[Chester LUG] Fwd: Re: OT - Linux Mint (or rather dual booting with Linux)

[Sebastian Arcus]

On 25/02/13 22:59, Roger Gibson wrote:
> Thanks for all comments.
>
> Re MS Support comment to reinstall the system annually, this came from a
> quite senior MS chap.  I assist a charity with IT, and in spite of many
> efforts by me, they stick to MS. However, I can't blame them, as Gates
> Foundation sells MS products to charities for peanuts.  I bought several
> desks of XP Pro and Full Office 2003 for about £3/£4 each.  Then when W7
> came out they sent me 50 licences free.  I was having trouble
> authorising a couple of these (authentication failed after about three
> months), and the problem got escalated up the chain.  Eventually it was
> fixed, but while talking to the chap, who rang me from Bangalore several
> times to check it was working still, I mentioned some other problems.
> When he learned that I had installed the systems a couple of years
> previously, he said, try reinstalling. Registers get muddled etc,
> especially if applications are aborted and not closed properly etc.

Thanks Roger. Not disparaging the real techs out there, but I'm afraid
the industry seems to be full of sales types who pass themselves as
"working in IT" - just because they work in a company where other actual
IT people work. I've recently heard a talk from a guy working for a
large Linux distro who was clearly in sales/marketing (or at least let's
say on the "softer side of things") - and who described himself as
"supporting" systems for some large banks. It was beyond me what that
"support" meant, as he was clearly not a techie.

Then there are the people who are narrowly trained on the job to press a
series of buttons, but who don't have real tech background or
fundamental knowledge and regurgitate what they heard here and there.

So I would take with a grain of salt what the MS guy was saying. Plenty
of registry corruption occurring in MS products - but a blanket
recommendation of re-installing once a year doesn't sound like real pro
advice who knows his/her stuff.

</rant over>

It
> worked, and quicker for a time. Must be the same reason you hear of all
> the system clean up programs etc.
>
> And re Thunderbird/Gmail synchronously IMAPed from Ubuntu/W7, I don't
> use calendar, but having looked, yes address book entries have
> multiplied, up to 30+ copies in some cases.I've got over 1000 separate
> entries.  The Gmail 'remove duplicate addresses' soon removed the
> duplicates, and I'll keep a watch on this now.  I had not noticed this,
> but maybe access to addresses was slowing.

I've spent the last 8 years trying various calendar and address book
sync systems for Outlook (aside from Exchange) or Thunderbird  - and I
have to say that I haven't found a reliable, solid method which will
cope in the long term with 1000's of entries. The sort of method that
can be installed at clients and not go wrong one way or another every
few months again and again. At the moment I'm using Horde - and it seems
that the sort of setup where a central repository is accessed through a
web interface appears to be the only reliable setup.

Oh well, enough with hijacking this thread. Sorry everybody.

Sebastian