Posts by Roger Greenwood
320 posts • joined Thursday 7th September 2006 11:10 GMT
Donations
In the spirit of this report I just donated some more money to http://www.documentfoundation.org/ as I use LibreOffice.
Will this improve the economy?
Re: Yaaaayyyyyyyyy
"simple to use as dropbox"
or like google drive?
"DRM systems don't work"
For those new here, 9 years ago:-
http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt (Cory Doctorow)
Re: Who mentioned Windows?
"Eadon did. It's what he does."
and he
absolutely
will
not
stop.
ergo:- Eadon is a machine.
Posted in Badges for Commentards
Long service award?
And 1 year is not long enough. How about 5 years continuous membership for a start?
Posted in Badges for Commentards
Re: Purple Vulture
I like the quality idea, but would suggest the ratio at least 5:1 up:down
Badge should have "QA" stamp.
For that money . . .
. . I would get 2 x tablets and a chromebook. Can see this appealing only to those with more money than sense.
But . . .
. . . it got a mention on a tech website like this, and maybe others. That's hardly a fail.
I want to . . .
. . drive to the station, drive onto the train, drive off the other end. Getting from hub to hub is only 1/3 of the journey. With a car at each end rail would make sense rather than hitting the motorway as now.
p.s. also agree with Cliff - think longer term.
Posted in Review: HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook
Re: I don't get the appeal
The appeal is to "most people" i.e. who want a machine to just work and are fed up when it doesn't. They would maybe buy an apple but can't afford. They would maybe buy a tablet but think they need a keyboard.
Me and you on this forum are certainly not "most people" as we like to tinker about with stuff.
Re: Same here
Ditto on a new Lenovo - came running win7 with a win8 disc, which will not be getting used. So that's a win8 sale then?
How low can you go?
Subterranean if necessary.
Looking forward to the counterstrike!
(tonights beer:- "Blond" from thenookbrewhouse)
The time is not right for me . . .
but it will be really interesting to see more real world testing. Many thanks Trevor, great article, have a pint.
Re: They stubbed toes, I broke my leg with Backup Exec.
I wonder if one of the reasons it has been so popular in small businesses is because the resellers get a nice fat profit margin, compared to the alternatives?. Nothing to do with technical advantage. Just wondering . . . (as an ex-small business user).
"no alternatives at retail, e.g. PC world etc"
Whilst dodging tumbleweed in PC world at the weekend I did notice they were selling both versions of the chromebook. No windows 7 or other desktop OS except Apple though, so I take your point.
You mean the DYSON programme?
De-orbit
Your
Satellite
Over
Nothing important
T-EE
I was lured into leaving them. Poor coverage, poor service, prices rising.
Re: So you didn't meet this guy then?
"We're on BST right now...."
I know, I just thought 4 minutes was enough for a first pint.
Especially on a Friday.
Re: So you didn't meet this guy then?
Your post was at 9:53am GMT so you'll need another by now.
You're welcome.
Memo to BSA Members:-
Simplify your terms and people will find it easier to comply.
That is all.
Pay me
$40 a pop and I might consider trying it.
" it has been 13 years"
Only assuming you jumped first. Those clinging to XP will likely be those who also clung to NT etc., so more like 5 or 6 years then.
My last desktop NT machine died last year. We had a wake.
Wireless charger?
Like my toothbrush. No contact, sealable, nothing to prevent release.
Just need to use AC not DC power, surely this is within the weight budget of the truss?
Nominations?
If we can all have a go, how about Thomas Crapper?
(You can add your own punchline)
Re: Death to the cloud
Was down for a few hours only for us in UK - back now.
Offline docs - was good to see how offline would cope in a real test - worked really well for us, but then nothing in our cloud was critical, just useful to share.
(Pint left over from yesterday)
Re: I have lost the ultra-violet wiping-out gadget (ask your dad)
"ultra-violet wiping-out gadget" otherwise known as "the windowsill" (c)1982
p.s. "yes"
Re: Isn't Blue Sky of Death a trademark ?
Far be it from me to argue with your costings, Dominic, but what about the cost of lost/delayed sales due to the bad publicity? How many will be put off temporarily (or forever)?
I know it's impossible to answer accurately, but that doesn't mean it's not a real cost.
I guess we will get some idea when comparing market share in years to come.
"just $404m."
I would take 10% of that and be very happy thank you.
Re: Variable Relays
"full rehersal"
The system would be fully tested, usually meaning each element would tested separately. This is common when commissioning large projects. Full rehearsal is often very difficult to simulate.
It is also common, during testing, to set trip values low. It is then equally common to forget to set the proper values later.
Re: Not only can't MS sell tablets...
"Chrome OS laptops" - apparently (I am told) adverts are everywhere, and for £200 including a keyboard what's not to like when huge% of users don't have complex needs.
Money talks, and when everyone in the family wants their own?
Re: Getting away from Office
Yup - about 12 users, mainly using spreadsheets and text documents. No third party add-ins.
For files which are just on the server locally we now use LibreOffice, having also tried Star Office and OpenOffice before that. Dumped various versions of MS Office from 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007 to go to a standard platform.
Conversion between formats is always the problem, once a document is standardised in the new format it works fine. This happened previously between versions of XLS files as well, many requiring a round trip through ODF to get them working again!
For files which are better shared continuously we have moved those into Google Docs. This totals about a dozen files for 10 users and after 18 months have not regretted it for a second.
Some of these files are linked to each other so needed to change all in one go, but it wasn't difficult.
Savings? No more money wasted on office software every time we got a new computer. No more time wasted every time a spreadsheet crashed.
You may call it cheap, we call it Yorkshire Thrift.
Re: "The ribbon makes more features visible"
"customise the ribbon"
Correct - we never found it. After a couple of users had the ribbon a few years ago and got all frustrated we started using LibreOffice instead. Much calmer since then with the added bonus that I don't need to worry about licensing or the BSA when workstations get shifted around.
Re: "The ribbon makes more features visible"
"I just like to have all controls I use visible"
Exactly - I don't understand why users cannot configure the toolbar how they want it. This is what I do on my CAD system - I know what commands I will need, where I will need them, I can make custom command buttons etc. That is what drives productivity for us.
Making the system guess what you will need and hiding the rest is insane.
"how many Pis is each school involved getting"
Well at around 5000 schools in the country, I make that about 3 each. Your last point is of course the real problem. The story itself raises awareness though so many more schools may look into this further than would have otherwise.
"funding Open Source"
That won't buy anyone a floating mega toy.
"Just make your products better than everyone else does and you'll rake in money."
Very true.
And todays winner (financially) is Samsung.
I am not comparing products, just attitude and results.
"save time and money, according to Symantec"
Is exactly right.
"We would rather you spend much more money on our services instead" is what they didn't say. Reasuringly expensive is getting harder to sell.
(Pint of very expensive lager).
Directors
Tweetdeck Ltd & Twitter UK Ltd share the same 2 x directors in the UK - shame if they were to be disqualified!
Re: It's not a security hole
"does not - and cannot! - survive a boot."
"and you can already sideload those"
To my simple mind, that looks like a contradiction, so it could eventually turn into a security hole?
Above all now MS need to feel trusted, but money never seems to be far away from their thinking.
If only . . .
. . . managers could be persuaded to make coffee so essential in the workplace it was supplied free and compulsory.
Then we could tax it.
Pint of cappucino please.
Re: I use it at work too
"no migration path to Windows 8" then why have you got a rack full of them? Just wondering.
Re: Ballmer called Linux a “cancer”
Mr Ballmer was right in a way - Linux is a cancer:- It grows uncontrollably (not controlled by a single corporation) and seems unstoppable (which is not what Mr Ballmer would like).
In the case of Linux, I would say that is a good thing for competition. Only yesterday "Ubuntu on a phone" was one of the top 10 articles on the BBC news website for most of the day. I want one already.
Stages of competition
Look at the stages to go through:-
1. Ignore
2. Ridicule
3. Fight
4. Win!
Looks like MS just hit stage 3 proper in their competition with Google.
Trebles all round.
Re: Ooooh the irony
I'm also thinking SMB protocol.
Re: Lo! Microsft are dead on mobile
Rather a lot of wishful thinking there Eadon. So many businesses (especially small ones) are totally locked into MS and simply don't care anyway - they get what their IT supplier gives them and it generally works.
MS might be doomed in phones and tablets, certainly in the short term, but the business desktop is a different beast and will be much harder to conquer.
Then again my old win2003 server has just been upgraded to *nix so you may have a point.
Have a pint on me - 'tis the season to be jolly.
Re: The only sensible thing to do
They must have read Fred Brooks - something like :- "Plan to throw one away - you will anyway so you might as well plan it that way".
Re: C++ put me off programming
I used Stroustrups book to write a very simple program in 1996, and we still use it today, unmodified. Has saved us many hundreds of hours of work over the years, and eliminated errors.
Needs a kludge to get it to print from a win7 box, but hey ho.
Long live C++ - thanks Bjarne.
"generates more power than it uses"
Congratulations you have just invented perpetual motion. Have a nobel pint on me.
Re: "does not need monthly critical vuln patching"
"And how many reboots required?"
Just the one - new Kernel. But it is optional i.e. doesn't nag you all the time!
So Yes, fewer than the Windows server.
