On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 20:49:31 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:



Having said that Norton 360 won't run Antispam because there is some sort of
conflict, but I expect **** from software. I wouldn't put up with it with
any other product, but you don't seem to have a choice with software.

Thanks for the advice though.



Yes you do!. Ditch the Norton anti virus if you have that and use AVG
much better

If he used nothing he'd be better off than with Norton AV. It is
(still) bloated and won't play well with anything else.

I've seen that POS (all domestic variants) cause more issues than any
virus ever has (on too many machines).

All the best ..

T i m

Steve Firth wrote:

In brief, yes.

If you want a good computer and you don't understand computers much, go
and buy an iMac. It will do most of what you want straight out of the
box. If you want to do MS Office stuff install Neo Office which is free.

Dell also fare badly in terms of delivery, reliability and availability
(that last one as you discovered).

http://preview.tinyurl.com/33p2zm

Steve,

That is a report of a 3rd party support company that finds not many Mac
users call them compared with the numbers of Macs out there.

Interesting as it is, it could be that Macs are good - or that their
support is good - or merely that Mac users don't call that company.

I'd say to anyone looking at buying a Mac exactly what I said to my
mother. Sure, they may be good, but don't ask me for help, I don't
understand them. If you know what you are doing (and you obviously do),
or you know someone who will help you, fine, go ahead.

Andy

Andy Champ wrote:

I'd say to anyone looking at buying a Mac exactly what I said to my
mother. Sure, they may be good, but don't ask me for help, I don't
understand them.

You don't understand Unix? How bizarre.

tony sayer wrote:

Having said that Norton 360 won't run Antispam because there is some sort of
conflict, but I expect **** from software. I wouldn't put up with it with
any other product, but you don't seem to have a choice with software.

Thanks for the advice though.



Yes you do!. Ditch the Norton anti virus if you have that and use AVG
much better

Yup, I would second that. Norton has become practically unusable in
recent years. It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:05:18 +0000, (Steve Firth)
wrote:

Andy Champ wrote:

I'd say to anyone looking at buying a Mac exactly what I said to my
mother. Sure, they may be good, but don't ask me for help, I don't
understand them.

You don't understand Unix? How bizarre.

A bit like CP/M or TRS80 speak isn't it ?

One or t' other.

DG

On 2008-01-07 23:51:11 +0000, John Rumm said:

tony sayer wrote:

Having said that Norton 360 won't run Antispam because there is some
sort of conflict, but I expect **** from software. I wouldn't put up
with it with any other product, but you don't seem to have a choice
with software.

Thanks for the advice though.



Yes you do!. Ditch the Norton anti virus if you have that and use AVG
much better

Yup, I would second that. Norton has become practically unusable in
recent years. It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.

The firewall piece seems to arbitrarily go tits up for some unknown
reason as well.

Derek Geldard wrote:

On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:05:18 +0000, (Steve Firth)
wrote:

Andy Champ wrote:

I'd say to anyone looking at buying a Mac exactly what I said to my
mother. Sure, they may be good, but don't ask me for help, I don't
understand them.

You don't understand Unix? How bizarre.

A bit like CP/M

yawn

You're using an OS built on a cheap clone of CP/M.

John Rumm wrote:

It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.

AVG Still sucks cycles as does Zone Alarm. And running both together
brings my wife's HP laptop to a standstill. I'm going to buy her a real
computer this year.

On 2008-01-08 00:58:29 +0000, (Steve Firth) said:

John Rumm wrote:

It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.

AVG Still sucks cycles as does Zone Alarm. And running both together
brings my wife's HP laptop to a standstill. I'm going to buy her a real
computer this year.

iMac?

Andy Hall wrote:

On 2008-01-08 00:58:29 +0000, (Steve Firth) said:

John Rumm wrote:

It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.

AVG Still sucks cycles as does Zone Alarm. And running both together
brings my wife's HP laptop to a standstill. I'm going to buy her a real
computer this year.

iMac?

Probably, although I'll let her use this MBP for a time to see if she
would prefer another laptop. The HP has been such a shoddy piece of work
that I suspect she'll be glad to see the back of it.

In article , John Rumm see.my.signa
scribeth thus
tony sayer wrote:

Having said that Norton 360 won't run Antispam because there is some sort of
conflict, but I expect **** from software. I wouldn't put up with it with
any other product, but you don't seem to have a choice with software.

Thanks for the advice though.



Yes you do!. Ditch the Norton anti virus if you have that and use AVG
much better

Yup, I would second that. Norton has become practically unusable in
recent years. It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.



And while your about it ditch the Adobe Reader and get Foxit reader
...much --lighter-- to run..
--
Tony Sayer

In article , Steve Firth
scribeth thus
John Rumm wrote:

It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.

AVG Still sucks cycles as does Zone Alarm. And running both together
brings my wife's HP laptop to a standstill. I'm going to buy her a real
computer this year.

What do you mean by a real computer?, hasn't she already got one then?..

Mind you most everyone using an ADSL router has a pretty good firewall
built into that with NAT translation inherent...
--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer wrote:

In article , Steve Firth
scribeth thus
John Rumm wrote:

It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.

AVG Still sucks cycles as does Zone Alarm. And running both together
brings my wife's HP laptop to a standstill. I'm going to buy her a real
computer this year.

What do you mean by a real computer?, hasn't she already got one then?..

Nah just some rubbish built by HP with an OS designed by the blind
watchmaker.

Steve Firth wrote:

John Rumm wrote:

It can bring even relatively high end machines to their
knees. AVG seems to do a much more effective job for a fraction of the
resources used.

AVG Still sucks cycles as does Zone Alarm. And running both together
brings my wife's HP laptop to a standstill. I'm going to buy her a real
computer this year.

There is no getting away from the fact that all the AV packages place a
significant load on the machines these days - especially when they scan
for non virus malware as well.

You could go for AVG internet security and ditch Zone Alarm. The AVG
bundled firewall does not seem particularly resource heavy. (i.e. there
is no real performance difference between the Internet Security Package
and the Anti Malware one)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

There is no getting away from the fact that all the AV packages place a
significant load on the machines these days - especially when they scan
for non virus malware as well.

That's quite true, but in the meantime, i'd suggest ditching AVG
(whose detection rate has always seemed poor in real-world experience
to Avast), and do a general sweep of the system to make sure there's
nothing untoward running on it.

For the OP...

First things first, press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC and see how many processes
she has running - a "clean" system (new install) *with* Avast and
ZoneAlarm generally has 33-34.

My heavily loaded system (over 18 months old, and has a _lot_ of apps
installed) currently has 43 processes, but of these, two are my
newsreader (one for the main app, one for this message), an email
program, and a browser. Another task is the task manager which I still
have open as I type now, so call it 42 :-p

Also, check the amount of memory in the machine - you want to look at
the "commit charge" in the status bar of the task manager. Make sure
she has at least as much physical memory in the machine as she is for
the "commit charge" or it'll just page to disk permanently.

Has it been defragged lately ? - if not, I can recommend JKDefrag
(google for it) - it's small, system friendly, and very efficient.
There's no "interface" for it as such, you can simply close the window
to stop it running (it'll finish the file it's working on first)

If she has significantly more processes, it's worth going to
hijackthis.de and downloading HijackThis - run it with the "save to
logfile" option, and copy and paste the results to the window on the
same site to give yourself an idea what each thing might be as the
machine boots. Take the results with a pinch of salt though, as it
doesn't know every variation of every application in the world :-}

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:47:54 +0000, (Steve Firth)
wrote:

Derek Geldard wrote:

On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:05:18 +0000, (Steve Firth)
wrote:

Andy Champ wrote:

I'd say to anyone looking at buying a Mac exactly what I said to my
mother. Sure, they may be good, but don't ask me for help, I don't
understand them.

You don't understand Unix? How bizarre.

A bit like CP/M

yawn

You're using an OS built on a cheap clone of CP/M.

I was hardwired in them days.

DG

On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:20:37 -0800, Man at B&Q wrote:

But what about sharing files from the same location on disc on a dual
boot machine?

Linux can read and write to all types of FAT, and read NTFS partitions
(I'm not sure what the current status is on writing to NTFS). There are
also some programs and drivers for accessing Linux's ext2/3 filesystems
from NT family Windows (NT, XP, Vista)


--
John Stumbles

Bob the builder / it'll cost 'yer
Bob the builder / loadsa dosh

Linux can read and write to all types of FAT, and read NTFS partitions
(I'm not sure what the current status is on writing to NTFS). There are
also some programs and drivers for accessing Linux's ext2/3 filesystems
from NT family Windows (NT, XP, Vista)

Writing to NTFS seems to work fine now - i've done it a couple of
times from Ubuntu 7.04 from a wubi install (a "virtual" partition that
can be used to boot linux from a hard-file mounted under NTFS) to the
same physical partition as the host OS, i.e. XP

On Sat, 05 Jan 2008 19:42:37 +0100, David in Normandy wrote:

When I passed my shuttle on to my son he installed XP on it. I'd
installed Ubuntu and two versions of Debian on it before and it had Just
Worked (TM). He spent ages hunting around for drivers for this & that
under XP. (The only reason he wants XP is to run itunes.)


--
John Stumbles

I can't stand intolerance

(The only reason he wants XP is to run itunes.)

Does he need the itunes store, or just the functionality to transfer
to the ipod ?

You could always point him towards Amarok :-}

Steve Firth wrote:

You don't understand Unix? How bizarre.

No Steve, I don't. I can use some flavours of it - but not very well.
This is true of half a dozen (1) other operating systems I've used. The
only one I truly understood was the one I wrote myself, and that didn't
do much. I understand Windows better because I've used it
professionally for many years, and that is because I write software for
a living and the biggest market for software is on Windows.


Andy

(1) Let's see... George III, VME/K, VME/B, OS/360, whatever it was on
that odd Burroughs jobby, CP/M (inc CP/M86, MP/M, CDOS),
MS-DOS-come-PC-DOS, Win 3.1, Win NT (totally different BTW), Solaris,
Ubuntu... I lose count.

Andy Champ wrote:

the biggest market for software is on Windows.

That rather depends on the approach one takes. The biggest market for
the software I wrote was Macintosh users. Sheeple may think they know
better or be proud of mastering a barbaric and poorly implemented OS,
but they're wrong.

John Stumbles wrote:
On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:20:37 -0800, Man at B&Q wrote:

But what about sharing files from the same location on disc on a dual
boot machine?

Linux can read and write to all types of FAT, and read NTFS partitions
(I'm not sure what the current status is on writing to NTFS). There
are also some programs and drivers for accessing Linux's ext2/3
filesystems from NT family Windows (NT, XP, Vista)

Help Rob! Call the TLA police!

I thought LAS was bad enough!


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

On 2008-01-08 21:28:26 +0000, John Stumbles said:

On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:20:37 -0800, Man at B&Q wrote:

But what about sharing files from the same location on disc on a dual
boot machine?

Linux can read and write to all types of FAT, and read NTFS partitions
(I'm not sure what the current status is on writing to NTFS). There are
also some programs and drivers for accessing Linux's ext2/3 filesystems
from NT family Windows (NT, XP, Vista)

You can get NTFS drivers from Paragon which work well. They do OS X
ones as well and both are RW.

In message , The
Medway Handyman writes
John Stumbles wrote:
On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:20:37 -0800, Man at B&Q wrote:

But what about sharing files from the same location on disc on a dual
boot machine?

Linux can read and write to all types of FAT, and read NTFS partitions
(I'm not sure what the current status is on writing to NTFS). There
are also some programs and drivers for accessing Linux's ext2/3
filesystems from NT family Windows (NT, XP, Vista)

Help Rob! Call the TLA police!

I thought LAS was bad enough!

You mean you don't understand FAT? That was the only TLA.

--
Si

On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:40:43 +0000, Andy Hall wrote:

On 2008-01-08 21:28:26 +0000, John Stumbles
said:

On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:20:37 -0800, Man at B&Q wrote:

But what about sharing files from the same location on disc on a dual
boot machine?

Linux can read and write to all types of FAT, and read NTFS partitions
(I'm not sure what the current status is on writing to NTFS). There are
also some programs and drivers for accessing Linux's ext2/3 filesystems
from NT family Windows (NT, XP, Vista)

You can get NTFS drivers from Paragon which work well. They do OS X
ones as well and both are RW.

The NTFS-3G project has matured quite recently (this year) and is now
being included in quite a few distributions as a read/write NTFS driver.

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:02:28 +0000, Colin Wilson wrote:

(The only reason he wants XP is to run itunes.)

Does he need the itunes store, or just the functionality to transfer
to the ipod ?

You could always point him towards Amarok :-}

Just transfer to/from the iPod. It's a nano. We tried gtkpod(? mumble)
which seemed to have been written by whoever designed the Solaris
installer :-(. Does amarok work with nanos?

--
John Stumbles

Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
Tits like coconuts

Does amarok work with nanos?

I was under the possibly misguided impression it worked with all of
them, but I could be wrong :-}