while the OS is running and both have CD recovery disks that will do the restore without having to reinstall the operating system.  Under the right conditions, (hardware compatibility) the restore program can pull the image off a USB drive or even from a location across the network. (I find it is easier just to use another local drive.) With Acronus, you can mount the backup image as a drive making it easy to restore individual files.

Both products are under $50 and well worth it.  Acronus also has a product call Migrate Easy for $39 that is dedicated to doing drive upgrades and walking you through the process.

The professional version, Acronus Workstation, ($79) has "universal restore" meaning you can restore to different hardware or to a virtual machine (or even convert images directly to virtual machine images).  Another cool feature (I have not tried) is the ability to boot the image from the the recovery application and actually use the computer you are recovering while it is restoring itself in the background.

Thats pretty funny. Where, pray tell, could someone see one of these Microsoft originated "bullitens" that advise users to wipe the HD and reinstall Windows every year ?


Sam

John and Mop and the rest,

I have been using Acronus True Image on my 3 PC's with great success for several years now. It is a really fine product.

I put a dedicated drive in one machine on my network of three and do full backup's often. This saved my bacon when the HD in the laptop failed. After installing a new hard drive in the laptop I slipped in the recovery disk and found the backup HD on the network. Restoring the image to the new drive was completely uneventful. The beauty of the restoration was absolutely everything worked. All of the programs previously installed worked without authentication. All files in place. Even every personal setting was in place. It was as if the hard drive failure never happened.

Acronus True Image IS as close as it gets to a perfect backup package.

For you Mopman. Get a copy of Acronus True Image. Use a second computer (hopefully you have one available) and install the software on each.

On the second computer set up a partition on the C hard drive for a compressed backup of the hard drive you want to replace and make the recovery disks. Acronus will walk you through the entire process.

When the backup is finished and verified, pop in the new hard drive and set the computer to boot from whatever drive the restore disk fits. Boot the computer and Acronus will walk you through the restore.When finished reset the computer to boot from C drive and your in business as they say.

Have fun and if you have probelms, drop me a PM.

Mike

I purchased a brand new copy of Acronis True Image some time ago for about $12, but haven't yet installed it. I did install the M$ NTBACKUP.nsi utility into my XP Home Edition, but so far I simply manually drag and drop copies of stuff like bookmarks, My Documents and other data files that I want to back up, either into my external hard drive or into a thumb drive, and rely on System Restore for backing up the registry and system files.

I take it that Acronis is less a pain in the arse to use to back up system files than is the M$ Backup utility.

I plan to install Acronis and try it out now that I have more time to play with the computer, with it getting too cold for much outside work on the homestead.

Don,

It used to be a backup was for your files. The stuff you really wanted to keep in case your hard drive failed and nothing wrong with that at all. I do that as well. I spread backed up files on every drive and even on thumb drives just in case.

As you know most computers don't come with a complete, licensed copy of windows to let you start over if a drive fails. Your first move in that case is a big buck investment just to get back to square one (NO, your M$ recovery discs won't reinstall windows). Than comes all the hours of tailoring the operating system to your liking and installing all of your software and files.

With an Acronus backup it's an hour or so and EVERYTHING! is back as it was yesterday. How cool is that? Time to get busy Don. Install Acronus and rest easy.

Mike

Or just run Level 1 Raid and no back ups needed.

That won't always help.  If you have a corrupted OS or an accidently deleted file, you will have a perfect copy of the problem on the other drive. :)

Ghod knows I'm no friend of Steve Balmer, but running unlicensed copies of Windoze isn't a good idea. In the first place, you're denied access to most of the updates that licensed users get automatically. As if that weren't bad enough, the M$ update site will poison machines that don't have proper credentials, reducing them to very basic functionality such as web access.

Image backups are just one option in a disaster-recovery plan, and you don't have to buy proprietary software to have a reliable process in place. The first step, however, is not to backup, but to make sure your machine is running fully licensed software. Why invite trouble?

73,

Bill W1AC

I think what he meant to say is:  most computer don't come with the Windows install disk.  The license (COA) is the sticker on the machine.  The code on the sticker will work for activation if you borrow an install disk with the same OS version.  Also, the manufacturer may send you a disk if you beg.  Dell stopped including the install disk for free.  I always pay the extra $5 or $10 and add it to the cart when ordering.

W1AC Bill,
Please read my comment again.


If I didn't make myself clear, I'm saying, For many years now when you buy a computer you have a licensed copy on your computer of windows BUT the disc's provided by your computers manufacturer do not contain a complete copy of windows. You cannot reload windows on a new hard drive from those disc's. In fact you can do very little if a hard drive acts up and you have to replace it or god for bid a virus corrupts something. Those worthless M$ recovery discs are JUNK. I think we all know running unlicensed copies of software isn't OK, Thanks!


Mopman isn't trying to recover from disaster. He is looking for an easy way to put his operating system and files on a new disc. Stay focused Bill and please offer your best advice.

I strayed a bit from the thread and talked about backup's and other stuff but I tried my best to tie it together for Fred. Please tell us exactly how it's done.

Mike

One thing not mentioned is that many new computers don't have OS disks but they DO have a recovery partition.  Before I sold my Dell laptop, I booted into the recovery program.  The program runs a cut-down version of Norton Ghost.  Initialize the recovery, and the system partition is overwritten with the original image exactly as shipped from the factory.  NEVER use this method of recovery if you don't have a backup of your data as it will be overwritten, but its a nice way to get a computer ready for resale or if you just want a fresh start.

When I backed up my laptop with Acronus, I backed up the recovery partition as well and it was restored to the new drive.

I use a Dell Dimension 8250. 5 or 6 years old.

I don't have a Windows XP disc with the Micro$oft label, but a disc with the Dell logo.  The label says:



How can I tell whether it is a complete OS install disc or just a recovery disc?

Yes, that's a typical Dell disk with the full (OEM version) Windows XP OS install files on it.  There should be another disk with the Dell hardware specific drivers that need to be installed after the OS is installed.

Personally, I have yet to see a Dell recovery disk without the OS, but then I always order the OS so I guess I don't know what I would get if I didn't. :)

I once worked on a friend's Compaq, and the recovery disk was a restore image instead of the OS. The bad thing about that is you can't do an XP repair install, which is a very good method of recovering from a corrupted OS with (almost) everything still intact.

I thought it probably was.  My disc has the XP backup utility on it, which for some reason isn't installed by default on the home edition.  According to the M$ website, the "recovery" discs usually don't include the backup utility, but it's available online as a download.

And yes, the drivers disc came with mine.

I believe the MS Backup is a "lite" version of the Veritas backup software which was marketed by Stompsoft as Backup MyPC.  Veritas was later assimilated by Symantec and I think they killed it off.  Anyway, the Veritas backup is a file based backup.  It's certainly better than no backup at all. The restore process requires a reinstall of the OS first, then the backup software, then rebuilding the backup catalog.  The restore of the latest system files over the old XP install system files almost always results in problems that can take hours to troubleshoot. (I know, because I have done it several times.)

A bare metal image restore like Acronus or Symantec Save and Restore is oh so much cleaner.

The CD I have is Acronis True Image 9.0.  I assume someone made a typo and that mine is the same thing?

My external hard drive came with backup software, but apparently it is also a file-based program that backs up data files but doesn't save a bootable set of the Windows system files. However, the backup image with the Mac OSX is supposed to be bootable.  I installed only the driver for the HDD, but not the backup software.

AcronIs, Correct!

I have heard that Vista has too many wrinkles and issues with users. And some hardware manufacturers are not making any drivers to fix the Vista problem.
M$ will replace Vista with another O$ system similar to XP but will prbably call it WIN210.
DOS is gone

Fred

As far as I know, it's going to be called Windows 7.  It appears they are shooting for more scalability than Vista has.  They were demonstrating it running on a low power machine that Vista would not dream of running on:

http://gizmodo.com/5069994/microsoft-shows-windows-7-running-on-asus-eeepc

Some early impressions of the new OS:

http://gizmodo.com/5069661/windows-7-walkthrough-boot-video-and-impressions

It is supposed to by called something like System 7.  The question is will it really be any better than Vista.

M$ finally got it right with XP.  They should have left well enough alone, and incrementally upgraded it, rather than continuing to reinvent the wheel every 2 or 3 years with a brand new OS system built from ground up.

I never used DOS.  I had little interest in using computers back then, because remembering and typing in all that command line stuff was too tedious. I was introduced to the GUI with one of  the older Macintosh OS's, and my first home machine was Windows 95.  But Win95, 98 and ME sucked because they were basically DOS with an add-on GUI, and tended to be very unstable.  I recall getting the blue screen at least once every time I used the computer.   The pre-OSX versions of Macintosh weren't much better.  I think I can count on one hand the number of blue screens I have got with XP in the last 5 years.

I think that is what Apple is doing with their Macintosh OSX.  But instead of calling them OSX.1, OSX.2, etc, they give each upgraded version a funny name like the name of an animal or something.  I worked with OSX at work before I retired, and each updated version transitioned flawlessly from the older one.  Usually, I couldn't tell much, if any difference until I used one of the new features that previous versions didn't have.  Every now and again a piece of older software wouldn't work after the updates were installed.

I plan to keep on using XP until I can't make it work any more for what I use a computer for.

ACRONIS here I come. Might be a next month project. Christmas madness is the priority.

I'll give this a try. John, YBF, and Steve, QIX seem to work with these issues every day. I'll be sure to make a good backup of the important stuff.

I hope I don't lose any of my wife's contacts on her Chikka or Yahoo thing.

Fred

thread re-use..

I just picked up a refurb PC with vista on it. It refuses to run some software I already have, but that;s not too big a deal.
Is there a recoding interpreter out there? (recalling FX!32 for NT on the DEC Alpha)

It is very strange that I played a DVD on it using windows media player and it was not sharp and looked like crap compared to the XP computer.

Then I tried the included H/P player, and voila, looking very sharp. Guess which one is default now?

I have heard rumors that media player of vista downscans DVD playback resolution "for a better windows experience" or some crap like that. I think it is a ploy for rights management or something equally stoopid. Oh sure, like I am going to whip out a 3-channel 3Gs/S realtime A2D recording instrument and record the 32 bit analog output at 1900x1200.

I'll probably set the thing to the classic view, as the "translucent oily plastic GUI" look is just too weird. A reminder that too many things today are made of slick plastic.

It has not seen a network yet and probably won't for a while till I can put a firewall on it to keep it from sticking its toungues into various light sockets. I think wresting control of this computer away from itself is going to be a learning experience.

Overall though it seems to run pretty well even with all kinds of 'things' fading in and out and moving around and appearing unbidden, which also needs to be put a stop to. AMD Athlon X2 dual core 64 bit at 2.7 GHz with 5GB RAM.

There was an ISP (Internet Service Provider) who ran RAID level 5, and felt no backups were needed - OOPS!!!!!!!!!!  A hacker penetrated the system and - ZAP - deleted all of the files on the user partition (slice)... of course, the RAID duplicated the situation and they lost everything.

Other possibilities that could also cause a catastrophic loss of data would be a lightning hit which destroyed all the drives in the RAID (have seen this!), water, extreme heat, viruses, worms, and of course the number one problem - OPERATOR ERROR!

 :D  ;)

Nice necro. We're talking about home back up, not industrial. For that situation, off-site back up is always required.

Ok, I'll bite - what's a necro?   :)

Things like this never happen on a Mac.  ;)

People are waking up.


Microsoft Sales Decline for First Time Ever

It's been a tough year for the economy, and Microsoft wasn't immune to the effects of the recession.

Microsoft yesterday reported its first ever annual sales drop in company history. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009 Microsoft reported revenue of $58.44 billion, a 3 percent decline from the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the year were $20.36 billion, $14.57 billion and $1.62, which represented declines of 9 percent, 18 percent and 13 percent respectively.

"Our business continued to be negatively impacted by weakness in the global PC and server markets," said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft.

In response to the changing economic climate, Microsoft has turned to layoffs for thousands of employees, which has helped the company soften the blows to the bottom line.

"In light of that environment, it was an excellent achievement to deliver over $750 million of operational savings compared to the prior year quarter," Liddell added.

The first-ever decline in sales in Microsoft history isn't surprising given that the just past third quarter saw the first-ever decline in profits.

“While economic conditions presented challenges this year, we maintained our focus on delivering customer satisfaction and providing solutions to our customers to save money,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. “I am very excited by the wave of product and services innovations being delivered in this next fiscal year.”

The release of Windows 7 could start a wave of sales for Microsoft as both consumers and businesses figure it's time to upgrade, especially after skipping Windows Vista.

Microsoft, however, isn't so quick to pronounce Windows 7 as the savior of the industry just yet. Microsoft senior vice president Bill Veghte said last month that the new OS might not be able to turn things around single-handedly.

Digging up an old post.

Ok, ok, now let's get real  ;D    TRUST ME - I'm in the business - this sort of thing happens on Macs too   8)

Macs fail; disks in macs fail; OS'es become corrupted - it just happens.

By the way, as a software engineer, I was overly UNimpressed with Macs.  The O/S was badly engineered, the "extension manager" was the biggest hack I think I've ever seen, and the system was unmanageable (from an MIS point of view) at best.....It was the worst - UNTIL OSx.   Finally, they've really got something going!  OSx, based on Unix is really nice.  Bring up a Unix command window - and you're in Unix, witih all the Unix tools, syntax and other goodies.

I am inclined to believe the decline in Microsoft's sales are due multiple causes:

1) The economy
2) Unix (Linux, FreeBSD and other open source systems) whicih are cutting BADLY into MS's server business (the big ticket software products are here).  I'm a Unix server bigot  ;D
3) Vista (need I say more?  What a MISTAKE).

Now, I have not studied Apple's market share or their numbers.  If Apple were up dramatically at the same time MS went down, I would take that as a strong indication that Apple was eating into MS's nearly complete domination of the desktop market.

But, suffice to say, Mac OSx is a real operating system (finally!), and will certainly help with the company's acceptance into the mainstream MIS community, rather than being the "bastard child" used by that weird guy they hired last month who HAS to have a Mac, and that the MIS people groan over every time they have to touch the system.

 :) ;) :D ;D 8)

I suppose I'll "upgrade" to windows 7 when the time comes. I do not know if Linux is supported by the hardware in the HP Pavilion a6703w I just bought, but I can imagine that it would run smokin on the dual core 64 bit CPR provided I have enough memory.

With Linux and UNIX, does the problem of memory leaks still exist? This use to be a general complaint in the past against UNIX.

all I know about the hardware is that it has the oomph to do some of the things that the old 900MHz 32 bit athlon PC cannot do properly. The old PC will stay for backup and e-mail/browsing duty.

Necro is a prefix meaning death (as in necrophobia - fear of death).  So I guess a necro in this context is a necrothread.

You could always run linux in a VirtualBox.   http://www.virtualbox.org/

The old Mac OS may have been a "hack" but I never had to rebuild the system, never has to wipe the HD and start over, never had to mess with IRQs, all peripherals and added boards in the machine installed in a minute or two, never had a problem getting a printer installed and never had a virus, trojan, or any other malicious SW problem. I never wasted a second recompiling anything, editing text files, messing with registries, or silly config and com files. Did need to because the computer worked.

I used to laugh when I heard my PC using friends beat their chests over spending all weekend getting a new piece of software installed or adding a new peripheral. They spoke as conquerers over coming some great foe. What a waste of time. I hear people now proclaiming the virtues of running two video monitors. Big deal, you could do that on the Mac well over 15 years ago. Plug and play? Mac always had it.

Back in the day a vendor of a Mac web server offered $10k to anyone who could hack their box. In over 10 years, no one claimed the prize.

That said OS X is more stable, but compared to the Windows OSes of the time, the classic Mac OS was light years ahead in the productivity area. Many so called programmers complained it was hard to write software for the OS. Funny, but MS got started with the first GUI versions of Word and Excel on the Mac. Some how, they figured it out. ;)

If you lock down all the features, the software and the hardware, it's understandable why it "just works".  Closed systems are like that.

That said, I tried to upgrade my G3 to Tiger so I installed a DVDRW drive and the OS DVD would not boot.  Turns out you need a "special" $300 DVDRW drive that's compatible with booting on a Mac.  Fortunately, I got the drive on close-out for $40.  Even though Apple adopted the PCI slot, most PCI cards won't work unless it says on the box that they are Mac compatible, and even that is no guarantee (unless you get actual Apple boards). I tried to upgrade to USB 2 and Ethernet 1G.   One of the cards would not play (can't remember which).

Oh...and once I upgraded to Tiger, my MS Office would not work and the only choice was to install a much bigger slower version.  So much for backwards compatability.  No better than a PC.  At least Office 2000 still runs on Vista (except for a bug in Outlook). 

No features were locked down. Please explain. The system was not closed. There were and are tons of third-party hardware and software. I just pointed out that MS wrote SW for the Mac and at one time was the largest Mac SW provider.

As far as I know, Apple makes no PCI boards. All video, audio and drives are made by third parties.

I stand corrected...It's worse than I thought.  You can't even buy Apple boards, and the compatibility of generic boards is dreadful.

Try installing the "Intel compatible" OSX on anything but an Apple motherboard.  Hackintosh is possible but difficult, ONLY because Apple purposely made it very difficult to do.

Report July 22, 2009:
 SAN FRANCISCO–"Apple Inc. posted a quarterly profit that blew past Wall Street forecasts thanks to strong sales of Mac computers and improved margins.

The company reported a net profit of $1.23 billion (U.S.), or $1.35 a share, for its fiscal third quarter ended June 27, up from $1.07 billion, or $1.19, in the year-ago period.

Apple's earnings per share beat by far the average forecast of $1.18 by analysts.

Revenue rose 12 per cent to $8.3 billion, versus analysts' average estimate of $8.2 billion. Apple's revenue increased in every region, including the U.S. and Europe. Worldwide retail store revenue increased 4 per cent from a year ago....

...Apple's Mac computers also bolstered results. Apple sold 4 per cent more Mac computers than a year ago. Meanwhile, researchers recently reported a 3 per cent to 5 per cent decline for the overall worldwide PC market in the same period...."

Of course, selling more then the competition doesn't always equate to being a better product. It could just mean that there are better convincing salespeople in the Mac sales arena then there are in the PC sales arena.

Try installing GM parts on a Ford. What's your point? BTW, people have installed OS X on non-Apple hardware. Your info is incorrect.

http://lifehacker.com/348653/install-os-x-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required


I've installed at least a dozen non-Apple boards in my Macs over the last 15 years without a problem. In fact, none of the boards I installed were made by Apple. How many have you tried and on how many machines and over how many decades? The idea the system is closed is a myth.

I think the fact that I used the term "Hackintosh", shows that I am aware of that.  I didn't say it it can't be done, just that Apple makes it difficult, same as they make hacking the iPhone difficult, because they want control over hardware and software sales ($$$).  Nothing wrong with that, but if Microsoft decided one day that Windows would only install on Microsoft brand motherboards, compatibility problems with motherboards would probably disappear, but people would be up in arms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSx86

Why beat a dead OS? Switch to Linux.

It's not a panacea, not perfect, and not without faults. I find it necessary to keep using XP - this post was written using Firefox under XP Pro - for some applications that aren't available for Linux yet.

But, it is a world away from Microsoft and M$'s attitude that users are sheep to be fleeced at regular intervals, just because they can.  I have never had an issue or problem that I couldn't get help for, from a worldwide community of users that charge nothing for the information.

FWIW. YMMV.

73, Bill W1AC

The lone macintosh someone brought in was one of the first machines to be rooted and have its file system gutted like a fish at Defcon9.  Linuxes and UNIXes fared better, about the same as NT. up and down.. The only machine unscathed for the entire 3 days was running VMS. So macs have been known to be hacked. Especially in a room full of 5000 real live hackers.

I bought the vista machine to use mainly for handling DVDs and video and pictures. virtualbox.org seems viable to add functionality to it.

All O/S have their places.

srsly, I'm running 98 as a webserver with a free firewall and free ftp program, for some sites I don't care about. But it has not been hacked either.

I did not have to spend any time setting up peripherals except loading the o/s and software because the 98 machine has integrated peripherals except the drives. Like a mac of old.

Same goes for the XP clone machine once I built it to my liking, ok so I was "forced" to -horribly- have to select among dozens of graphics cards and other tidbits.. how traumatizing! oh. wait.. it was fun, actually.

Building any of these electronic brains to my liking would be cost prohibitive on a mac (or -insert any non-x86 machine type here-). You can only build mac computers out of garbage if it is mac garbage. X86 on the other hand can be put together from garbage found on any curb. Sometimes even the M$ O/S can be found there. Ironic.

A friend is going to give me his old mac soon. it has a unix-derived o/s so he says. Leopard? that should be very nice. It will probably become my internet browsing and e-mail machine. The X86 clone will then be for standalone backup, storage, documents and CAD and the like. VMS is a bastion unto itself - for the Bunkerofdoom site, because I do care about that.

I cut my teeth on command lines configuration files. It is a matter of knowledge giving one leverage into functionality. I used to not like macs because you could not easily get "behind the window" so to speak.. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" I like the newer macs but I won't shell out $ like that.

A computer is just a tool. It's advantageous to have several kinds, one for each task set for which it is best suited. With the advent of mucho processing power, the days of the holy wars are over.

There is no need to discard a computer only to buy more $oftware because the old software won't run on the new computer. Keep them all in a cabinet or rack and switch to the one wth the required applications. KBM switches are the boon to modern man.

Wish list? a rack full of Itanium. $$$. "Meet your diverse application needs with a multi-OS ecosystem running HP-UX 11i, OpenVMS, Microsoft® Windows® Server, Linux, and NonStop."

Well, Mac OSx is really great, and so is XP most of the time (I still use Windows 2000 on my main software development machine that I built 7 years ago, and have done nothing to it over the entire time).... If you more or less leave things alone, it will usually work forever unless the hardware dies.

Let's go back to the days of IRQs and the like.  I was a software engineer even back then  :D  (actually, since 1981 - before that, broadcast engineering).

I worked on early Apples back then... - hangs, crashes, things just "not working".. that's the way it was back then with most systems... If you tried to do anything "unusual", often there were major problems.. The PCs were similar... DOS, and then Windows 1 (and 2 and 3) and finally NT (oh, there was OS/2 in there, too)...

The Mac was certainly a closed system back then.  You bought their hardware and used their software and all was well with the world...... until you tried certain 3rd party applications... then the "fun" began.

I am so glad those days are over!

Of course Unix in all its flavors out does all this stuff.  At one time, I believe FreeBSD held the world record for number of years in continuous operation without a reboot, crash, etc.  Some system at NASA was supposedly up for more than 10 years.

FreeBSD certainly holds the record in my computer world.... 980+ days "up" !  This is a FreeBSD server which also functions as a mail server, firewall, file server, and router with 3 networks connected to 3 different NICs.  This system is definitely busy, and is on a UPS with a generator at the site as well.  All of this running on a modest Pentium III with 128 megs of memory, and the system is fast.

Programming wise, the Macs really were terrible.  Perhaps this situation has been resolved in more recent versions.  I have not written a program for a Mac since the Apple II CI (wow, and I dating myself !).  But, I can tell you at that time, the so-called "toolbox" (part of what they called their API (the programmer's interface) was very hard to use and the documentation was almost useless.

But now, we're in a situation where a major platform (the Mac) has what I would describe as a real operating system with a nice GUI.  This type of thing can only continue to grow.  It would be really great is Microsoft did something similar, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting  :D :) 8)

And yes, there are GUIs on Unix (Linux, Freebsd, etc.) that work very well, but the reality of the situation is there are quite a bit fewer applications available for the Unix variants than one can get on the PC or Mac (with the PC obviously having the most)....yeah, yeah, yeah there's VirtualBox, but now you're introducing a level of complexity that the average user is not going to be able to deal with easily; it's slower - and I use a couple of windows apps that crash VirtualBox....

But, what the heck!  I'm glad to see Apple's new strategy resulting in better numbers for the company.

Choose one of these, plug it in and poof... problem solved.
I got 3 500G running at home now. Perfect for storage expansion and you can take it with you to share stuff with your friends. (well, in my case it's just friend but you get the picture!)

 Maxtor  (http://www.maxtor.com/en/external-drives/backup-and-storage-devices/)

I'm getting pretty absent minded lately.........wow. I got the Acronis True image software and it worked prefectly to transfer "the system" and copy files and even floormat the new HDD. I did this to three machines to increase HDD size.
Thanks "YGF" , John for the point in the right direction

Fred

Absolutely not true. Nearly all the software I used was third party including apps from Adobe, Quark and Microsoft. If programming was so terrible how did Adobe build its empire on the Mac platform? Why did thousands show up to the Mac Developer conference every year?

I also added many boards and peripherals to the system, ALL were third party, Radius, Hewlett-Packard and the like. I never had any problems. All were installed in minutes, no IRQs, no special downloads, no other BS.

Major operations like the TV Guide were produced using Mac with tons of third-party software and hardware. Closed system. No, not really. The myth persists though. Amazing. :'(

We're talking religion, mostly.

But, as a very experienced software developer - religion aside, the Mac (AT LEAST AT THE TIME) was difficult, and the (API) documentation was really poor.  People will put up with alot if they need to get the job done.  You want the Mac look and feel?  You had to suffer the API  :o  Hey, I've programmed to worse than the Mac, that's for sure!

The Mac's *former* general lack of acceptance into mainstream business computing was due to its closed nature, complete lack of any command line or standard MIS utility, and weak underlying software design.  MIS departments handling hundreds or thousands of workstations need standard tools that allow you to, in bulk, manage these systems from a central point.

MIS departments are very pragmatic.  What can I manage EASILY, REMOTELY, PREDICTABLY, EN-MASS, and is RELIABLE  - that's what I want in my network.

THESE PROBLEMS SEEM TO HAVE BEEN LARGERLY MITIGATED WITH OS-X, but having done this for many decades, it was no myth. 

I have been a software engineer and software developement manager for many years.  When doing Mac software, we always had to allocate more resources or allocate more time for the "Mac port" of whatever software was under development.  These were hard numbers, and it is what it is.  It just took more time.

Again, maybe this has changed with new releases.  I haven't had to write any Mac code for a while now, so this may be a non-issue.

Here at my fingertips I have FreeBSD (4 versions), Linux (Ubuntu), Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and of course DOS......

I like the new Macs and the new OS.  Assuming I don't have to buy any new hardware (I have scads of computers - none of them particularly new or ultra fast), I'm going to set up an OSx machine here and check out the development tools.

The Town is building a new library.  We are getting 3 high end Macs for video production and such, and as MIS director, I will be managing these systems.  Hopefully, there will be no unusual problems  ??? ;)  I don't expect any at this point.

I can't resist pointing out that MacOS is a UNIX variant.  The lineage is Mach, a microkernel UNIX which Avie Tevanian was the center of at CMU.  He built on that at Next, and NextOS become Mac OS X. Avie is no longer at Apple but his influence lingers.

The big additions are the object layer, Cocoa, a programming language, Objective C, both nice but (wouldn't you know it) Apple only for all practical purposes and, of course, Apple's truly lovely GUI. But underneath beats a UNIX heart.  Bring up a Console and type "ps -A"

Jon "programming since computers weighed more than you do" K

That's why I like the new Mac OS   8)   I was able to start some server daemons without any great difficulty.  Didn't mess with ipfw or ipfirewall or anything too meaty - my wife borrowed the Mac from her school, and she was literally standing over me, asking over and over "honey, are you sure this isn't going to screw it up?"  so, I didn't go too far   ;)

Jon, I would assume you are  from the days of punch cards and paper tape since you hung with my high school friend Steve M.

Indeed.  I was an ace on a keypunch and remember when a battery operated paper tape spooler changed my life.  I have to stop thinking of UNIX (1969) as new.

HMMM 026 or 029 speaking of 1969

You do know your stuff.  I used 026's in school and was thrilled to be using 029's at my first professional programming job.  I could program the little star wheel Program Card too, although they were mostly broken on the 026's at school.

No religion at all. I'm not asking you to take anything on faith. I clearly presented facts to prove my point that the MacOS was and is not a closed system. Pointing out that the OS may not have been programmer friendly or had poor MIS/enterprise management tools does not speak to my point (except to prove it further - how could you, a third-party, have access to program a closed system, even if the tools were crappy?).

I agree with you that the old Mac OS had poor MIS/enterprise management tools. This has been well documented. But it is totally irrelevant to the closed-system debate and even more so the the typical home user scenario - the genesis of this thread (yea, I know, it was a long time ago). Actually, the thread was about backups, so I am sanctioning myself for being off-topic!!!   I will pay penance by being nice to slopbuckets for a week. ;D


;D