[Bradford] UEFI and other Microsoft nasties

[Brian A]

Reply to Daniel: Well, according to the review, the salient points to me
are that it is not possible to switch off secure boot, nor is it possible
to boot from a CD or a USB stick.

Reply to John: Thanks for the link to the article. I haven't yet watched
all the video that is linked from that page. By chance I was listening to
the 'PC Pro Podcast' this morning and they discussed the same thing as in
the article. The response from the panel was mixed but the argument in
Microsoft's favour was that secure boot could be switched off. However, in
practice, it seems, from the Amazon review, that secure boot can't always
be switched off and, even if it could be it would be an uphill struggle to
do an installation if cd or USB media could not be used.

I have sent an email to Samsung asking their advice on which of their
laptops to purchase. It will be interesting to see their reply.I received
an auto reply which states that I should have a reply within 48 hours.

Microsoft is not know for shirking when it comes to 'evil'. Who knows, but
they could lean on  hardware providers to get them to make the installation
of other operating systems very hard/impossible to do.

Brian






On 27 March 2013 17:33, John Robert Hudson <j.r.hudson at virginmedia.com>wrote:

> Just spotted this on the subject:
>
> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/23817.html
>
> John
> --
> On Wed, 2013-03-27 at 12:17 +0000, Brian A wrote:
> > I am wanting to buy a new laptop. So, obviously I want to ditch
> > whatever Microsoft toy OS is on there and put on Linux. This, in
> > keeping with getting a matt 17" screen, amongst other things, is a
> > nightmare to research. I read a review on Amazon of a Samsung laptop,
> > which seemed to be a reasonable spec for the price, but a 'no no' as
> > far as installing any other OS.
> > I'd be interested to know what others think of the points of this
> > review in that regard.
> >
> >
> > Look for the heading 'APPALLING - AVOID!!!'.
> >
> >
> > http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B009SJCX68
> >
> >
> >
> > This was written before the release of the UEFI facilitated Ubuntu
> > 12.04.2, but I don't know if that would make any difference anyway.
> >
> >
> > Brian
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bradford mailing list
> > Bradford at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/bradford
>
>
>
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