[Thinkpad] "Get with the program" [Was New project: A20m]

Sorry, I was unclear.

The new things work extremely well, when they work. However at a
high price in money and complexity which I am unwilling to accept--
my personal preference for simplicity. And failure is built in.

When they fail, they fail in a way unacceptable to me e.g. often
forcing a total reinstall. I do not want to be part of such
a 'modern age'--which doesn't look modern to me, just a cage built
by MS to trap us in their coils. Aside from being impractical
(as I say, I am often in places where there is no access to support,
so I have to be able to fix things myself) I find it ethically
unacceptable. (I refer to forced updates, intrusion into my
machine, forced signup for Net software and the like.)

I understand the virtues of NTFS but the added level of complexity
is too risky for me. If I stay at FAT16 and FAT32 I can access the
partitions easily with everything. Drives are big enough and cheap
enough now that the increased space demand is not burdensome.

"The patches and fixes are still available for W2K . . ." Yes this
worries me; MS may take everything down at some point. It is my
policy to have no dealings with a firm that takes down old patches
and drivers, so that will be the end between MS and me when that day
comes. (I no longer purchase HP equipment for this reason; on the
EOL date they take down all s/w and manuals from their website, even
though their excellent machines are still chugging along. I have a
bunch of them still going over 300,000 pages.)

" . . . it is time to get with the program" Do you have '666' inscribed
on your forehead? :):) I am never going to get with any MS program.
They are an unethical firm with whom I must occasionally cohabit. Soon
it will be over.

Jeffrey Race

PS: I think I "have trouble" because I have a personal policy to own
nothing which I can't troubleshoot and possibly fix myself. Others
go on blissfully ignorant of all except the MS-approved recovery
methods. This is good enough for them say 95% of the time. I never
bet. Only 100% is good enough for me. I've solved urgent problems at
midnight for myself and others (who phone me at midnight) because I
took the time to learn while the sun shone. My systems work and
work reliably for me when they get up and going. The difficulties I
have now come from (a) a hard drive physical failure (b) unravelling the
nightmare of an XP machine thrust upon me by my daughter's school.

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Computer Services canyonlands@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 12:26:39 -0700
To: jrace@attglobal.net, thinkpad@stderr.org
Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] New project: A20m

It is long past time for you to wander into the modern age. Give up your
'familiar tools" because all the new stuff is better, works better, does
more, and does it all more safely.

Windows XP works extremely well on a T-23, and pretty good on a 600X, but
still better than Windows 98SE. Windows 2000 Professional is good, and I
use it myself, but you NEED to use NTFS for things to work as you expect
them to work.

Why is it that thousands of Thinkpads users can make things work, trouble
free, when you, with a PhD, still have trouble? It is because you are using
technology that is 10 to 15 years old.

The patches and fixes are still available for W2K, but it is time to get
with the program.

RayBay

On Oct 31, 2007 9:14 AM, jrace@attglobal.net <jrace@attglobal.net> wrote:

> 15-year old daughter's reject so Daddy will set it up as spare
> for his own use.
>
> OEMd as W98SE but someone put XP on it, lots of problems.
> I plan to wipe OS and put W2K on it.
>
> Problem: I want to save some of the data on Drive C but wipe
> all the XP stuff hidden and transparent. But when I boot Partition
> Magic 8 it shows only one primary NTFS partition, 7854 mb in use, 3655 mb
> free.
>
> Can I convert this to FAT32, which I would use for W2K?
> This would allow me to use all my familiar tools. I will have no
> NTFS stuff in my life.
>
> Tks for all help and advice.
>
> Jeffrey Race
>

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Received on Thu Nov 1 22:11:14 2007