Computer operating systems

[CitroJim]

I remember that, a long time ago, it was possible to get an external CD-ROM drive that connected to a printer port (provided it was bi-directional). I wonder if it might be possible to get hold of one of those?

Bloody hell Alastair, that's going back a bit. Noah had those on the Ark I believe...

[myglaren]

PCMCIA SCSI CD ROM drive

Not worth spending that kind of money on it, especially as it might fail. It's a cheap (read FREE) fix or the bin for it.

[Northern_Mike]

I remember that, a long time ago, it was possible to get an external CD-ROM drive that connected to a printer port (provided it was bi-directional). I wonder if it might be possible to get hold of one of those?

Bloody hell Alastair, that's going back a bit. Noah had those on the Ark I believe...

He did as well! I bought a 2-speed HP CD writer with its own SCSI card back in 1996. It cost £399 I believe. It was slow, not hugely reliable, and the blank CDs were a good few quid each - expensive enough to take faulty ones back to the shop!

I'm not sure if I could boot from it or not.

[Northern_Mike]

PCMCIA SCSI CD ROM drive

Not worth spending that kind of money on it, especially as it might fail. It's a cheap (read FREE) fix or the bin for it.

Join your local Freegle/Freecycle group and put a wanted request on there. People are always trying to get rid of old tat like that (especially on the Reading one)

[myglaren]

I'm going to try the PXE suggestion that Ben made over the weekend if I get the chance.
If that fails they can have it back running the way out of date XP which will crash and burn in no time flat.

I have Xubuntu running on a Fujitsu laptop with dodgy hardware - keeps doing odd things and it ain't fast (it was worse with Windows though)

Main machine upgrading to Umbongo 13.10 now

[Xaccers]

I'm going to try the PXE suggestion that Ben made over the weekend if I get the chance.

Have a read of this then http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_pxe_install_server" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[myglaren]

Ta for that Xac.
I did look at some similar guides when you and Ben came up with the suggestion but it is a bit out of the areas I usually roam in and I haven't networked my computers in ages so went for the simpler solutions first.

I keep going to network them but it never happens. It seemed so much simpler with SüSE than it is now.

[spider]

Having had to do a "refresh" (ie no data is lost) with Windows8 as the Store never worked with a 7 upgrade, quite a lot of my programs were removed and dropped into windows.old I need to restore and re-install them.

Reason being 8.1 was only (easily) available by the Store method.

[myglaren]

I've seen reports of the update bricking some machines - mainly Surface tablets

Umbongo update completely painless on the two machines I have done.

No progress on the laptop, mainly down to inertia and finding other jobs to do instead. Not overly sanguine about turning my primary computer into a server just yet.

[CitroJim]

Just updated to Saucy Salamander Nothing earth-shatteringly different to Roaring Ringtail but it seems a bit faster and slicker...

[myglaren]

Indeed I have discovered very few changes up to now - although I do use the KDE version and Mint "Olivia"* in fairly equal measures now - depends which computer I can get to.

Most significant difference was log in procedure that defeated me for a while after my daughter had been using it, and I have a panel icon to change keyboard map/language.

*To be replaced by "Petra" soon

[Hell Razor5543]

Got a bit of a weird one. My PC has been complaining that the primary HDD is getting full (less than 3GB out of 119GB), and the swap file is on its own dedicated HDD. The O/S is W7 Ultimate, 64b. I have just upgraded the memory from 16GB to 32GB, and somehow I have now got 14.7GB available on the primary HDD. Nothing else has been done. WTF has happened?!? I want to know how this happened.

I am intending to upgrade the drives, but this one has confused me (but that ain't difficult!).

[Xaccers]

Just upgraded

[CitroJim]

Just upgraded

That's nice for you...

Would the new OS be called 'Kit Kat' by any chance?

[Xaccers]

Just upgraded

That's nice for you...

Would the new OS be called 'Kit Kat' by any chance?

Yup, so the debate starts on the internet as to what the next one will be called, lollypop or lemon meringue pie perhaps, or maybe a tie in with Lindt?

The new email app has some nice features, such as showing the contact image next to the email if you have an image set, otherwise a square tile with their first initial is displayed with a unique background colour to differenciate between senders easily.
I'm going to have to get hold of Exchange 2010 though and upgrade as Exchange 2003 had a different way of implementing activesync. Lets face it, Microsoft late to the party as usual sort of bodged it to enable connections from mobile devices, to the extent that in vanilla form, if you wanted a nice looking login page for your OWA users it would break activesync. I had to do some considerable tweaking to get it to work on my server with both (basically you create a new virtual site to handle seperate connections).
Consiquently as mobiles adhere to the new activesync method, some features aren't available for 2003 connections without additional coding (ie a 3rd party app) such as being able to search through the inbox, and now with KitKat it appears that hyperlinks are no longer being recognised, although that may be down to a court case where someone patented the ability to recognise text in an email on a smartphone and make it clickable (such as being able to dial a phone number in someone's signature) so as 2003 emails are viewed as text rather than html, without the ability to recognise links the feature no longer works (thanks Apple/Nokia/whomever holds the patent).
Emails from Exchange 2010 can be viewed as text, rich text or html, so if a hyperlink is included as html then the link works. Stupid American patent system.