The joys of installing everything to a new laptop….
Why do they insist on installing all this useless crap to the desk?
BTW- Step one in laptop preparation- remove the icon for IE and install firefox.
New Laptop
by John Cole| 53 Comments
This post is in: Site Maintenance
Pb
Sounds like fun.
You’re installing Windows?
Yep, I’ve identified the problem! :)
Good luck with it, John, let us know if you get stuck! (seriously, we’ve got more computer geeks following you here than a stripper would at COMDEX…)
capelza
Ah the joys of a new computor. When I got my Mac, I went gaily along deletling some stuff I thought I’d never use.
Now I’m not so sure that I shouldn’t have kept some of it. Oh well. I have borh Netscape and IE (oddly the few times I go to Kos, Netscape won’t read the comments, but the aging IE will).
Would go with Firefox, but I have to switch over to OS10 to do so and that would involve new software as the software that came with the comp is still OS9. I’m just not that inspired.
Mr Furious
Whatja get?
Pb
capelza,
Provided it ran decently on your hardware, I’m sure OS X would be well worth it. But I understand the sentiment (“if it ain’t (too) broke…”) as well. And I’m sure there are other decent browsers out there for MacOS 9–in fact, Mozilla.org recommends using iCab over Mozilla 1.2.1.
Pb
Dude, he was getting a Dell. (IIRC)
Keith
It helps the Dells/HPs of the world subsidize the cheap hardware (a clean installation of the retail version of XP will only install the Recycling Bin the the desktop, but OEMs have the freedom to customize the installation with extra programs & change what icon(s) sit on your desktop…one of the agreements MS made to get out of trouble with the government)
capelza
pb, thanks for the tip. I’ll check that out. OS10 is on the comp, but it’s the earliest version and my understanding is that the first OS10 wasn’t all together worked out. At least that’s what my “Mac doctor” told me.
I guess I could update it, but yeah, it isn’t too broken to fix yet. I’m sure I’ll go there when I get a new comp. This Imac was the last generation of the big unibody ones. Right after (I mean within a few months) the next generation came out. Oh well. At least my cat loves it, I can’t keep her off the top of it.
Pb
capelza,
Oh, well, if you’re running OS X, then I’m sure there are other browsers to choose from, starting with Safari, and surely some flavor of Mozilla as well.
On Linux, I generally use Konqueror (Safari was based on this) or Firefox, and Mozilla for mail. IE is the devil, especially on a Mac. :)
The Other Steve
When I get my Dell E1505, I formatted the harddrive and reinstalled everything from scratch to get rid of their stupid crap stuff.
I’m pretty much exclusively using IE7 RC1 these days. It’s much faster than Firefox and has eliminated the problems I had with IE6(such as locking up when trying to do a search on a page in balloon-juice).
I don’t understand why people use Linux and the Mac. How do you get by day to day without being able to get any work done? :-)
Pb
The same way you do–blogs! :)
Keith
Yeesh, that doesn’t speak well towards Firefox, because I think the tab switching and rendering on IE7RC1 is just as slow as it was on IE6 w/ MSN toolbar, and I’m on a 3GHz P4 with a gig of memory.
Pb
Yeah, there’s no good excuse for that to be slow. I upgraded recently to something at least that nice, (AMD64 Dual Core 3800+, 2GB RAM) and my browsers and other apps have been nothing but snappy! :)
RSA
Hey, capelza,
You may already be aware of this, but Apple has built a migration assistant into OS X to make it easy to transfer stuff to a new Mac through a FireWire cable. Not a bad idea, given the difficulties people tend to have with the process.
And TOS writes:
I see that political beliefs are orthogonal to computer religion.
Bombadil
From your keyboard to IT’s ears. The work machine has IE and we aren’t allowed to load other software. I use Firefox at home and it works great, with the exception of a very few sites with formatting problems.
Pb
They probably aren’t entirely, actually, I’d expect to see some weak correlations between certain political groups and certain operating systems, especially at the extremes.
capelza
Thank you RSA.
The OS10 is one the comp, I have just never used it. It’s getting quite dusty in it’s folder.
TOS. I have used both PC and Mac in my career. I’ll take the MAC any day. I have never had a crash, a virus or had to avail myself of a patch. It’s just a more elgant system…and Bill Gates has little impact on my life. In fact, the less Mac friendly Microsoft becomes, the less inclined I am to ever consider a PC. Who needs MSN messanger. :P
Pb
capelza,
Although it is confusing, don’t confuse the PC with Windows! (is there any clearer example of Microsoft’s monopoly than that conflation?) I’m thrilled with my Linux PC, and the next computer you get will probably be a Mac PC… :)
Keith
I’m a Windows person myself (and I rarely install non-MS software on my machine unless I’ve written it myself, since so many vendors fail to follow guidelines for the application and/or the installer), and the only only time my PC has crashed to my recollection (since Win2K) has been with hardware failure/overheating. It’s a factor of the environment, really. Macs perform great because Apple has been able to keep the hardware and OS relatively pure, whereas MS has to deal with an exponentially greater number of interoperatibility issues (again, this is why I think I experience so few crashes…ditto for apps, as I haven’t had an Office app crash in years, either)
With regards to viruses and patches, it’s something that everyone is going to have to get used to at some point or another, especially with patches. The virus problem is getting closer to being solved (or contained really), as OSs are moving towards sandboxing and signing along with what those in the managed code world call “Code Access Security” (apps tell the OS/runtime what permissions they use ahead of time), but in the meantime, the more popular your OS is, the more visuses you will see (“Bring them on”).
Patches are just a part of life, as the online world means your OS is more dynamic and less static than has been traditionally the norm, but Windows has always made it a pain in the ass because MS has done such a poor job of preventing reboots during patching. They say they’re improving it with Vista, but Win2K was supposed to only have 5 scenarios that require reboot (although to be fair, some of this is also app writers not following guidelines for writing Windows code)
Bombadil
John, I’m blanking on the name of any of the right now, but there are plenty of software packages that you can use to port stuff from one machine to another. I got one at Staple’s for about $30 that did the trick.
RSA
That’s probably true, though I hadn’t thought of it. My experience is that Macintoshes seem more common among in stereotypically liberal academic world. This even holds to some extent for computer scientists, who (again in my experience) are as likely to make the choice based on aesthetics (of hardware, software, or applications) as anything else.
The Other Steve
I’ve never seen any correlation.
Seriously, if anything I suppose you could use social attitudes such as anti-establishment or a self-concious desire to feel different. Those don’t seem to be correlated with the parties either, at least not any more.
Pb
The Other Steve,
Yeah, note that I said political groups. For example, Pew’s typology groups.
Pb
RSA,
And on the flip side, I’d imagine that the more corporate or authoritarian out there (especially authoritarian followers) would in general be more likely to consolidate around Windows instead.
The Other Steve
Naw, it’s more that life not using what is mainstream sucks.
It’s more laziness than anything else.
RSA
Pb,
. . .which is weird, given the control Apple maintains over the Mac. Not that I disagree with your speculation, though. Also, I just realized that I have seen some overlap between Linux fanatics and hardcore libertarians, for obvious reasons. (Libertarians are one group of people I’d actually expect to choose a computer system based on ideological grounds.)
Pb
The Other Steve,
Well of course there are monopoly effects involved, which is why I said a ‘weak’ correllation.
Now, I’ve never been mainstream, but I can certainly be lazy. In fact, that’s a lot of why I switched in the first place–too much hassling with it, otherwise.
Pb
RSA,
They’ve got the market for hip, counterculture authoritarian followers cornered? I wonder what David Horowitz uses/used. :)
I’ve got some libertarian leanings, but I’m certainly not hardcore–more of a liberal/libertarian. But yeah, if you just want to do things the way you want to do them (freedom, baby!) then that would certainly fit in and make sense.
bago
Aww, no IE7? I just signed off on the Phishing feedback site that the msn toolbar and IE7 will send people too.
John Cole
I am no Microsoft hater- I just think IE sucks.
I actually am quite fond of Windows- I remember the days when half the shit you wanted to use didn’t work on one system or the other- back in the Amiga, C64, Apple, chaos days.
I don’t think Bill Gates is a God or anything, but Windows based products have worked quite well for me. Maybe I don’t notice the crashes- have not had one in years that I can remember, and maybe I can tolerate the memory leaks that seemed to happen all the time because I remember the Windows 3.1 days with the alarmingly regular BSOD. Today everything seems pretty damn stable, accessible, and operable.
I am down with that. When I log on every day (another antiquated term) I want to get right to
downloading pr0nreading news and answering student email, so Windows works just fine for me.The Other Steve
Compare installing a printer, or sharing a directory between the systems, then get back to me about hassling. :-)
It’s the simple things that count.
The Other Steve
Preach it brother!
While it was cool to have computers in the 1980s, in terms of futzing around to get simple things to work… Windows has been a godsend!
Pb
Ah, those were the days… I have fond memories of my C64. :)
LOL. Actually I think Windows 3.x was probably more stable than Windows 9x in a lot of ways. And of course Windows 2000/XP was a huge improvement over that, so I suppose if you’re just comparing one Windows to another Windows, you’d certainly think that things have gotten better.
Pb
If by ‘godsend’ you mean ‘plague’… :)
Seriously, though, when I do use Windows, I generally end up spending time futzing around trying to get Windows to *not* do annoying things–and that’s when I’m not futzing around trying to get it to do what I want it to do in the first place. Windows is ok when it works. But when it doesn’t, it can get really bad…
KC
Speaking of laptops, I may be in the market for one soon. When I bought my laptop from Compusa, I got the whole $250 fix “everything” warranty. Little did I know, “external” stuff, such as my screen coming out of its hinges, is considered outside the warranty. I was told it would be $1000 to repair. Now I’ve taken it to a local computer repair shop in the hopes they can do something. Really pisses me off though.
The Other Steve
Sadly, most Linux users experiences of Windows stopped sometime around Windows 98, so it’s hard to know whether to take you seriously or not. :-)
Perry Como
KC, check out http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/ — I bought one from them about a year ago and have been happy. I got their extended warranty on a damaged screen, which was a good thing. Someone cracked my screen and they replaced it with no hassle. Small company, good customer service in my experience.
Andrew
I still use windows at work and I prefer linux. I use Ubuntu on my desktop, Debian on my webserver, and OS X on my wife’s mac mini.
Ubuntu simply lets me do what I want to do without out fighting me like windows does. It’s the little things that I like. Like being able to right click on a window and say always on top. Being to ssh into servers. Having usable scripting and comand lines. I can do all of that on OS X or Windows, but they make it hard.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Besides the original Mac OS and its wonderful interface, I liked Windows 95. It was way more stable than 3.1 and hadn’t gotten too cluttered. I still have the Install CD.
Larry
One, bundling stuff that you probably won’t use is what keeps the prices down on the gear. This has been true for about ten years now.
Two, I bought a top name brand Celeron M laptop at a top name brand store on Memorial Day. It now has 768m of ram, 40g disk, built in Wireless G, DVD-CD/RW and a TrueBrite screen, and including tax, license and dealer prep and extra memory, cost me less than $500. Why on earth would I complain about anything related to this purchase? I couldn’t have touched this set of specs for less than twice that, just a short time ago. The only thing I didn’t get was a lot of disk space, and I don’t need a lot of disk space.
Three, some things will not run properly on any browser but IE. For those things, I use IE. For everything else, I use Opera.
Pb
After Windows 98, I wouldn’t blame them.
And really, if Microsoft came up with something strikingly more useful and compelling–that is to say, to the tune of $200 or so extra over and above Linux–I *might* consider switching. But I can’t really think of what that could possibly be, and as it stands now, you couldn’t pay me $200 to switch. And also, if I wanted to replace all the software I use now with commercial software, it would cost a lot more than that, to the extent that that’s even possible.
Pb
Andrew,
Which Ubuntu did you install? I tried out the Desktop version under qemu, and while it was very straightforward and easy to install, it was definitely geared towards the non-technical user. I guess the Server version probably would have been more my speed. :)
rachel
Pb,
I like the way Konqueror can call up my Amarok controls right there in the browser (I usually run my browers on desktop 1 and multimedia on desktop 4), but otherwise it’s a lot slower than I like, so I’ve mostly moved over to Opera now for my browsing. Is there any way to speed Konqueror up that you know of, like there is for Firefox?
Andrew,
Have you checked out Kubuntu? The reason I ask is some people like KDE better than Gnome.
The Other Steve
LOL! You’d save $200 just by the increased productivity in one week. :-)
Pb
rachel,
How did you go about speeding firefox up? I originally switched to konqueror because firefox was slower on my old machine. They’re both fine now, though. :)
Depending on your machine configuration, konqueror does have some options that are worth checking out, in the Performance section, (Settings -> Configure Konqueror… -> Performance) and possibly the Cache section as well.
Also, I haven’t used amarok before, but it looks neat, maybe I’ll try that out sometime as well…
Pb
If I didn’t, could I bill you? :)
Bruce in Alta California
Going thru the birth pangs also.
Rule #1: When you think your laptop is on the fritz and its time to look for a model that is not over 3 years old, get serious, don’t just surf around and look at web pages to “build” a laptop with all the goo-gaws for the least amount of money.
Else: You will end up at a Mega-store at 9pm one night desperately looking to buy one off the shelf
Rule #2: Make a list of all the programs you NEED on your new laptop and gather up the INSTALL CDs
Else: You will get back from the Mega-store at 11pm and realize a lot of your software is somewhere else (at work)
Rule #3: Data files include email and program configurations so have them ready to move to the new lap-top
Else: Duh, I thought email was in My Documents. Oh sh*t. Tell me again how to make this program default to chartruse and mauve colors.
Rule #4: Adobe Acrobat. Don’t leave home without it.
Else: Crap, all I can download is reader and I can’t find my key code for the full version. Oh crap, how am I susposed to make my printer also scan documents?
Rule #5: How do I get this to hook up to my network and print/scan to/from my printer/scanner?
Else: I figured out how to connect to the web, still working on that dadburn network printer (now where is that printer install disk and how does that help me scan documents?)
Rule #6: FAX. fax? ohhhhhhh, me so tired.
rachel
Pb,
It’s been a few years, but–as I recall–I entered about:config into the navigation bar and did stuff to the network settings. The Firefox Tweak Guide should have a better explanation than what I can give you.
The Other Steve
Bruce in Alta California – Good advice!
I keep all of my product keys as notes in Outlook. So I have them all in one place. Of course the key is when reinstalling the computer, to remember to write down the product key to reinstall Outlook. :-)
demimondian in exile
The Firefox tweak guide advocates at least one thing which I’d recommend against: upping the number of live connections you keep alive at any given time. It’s a tragedy of the commons thing: you may (or may not) get faster service, but you are potentially denying access to someone else.
Andrew
PB,
I use the straight desktop version of ubuntu. It is geared for for a less technical crowd. However, a few apt-gets and it suits me just fine.
El Cruzado
I’ll just chime in to say that Mac OS X started being good at 10.3, is actually real good now (10.4.7 as of last count) and isn’t getting worse any time soon. For the one above who had an old unused version installed, I’ll say that 10.4 is worth it. It will take a little getting used to some of the changes, but by now it works fine, and it’s fast enough in older computers (the speed difference with OS 9 is more than made up with the improvements).
I use Windows often and don’t have much problem with it. Then again, I know what I’m up to with it and don’t trust it with my personal stuff.
Pb
The Other Steve,
What is this ‘product key’ of which you speak–is that another one of Microsoft’s time-saving initiatives? :)
rachel
Pb,
‘Product key,’ ‘product key’… I seem to remember something about that from some nightmare I had a long time ago.