hammy56

so its a different operating system? better I assume?

mollusk

Yes and yes. I'm posting on an 6 year old laptop running it right now.

And it is free.

hammy56

thanks.

shovelhd

Linux. Nothing special about Ubuntu.

mollusk

It is a little less annoying than other distros.

carpediemracing 

Not before a certain time. I must have gotten the last non-firewire, non-SD card macbook pro in the world.

However I just got home tonight with a new macbook pro, 15" with firewire, thunderbolt (I have no thunderbolt accessories), and SD card slot. I can tell I'm getting old as unpacking it and starting it up feels like enough of a chore that I haven't done it and I'm not about to.

I think in the future I'll get an iMac (mainly for the massive drive space, extra RAM, more robust CPU, and larger monitor). That'll be my iMovie machine that stays on the desk and has all the backup drives and such. Then a wireless Time Machine for the laptops.

carpediemracing 

I HAVE A QUESTION.

I have an HP DV9500 type laptop. It's the main registration laptop, it has both an internal backup drive as well as an external one.

Right now it basically refuses to stay on, just switches off, like "click" then the computer just powers down. Rebooting sometimes results in the same thing before it boots (or while it's posting even). Sometimes I get all the way to logging into Windows and then it stops.

I've googled but haven't found anything definitive on what causes this. Anyone have experience with these symptoms? I'll buy battery or power supply (?) but if it's a fatal kind of thing I'll give it up. It's kind of old, maybe 5? 6?. dv9607us exact model.

Scummer

Just because Microsoft says you can put Exchange 2010 on SATA drives, doesn't mean you should put Exchange 2010 on SATA drives.
Going from a 40 spindle 15k FC drive RAID5 7+1 setup to a 10 spindle RAID6 8+2 SATA raid group and expecting the same performance out of your Exchange server? Puuuleaze.

bostongarden

Nice!! The current iMac 21.5 is in refurbished, but, I suspect that you are looking to do this down the road a bit.

I'm no expert here, but, I hope it isn't a failed hard drive. If it is, the more you try to whir it up and boot, the worse it will get. You do have a backup, yes?


(Cool thing for me today that is kinda geeky: I was put in a top 50 list that included Bob Metcalfe.)

gsteinb

if you guys talk geek stuff in the reading thread I swear I'm going to merge every thread in the forum.

kensuf

Given all the talk about Steve Jobs in the reading thread, I figured this would be the appropriate place to mention that Kanye has declared that he is the heir apparent.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/06/kanye_west/

Oh boy.

carpediemracing 

iMac - plan on later this year. I'd get the 21.5, may be able to justify the bigger one.

I hope it's not a failed hard drive. It actually booted last night after I posted my question. Data is now backed up.

I didn't know the name so I googled Metcalfe. He's not afraid of saying what he thinks. He looks like a Cat 2 M55+ that would kick everyone's butt.

mmmdonuts

So someone talked you into placing tier-1 data on tier-2+ storage? Nice...

That must have been a "management" decision.

shovelhd

Dump the RAID6 for RAID10 and SATA should be fine. SATA is not the issue.

shovelhd

That's your opinion. I prefer RHEL/CentOS.

mmmdonuts

An Enterprise distro is overkill for a PC/notebook user. So in that sense I agree with mollusk that Ubuntu is quite nice and a very good alternative for the masses. I don't like dorking around with my home systems. It quickly begins to feel like work and I already spend too much time doing that.

gsteinb

moved some stuff here from the book thread

jwible

I just partitioned out 20 gigs on an old Thinkpad with Win 7 on the other 80g. I loaded up Ubuntu's latest release on 15g and created a 5g swap. I like it, but I'm not doing anything other than webernetting on it. I think I may reformat the whole thing and take Windows off and try to get the laptop setup for video editing.

Homebrew01

Did you try F12 at startup & run diagnostics ?

mmmdonuts

Old PC fix: Reseat component cards, RAM, and connectors. Very often that fixed random hardware problems. A laptop can have things jiggled loose.

carpediemracing 

Uh...

Good point. The thing gets moved around even at the house and it recently spent time traveling to a race and then to my dad's.

carpediemracing 

If you ever want to see what it's like to have a Mac on a Windows type box this is the way to do it. Also, if you have an old laptop or PC that's kind of slow (think Pentium 5 etc), this is a way to build it out with a very efficient, low overhead OS. I ran an old Toshiba laptop for a while using Ubuntu so I could play MP3s on it (trainer room).

My brother has a basic Ubuntu system on a CD so he can boot up into a clean build on pretty much any machine - the whole OS is on the CD so the machine doesn't use files off the hard drive.

As far as better... that's a sticky question.

Scummer

How about Tier1 to Tier4....

Well, it was more: Getting cut out as the staff aug contractor who build the SAN/Fabric and maintained it for 2 years and then have 2 guys from the company take over who have no idea about storage and then sit back and watch the train wreck unfold.

The only problem is, right now I'm at a different client for staff aug, keeping their datacenter running and I have no time for the first client to fix their mess. Sometimes you just have to wonder what they are thinking, or not thinking.

mmmdonuts

It's a Dilbert world my friend.

shovelhd

The first thing I would do is replace the AC adapter. If you need a good spare to try just shout, I'll send you one.

The DV series laptops also had issues with the buttons along the top of the keyboard. You can find replacements but they are hit or miss as they're most likely pulls which may or may not have the same issue. It's not expensive to try, though. I also have a dead DV series laptop which might be a possible parts donor.