M$ Vista

On Aug 2, 1:44 am, Archimedes' Lever wrote: [....]

But ... but ... but: You can't get a CD for free. You can only get the image of the same. To have a CD you would have to burn a copy of the download. Someone has already done that for you and only wants $5 for the labor. Many would see that as a reasonable rate.

Agreed.

"Want" in this case is largely a matter of good marketeering. People aren't encouraged to think critically or analytically - stay with the herd and be kewl.

Scary

That's because they don't havwe anyone they can depend on to remove the previous owners personal information and software. They are afraid of the liability issues.

AIUI, it will. I plan on buying another drive for my ThinkPad so I can put some version of Linux (perhaps Ubuntu) on it and keep XP, without taking the chance of trashing my working XP. I'll then do a rotation on the drives and do the same on my wife's (though with XP rather than Evil).

A CD blank costs $.05 and it takes 10minutes to burn one, while you do something else. $30/hr, tax free, isn't all that bad.

I doubt it. Out here they make it pretty clear that this is the donor's responsibility. In the same way they won't accept liability if your ATM card had slipped into the couch that you just donated.

Many also don't take TV sets and stuff like that. They may be afraid to be stuck with gear that doesn't sell and then costs a hefty disposal fees.

I've met quite a few people who have asked me where they can buy a new PC that still has XP. I told them to check Dell but last time I looked only the expensive series had that option, plus I believe one lower end laptop that didn't have enough memory for Vista to guzzle up. I bet many of them would have bought one at the thrift store on the spot. If they only had them.

Why not just buy a naked computer and an XP CD and install it yourself? I do that with W2K and Slackware routinely.

Cheers! Rich

Sure. But I tend not to for two reasons: I had, let's say, mixed experiences with the quality of naked PCs from computer shops or warehouses. Then you might find yourself in a situation where it doesn't work because some driver is not available for the older OS. Now you'd really be up the creek (has happened to me).

If you are on dial-up... you have issues already.

Pay away, pay baby. Hell... send me some of your money!

Most things are on DVD now. Most local user groups will make an image file available to folks.

Whatever. Telling other folks to do it your way is counterproductive for folks with high bandwidth connections

The Real Andy snipped-for-privacy@nospam.com posted to sci.electronics.design:

If the mobo supports booting from USB it can be done. You will have to build a custom kernel with USB and USB storage included in the kernel and do some futzing around with LILO or GRUB.

Spurious Response snipped-for-privacy@cleansignal.org posted to sci.electronics.design:

What a cowword wrongboi.

It is not as "easy" as it was touted to be.

Archimedes' Lever snipped-for-privacy@InfiniteSeries.Org posted to sci.electronics.design:

And the converse is also true. People with high speed connections tend to blow off the issues of dial up. To underscore the issue sites that take over 10 seconds to load with a high speed connection (over 1 Mbit/s) are messed up. Think what it would take on dialup.

krw snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzz posted to sci.electronics.design:

CD / DVD duplication is a minor cost, addressing and stuffing the envelopes is where the costs are.

Dial up is all but dead. Join the new millennium, and catch up with the new OS while you're at it... Idiot.

Dial up is lame

They now make machines that do that too.