We have Ubuntu installed on two of the machines at home and recently, after losing a Windows restore disc, I suggested installing Ubuntu 10.04 on her Dell 1545 after my suggestion.
As installations go, it was relatively painless – certainly better than reinstalling Windows. Don’t get me wrong, Dell is better than most in this respect as they gave us OEM install discs for Windows Vista, bundled software and the drivers. As strait forward as this is with Dell’s resource CD (it mostly tells you what you need), it doesn’t know any more than what model you own. This is problematic with the wireless card for example as there are two revision states and the drivers are incompatible with each other – one crashes Windows.
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It’s another year and I’m deploying next week. One of the few perks that entails is VAT exemption at PC World. I had decided some time ago to retire my Acer Aspire One A110L, this seems a sensible opportunity. I need the following:
- Very good battery life
- No solid state disk (SSD) – they’re too small and were a bottleneck on the Aspire One
- Under £300
- Must have a microphone, web-cam and reasonable speakers – Skype is an essential
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Windows software tends to abstract any kind of technicality from the user, except when it comes to ripping. For some reason, this requires a myriad dropdowns. I’m computer literate and I struggle.
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Following up on what I wrote yesterday concerning suggested damage to hard disks caused by Ubuntu not altering the number of load unload cycles set by the manufacturers, I noted that a number of people have been suggesting that Ubuntu should take control away from BIOS and carry out these modifications by default, as Windows does.
Well being the kind of person I am I thought I’d do a little investigation. Now after disabling the cycles from Ubuntu, I let the system run for fifteen minutes and noted that there was no increase where previously there had been.
Now I rebooted in Windows Vista Home Premium, let the system run for fifteen minutes and rebooted into Ubuntu. After taking measurements again, surprisingly there was a ten cycle increase.
So the only conclusion I can draw here is that Windows Vista does not alter settings provided from BIOS/microcode either.
Now as to whether or not increased time in the landing zone is detremental to hard disk lifespan is still very much open to interpretation, one thing is true though – the argument that Ubuntu is not doing something that Windows is doing is incorrect.