Posted by
Russell Standish-2 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/NTY-Buy-Apple-gadgets-use-Google-services-buy-media-from-Amazon-tp7584915p7585014.html
On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 01:47:48PM -0700, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
>
> On 02/24/2014 01:00 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:
> >but current things like UEFI deals (which gave me an annoying
> >several nights a few months back) and the all-or-nothing manner in
> >which their programs interact; because the community college here
> >bought institutional Office licenses, their 'introduction to
> >business computing' class is predominantly an Office course (the
> >rest is Windows Explorer).
> >
> What's wrong with UEFI? Just turn off secure boot.
>
> Marcus
There's a certain amount of "who's moved my cheese". UEFI invalidates
quite a lot of hard-won knowledge, such as the use of LILO and
fdisk. I have begrudgingly moved to using grub in recent years, but
I'm still not as proficient as I was with LILO. I still use fdisk
normally, but UEFI required the use of parted, so its back to "hunt
and peck" through poorly written computer manuals. Sigh.
My most recent experience was with buying a laptop that had Windows 8
preinstalled. I knew enough by now to know that the system is
distributed on hidden partitions, so I made a careful backup of the
partitions before I started. Needless to say, the UEFI change meant
that those backups were useless, so I badgered the vendor (HP in this
case) into shipping me the OEM install disks free of charge, which
they should have supplied in the first place (like Apple do).
But even after about 5 attempts (each attempt taking roughly 36 hours
to reinstall Windows 8), I could not set up a dual boot
machine. Windows 8 insisted on repartitioning and reformatting the hard
drive (unlike earlier Windows releases), and Linux cravenly refused to
resize the NTFS partitions (perhaps my Linux distro at 1 year old was
too old), but the net effect is that I have given up trying to use
Windows 8 for now. It's just too hard, I have better things to do with
my time. If and when it becomes important, I'll try to pick up a cheap
license from Microsoft, and install it in a Virtual Machine.
Cheers
--
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Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics
[hidden email]
University of New South Wales
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