Davey wrote:

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 04:15:54 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:

When I use my phone for the internet or email I feel like I'm on foot
with a ball and chain.

I use my 'phone as a 'phone. Only. That's what it's for, the PC is for
computing.

Indeed so, that's all my elderly phone will do. It is actually
far better at being a phone then the latest smart phones my
partner uses.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Plant amazing Acers.

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 10:47:42 +0000
Chris J Dixon wrote:

Davey wrote:

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 04:15:54 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:

When I use my phone for the internet or email I feel like I'm on
foot with a ball and chain.

I use my 'phone as a 'phone. Only. That's what it's for, the PC is
for computing.

Indeed so, that's all my elderly phone will do. It is actually
far better at being a phone then the latest smart phones my
partner uses.

Chris

"Do one thing, and do it well". "Smart" does not necessarily mean more
useful.
Although I do occasionally wish mine had a camera function, but I can
live without it.

--
Davey.

In article , Chris J Dixon
scribeth thus
Davey wrote:

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 04:15:54 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:

When I use my phone for the internet or email I feel like I'm on foot
with a ball and chain.

I use my 'phone as a 'phone. Only. That's what it's for, the PC is for
computing.

Indeed so, that's all my elderly phone will do. It is actually
far better at being a phone then the latest smart phones my
partner uses.


Are any new "smartfones" any good at being a Telephone?.


Chris

--
Tony Sayer

On 23/02/2014 04:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/02/14 15:40, Huge wrote:
On 2014-02-21, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:59, Huge wrote:
*grin* Welcome to my world. I'm just setting up to move from Ubuntu
10.04 to
12.04. (Mostly because, increasingly, the latest versions of
applications
will not run because their dependent libraries are too old.) The first
step was to move all my data onto a separate disk from the O/S so I can
upgrade the O/S by itself. That's now done and working fine. So, what
next?

Oh, the pain. Sigh.

fx looks up at Jethro's post

So it's just as bad. I thought so. Certainly the impression I've gained
from 6 months of using Linux professionally for the first time.

W-e-e-e-e-e-e-llll. I *have* been running this Linux for 4 years without
upgrading and probably could keep going for some time, but I have a
specific
requirement for some recent software which whinges about out of date
libraries.

And in that its no different - in fact its worse - on say MAC OSX or
Windows.

Wife runs a G5 power PC. Not Intel. Because old programs that cost a LOT
of money are on it.

Guess what cant get latest firefox for it, safari is bug ridden and
there is no way to upgrade it beyond leopard.


And sites that ONLY WORK on latest browsers don't work..Its stuck with
an ages old version of word, because newer versions don't run on power PC.

Got a new printer 'mac compatible'

Was it F***k

Drivers said 'upgrade to later OS or f*** off'.

What do you expect, MACs are designed to go obsolete every few years.


Got it working with free code. Its now running libre office as well.

Got old hardware? latest windows wont support it. Got New hardware?
wont run on older windows.

You would have to have odd hardware for a new version of windows not to
support it out of the box.


Linux has support for floppy disks still..

So does windows.
Apart from transferring files to old synths what does anyone use them for?


The point is that maintaining backwards compatibility is hell for any
OS, but its *better* with linux than anything else.

Its better if you know how to find old source code and know how to
compile it in.
A lot of the older stuff never had drivers in the first place.
You tended to only get linux drivers for hardware someone that knows how
to write drivers for actually wanted to use. I suppose there may be a
bit more support from manufacturers know but I doubt it.


You don't have to buy new hardware and anew licensed copy of
windows/OS-X every couple of years to keep up with the new .docx format.

You never need a new windows to keep up with docx format, its a word
format and you don't even need a new version of that to use them.


Microsoft and Mac want you to buy new kit, Linux doesn't., its kept on
supporting old kit because the codes been written and wont be REMOVED
any time soon.

Microsoft wants you to buy software, they only started making PCs last
years.

Apple want you to buy new kit and are very good at convincing the
punters they need it.


I've got drivers for a 10 year plus old Nvidia GPU that works perfectly
well.

They work with win8 out of the box, were they in the distro you use?

Yes, it takes about 2 years for linux to catch up with the latest
bleeding edge hardware, but so what? don't buy bleeding edge hardware.

Upgrading the distro is something you do once a year once every 2 years
once every 5 years. Whatever. Driven by the need to get access to new
software that will only run on later libraries.

Or the need to get better hardware going.

With windows you just fit the better hardware and let windows sort out
the drivers unless its really bleeding edge where you might need the CD
that comes with the hardware.

With Apple you look at the windows hardware and wonder why the same
thing costs twice as much.


It's not hard to upgrade. Hive off the home directory somewhere, and any
other useful stuff in /var or /etc. wipe and do a clean reinstall, copy
home dir back and chances are everything will just 'work'

Heck its often possible to upgrade without backing up. For minor
releases anyway.

And the final thing is that the support IS THERE.

I've cut and pasted stuff on the web more than once straight into the
command line and 'fixed' some issue.

Impossible to find any support for Macs. Even Apples own support pages
for 10.4 have been removed.

And the usual advice for Windows is 'reinstall'

Well that's the linux junkies advice.
Windows you let it run the repair wizard and it will fix itself 95% of
the time.
System rollback will fix 99%.
Google will fix 99.9%.

If you have really screwed it then you use the backup image windows
keeps reminding you to make to fix it.


Nope. Give me linux.




They have, they give it to anyone, most people don't want it.

dennis@home wrote:

They have, they give it to anyone, most people don't want it.


However, this morning she noticed that Windows Outlook doesn't put up
the senders email address. I then found out after 10 minutes Googling
that this is a design feature which has been around for 10 years and is
not adjustable without adding config files to the OS. (or playing around
with multiple key presses.) There seems to be some indication, that
later Outlook versions can do this. iOS does this, as does SeaMonkey and
Thunderbird. I believe Opera also works this way. My Linux system can do
this without problems. So, being a popular OS does not demonstrate even
being adequate in this case.

On 23/02/2014 11:37, tony sayer wrote:
In article , Chris J Dixon
scribeth thus
Davey wrote:

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 04:15:54 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:

When I use my phone for the internet or email I feel like I'm on foot
with a ball and chain.

I use my 'phone as a 'phone. Only. That's what it's for, the PC is for
computing.

Indeed so, that's all my elderly phone will do. It is actually
far better at being a phone then the latest smart phones my
partner uses.


Are any new "smartfones" any good at being a Telephone?.


Chris

I love my smartphone, don't think I could now live without it.
Built in sat nav, local maps, search for local suppliers, internet
connection, decent camera - and it makes phone calls :-)




--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Capitol
wrote:

dennis@home wrote:

They have, they give it to anyone, most people don't want it.

However, this morning she noticed that Windows Outlook doesn't put up
the senders email address. I then found out after 10 minutes Googling
that this is a design feature which has been around for 10 years and
is not adjustable without adding config files to the OS. (or playing
around with multiple key presses.) There seems to be some indication,
that later Outlook versions can do this. iOS does this, as does
SeaMonkey and Thunderbird. I believe Opera also works this way. My
Linux system can do this without problems. So, being a popular OS does
not demonstrate even being adequate in this case.

So how are you supposed to know, or alter, which account you are using
to send mail? I've got six accounts set up in my email client. Or are
you talking about for received mail?

Received mail.

On 23/02/2014 09:10, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Linux has support for floppy disks still..

As does my Mac running latest OS X.

So does Win 8.1... still does not make em much use though!

--
Cheers,

John.

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

On 23/02/2014 12:36, Capitol wrote:
dennis@home wrote:

They have, they give it to anyone, most people don't want it.


However, this morning she noticed that Windows Outlook doesn't put
up the senders email address. I then found out after 10 minutes Googling
that this is a design feature which has been around for 10 years and is
not adjustable without adding config files to the OS. (or playing around
with multiple key presses.) There seems to be some indication, that
later Outlook versions can do this. iOS does this, as does SeaMonkey and
Thunderbird. I believe Opera also works this way. My Linux system can do
this without problems. So, being a popular OS does not demonstrate even
being adequate in this case.

Outlook does.

Do you mean outlook express, that software that hasn't been supported
for about 5 years? Is full of bugs and M$ say you shouldn't use?

On 23/02/2014 13:22, Tim Streater wrote:
In article om,
"dennis@home" wrote:

What do you expect, MACs are designed to go obsolete every few years.

No, MACs are fixed and there is usually no reason to change them. None
has ever changed on any machine I've ever used.

You bought a completely un-upgradeable system?
Well they would be fixed then.




With Apple you look at the windows hardware and wonder why the same
thing costs twice as much.

A typical windows fanboi myth.


Go and buy a new graphics card for a MAC and see how much more they
charge if you don't believe me.

On 23/02/14 21:35, dennis@home wrote:
On 23/02/2014 13:22, Tim Streater wrote:
In article om,
"dennis@home" wrote:

What do you expect, MACs are designed to go obsolete every few years.

No, MACs are fixed and there is usually no reason to change them. None
has ever changed on any machine I've ever used.

You bought a completely un-upgradeable system?
Well they would be fixed then.



well you can have a couple of G4s I think we still have lying around.,
Cant upgrade em at all.



With Apple you look at the windows hardware and wonder why the same
thing costs twice as much.

A typical windows fanboi myth.


Go and buy a new graphics card for a MAC and see how much more they
charge if you don't believe me.


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 22/02/2014 09:33, wrote:
An SSD is a great performance booster, but they have major file corruption problems, so are best only used for the OS. Read up about that first.

I did. And chose carefully.

Anyway I keep backups. I'd lose my newsgroup history, but that's about it.

Andy

On 23/02/2014 17:41, Huge wrote:
On 2014-02-23, tony sayer wrote:
Are any new "smartfones" any good at being a Telephone?.

Blackberry Z10. Can't recommend it highly enough.


How often do you have to charge it?


(my "dumb phone" - most months...)

Andy

dennis@home wrote:
On 23/02/2014 12:36, Capitol wrote:
dennis@home wrote:

They have, they give it to anyone, most people don't want it.


However, this morning she noticed that Windows Outlook doesn't put
up the senders email address. I then found out after 10 minutes Googling
that this is a design feature which has been around for 10 years and is
not adjustable without adding config files to the OS. (or playing around
with multiple key presses.) There seems to be some indication, that
later Outlook versions can do this. iOS does this, as does SeaMonkey and
Thunderbird. I believe Opera also works this way. My Linux system can do
this without problems. So, being a popular OS does not demonstrate even
being adequate in this case.

Outlook does.

Do you mean outlook express, that software that hasn't been supported
for about 5 years? Is full of bugs and M$ say you shouldn't use?

No. Full fat Outlook.

In message , The Medway Handyman
writes
On 23/02/2014 11:37, tony sayer wrote:
In article , Chris J Dixon
scribeth thus
Davey wrote:

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 04:15:54 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:

When I use my phone for the internet or email I feel like I'm on foot
with a ball and chain.

I use my 'phone as a 'phone. Only. That's what it's for, the PC is for
computing.

Indeed so, that's all my elderly phone will do. It is actually
far better at being a phone then the latest smart phones my
partner uses.


Are any new "smartfones" any good at being a Telephone?.


Chris

I love my smartphone, don't think I could now live without it.
Built in sat nav, local maps, search for local suppliers, internet
connection, decent camera - and it makes phone calls :-)



Indeed, I use mine loads I do use it for phone calls, though more are
made at home than out and about - using the inclusive minutes rather
than pay for landline calls. It's fine a as phone (dials numbers, I can
talk to them). But other functions are more probably as, if not more
important for me.

Whilst in theory I like the desktop with it's nice big monitor (I'm
there right now as it happens) in reality I'm more likely to use the
laptop cos I can sit on the sofa, or at the kitchen table or whatever. I
only really use the desktop nowadays when I really want the benefits -
processing lots of photos, fiddling with video, typing lots in a more
comfy position.
--
Chris French

In message , Vir
Campestris writes
On 23/02/2014 17:41, Huge wrote:
On 2014-02-23, tony sayer wrote:
Are any new "smartfones" any good at being a Telephone?.

Blackberry Z10. Can't recommend it highly enough.


How often do you have to charge it?


I charge my smartphone most days

(my "dumb phone" - most months...)


Personally, I'd rather have a device that is more useful to me. some
days I make or receive no phone calls at all, but I use other functions
everyday.

(And yes, these is a pointless argument, people should use whatever
suits them best, but I really would have thought we had moved on from
the "a phone should make phonecalls" type of statements)
--
Chris French

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 07:13:10 +0000, Andy Burns
wrote:

wrote:

IIRC Sandisk failed the tests, as did all brands but intel. The
problem is if power goes off during a write, massive corruption is
liable to result.

I've not looked for 2-3 years, but some SSD drives have an
ultra-capacitor which provides juice long enough for the controller to
flush the write buffers.

This was discussed, oh, about 6 months back in uk.comp.homebuilt when
I posted about what appeared to be a power down corruption issue under
win2k.

At the time (and after researching the issue of power down behaviour
of SSDs), I was quite convinced it was an issue with the Kingston 30GB
SSD I was using at the time. Now, I'm not so sure about this
hypothesis.

Several things have given me cause to suspect otherwise:

1/ I still kept seeing the dreaded BLACK screen message "Licence
Violation..." error message (corrupted registry being the cause of
this 'odd' error message) around one in every thirty cold boots, even
after upgrading to an Intel 180GB SSD, requiring a restore from the
latest image backup of the C volume (a 10GB partition space with only
about 1.5GB in use, hence a 5 minute restore operation).

2/ Despite powering the drive from the 5VSB rail (and switching the
mains off several minutes after a shutdown), I still saw the same
problem. I didn't bother leaving the 5VSB permanently on which may or
may not have made a difference.

3/ I suddenly started to experience the dreaded BlkSOD on restarts
required to complete Avast's program update _without_ any power
cycling involved. Eventually, the only way I could go forward on this
update was to uninstall Avast completely and re-install using the then
latest version it had been trying to update to. The next update after
that, unconscionably, is no longer win2k compatable so I have the
program updates set to 'manual only'.

4/ I can't recall when I last saw a BlkSOD but I think it must be well
over two months ago which is a 'record' period between image restores
over the past 3 years that I've been 'experiencing' the problem. It
might even be a whole 3 months - looking at the 'comments' in the last
3 or 4 image backups suggests they were made in anticipation rather
than as a result of playing 'catch up' after a recent BlkSOD induced
restore.

As a result, I'm beginning to think the problem may have been due to
a driver issue, aggravated by Avast's behaviour during shutdowns,
rather than an SSD power down corruption issue per se.

Getting back to the use of super caps, most consumer grade SSDs are
'Skinny designs' intended to obviate reliance on super caps meaning,
not a super cap in sight.

A year last November, I radically upgraded my brother's win2k box
using an Adata S511 120GB SSD (along with MoBo and the rest) with a
fresh install of winXP Pro to replace the win2k which was becoming too
problematic with the more current application software he needed to
install.

Strangely, this SSD lacks the SMART parameter known as "Unsafe
Shutdown" count. It's either an oversight or simply not considered
important enough to warrant logging such 'events'.

The upgraded box has never produced any hint of SSD power down
corruption over the past 15 months of its operation which is good news
for those of us thinking of using an SSD with a Non SSD Aware OS such
as msdos, win3.11, win9x and win2k since winXP is as feckin' clueless
about SSDs as win2k and all the rest[1].

It's quite true that SSDs with their 64KB to 1MB erase blocks offer a
lot more potential to scramble the contents of a random selection of
sectors making not just the 'open files' vulnerable to corruption but
entirely innocent files as well.

Whilst an HDD can lose a 64MB buffer's worth of data during a power
outage, it's usually limited to the last opened file or three which is
infinitely predictable behaviour compared to that of an SSD.

There is an extra risk but it seems to be vanishingly small compared
to my own experience if the responses to my original posting were
anything to go by (plus my research to find other similar reports of
SSD power down induced corruption - which seemed to be a pitiful few
cases with winXP and none in the case of win2k).

[1] An SSD aware OS is _supposed_ to issue a "Standby_Immediate"
command to all SSDs a second or so before disasserting the Power_On
signal to the PSU to 'switch off' the PC.

Apparently, not even win8 always issues such a command which forces
the SSD to flush all outstanding writes to the nand cells prior to
going into standby making it safe to power down.
--
Regards, J B Good

On 23/02/2014 22:48, Capitol wrote:
dennis@home wrote:
On 23/02/2014 12:36, Capitol wrote:
dennis@home wrote:

They have, they give it to anyone, most people don't want it.


However, this morning she noticed that Windows Outlook doesn't put
up the senders email address. I then found out after 10 minutes Googling
that this is a design feature which has been around for 10 years and is
not adjustable without adding config files to the OS. (or playing around
with multiple key presses.) There seems to be some indication, that
later Outlook versions can do this. iOS does this, as does SeaMonkey and
Thunderbird. I believe Opera also works this way. My Linux system can do
this without problems. So, being a popular OS does not demonstrate even
being adequate in this case.

Outlook does.

Do you mean outlook express, that software that hasn't been supported
for about 5 years? Is full of bugs and M$ say you shouldn't use?

No. Full fat Outlook.

My outlook 2007 displays the senders address (and name).
Outlook 2003 did too.

I don't have the latest version to look at.

On 23/02/2014 22:33, Tim Streater wrote:
In article om,
"dennis@home" wrote:

On 23/02/2014 13:22, Tim Streater wrote:
In article om,
"dennis@home" wrote:

What do you expect, MACs are designed to go obsolete every few years.

No, MACs are fixed and there is usually no reason to change them. None
has ever changed on any machine I've ever used.

You bought a completely un-upgradeable system?

Why would I need to change the MAC on my Mac? What benefit would that
bring?

With Apple you look at the windows hardware and wonder why the same
thing costs twice as much.

A typical windows fanboi myth.

Go and buy a new graphics card for a MAC and see how much more they
charge if you don't believe me.

A meaningless assertion. A MAC is a 48-bit number.


Very good, now go and pick your own nits.

On 23/02/14 23:19, Johny B Good wrote:
I still kept seeing the dreaded BLACK screen message "Licence
Violation..." error message (corrupted registry being the cause of
this 'odd' error message) around one in every thirty cold boots,

If its inconsistent its 99% hardware and I would suspect RAM

boot memtest.exe and let it run..


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 23/02/14 23:45, dennis@home wrote:
A meaningless assertion. A MAC is a 48-bit number.


Very good, now go and pick your own nits.
You got a light MAC?

No but I got a dark brown overcoat.


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 24/02/2014 08:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/02/14 23:45, dennis@home wrote:
A meaningless assertion. A MAC is a 48-bit number.


Very good, now go and pick your own nits.
You got a light MAC?

No but I got a dark brown overcoat.


What do you tell your wife? Beaten up again?

--
Rod

On 24/02/14 08:24, polygonum wrote:
On 24/02/2014 08:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 23/02/14 23:45, dennis@home wrote:
A meaningless assertion. A MAC is a 48-bit number.


Very good, now go and pick your own nits.
You got a light MAC?

No but I got a dark brown overcoat.


What do you tell your wife? Beaten up again?

Let's face it, she's credulous as hell..



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 08:14:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 23/02/14 23:19, Johny B Good wrote:
I still kept seeing the dreaded BLACK screen message "Licence
Violation..." error message (corrupted registry being the cause of
this 'odd' error message) around one in every thirty cold boots,

If its inconsistent its 99% hardware and I would suspect RAM

boot memtest.exe and let it run..

If it were a ram issue, I'd expect a damn sight worse symptom than
the occasional BkSOD (things like random crashes/freezes and stress
testing errors). I didn't and don't see any such 'classic ram errors'
so see no need to repeat the memtest86 test that I ran when I first
assembled the current upgrade.

This _does_ look like a hardware issue (notably the SSD rather than
ram) but I now suspect it's more likely to be a driver issue involving
NCQ support. Having said that, it seems, for the moment, to have
settled down. Who knows? It might actually have been some unfortunate
interference by Avast during a full shutdown with the earlier versions
of that AV.

It does seem rather improbable but I might as well consider _any_
possible cause since my original suspect (the SSD and power down
induced data loss) looks less and less likely to be the primary cause.
This leaves me to consider that it could be almost anything imaginable
as a causal factor in this thorny problem.

The only upside is that I made damn sure that no amount of hardware
faults, not even this one, would become a "Show Stopper" by making
image back ups of the boot partition as a matter of routine long
before the current build. I just didn't expect to be relying on such
backups more than once or twice a year. :-(
--
Regards, J B Good

On 23/02/2014 22:33, Tim Streater wrote:
In article om,
"dennis@home" wrote:

On 23/02/2014 13:22, Tim Streater wrote:
In article om,
"dennis@home" wrote:

What do you expect, MACs are designed to go obsolete every few years.

No, MACs are fixed and there is usually no reason to change them. None
has ever changed on any machine I've ever used.

You bought a completely un-upgradeable system?

Why would I need to change the MAC on my Mac? What benefit would that
bring?

With Apple you look at the windows hardware and wonder why the same
thing costs twice as much.

A typical windows fanboi myth.

Go and buy a new graphics card for a MAC and see how much more they
charge if you don't believe me.

A meaningless assertion. A MAC is a 48-bit number.

A MAC _address_ *on some network interfaces like ethernet* is a 48 bit
number.

(for the pedants)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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\================================================= ================/