Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Computers - can't live with em....can't live w....

All very interesting stuff. It polarises opinion doesn't it.
I have a friend who is an Apple Fanboy (I like that term!!).

Apple does seem to generate evangelical enthusiasm. But to be honest I'm struggling with this new fangled version of windows. It's a bit too smart for its own good. If I could fix the old box, I would probably continue to use it alongside the new kid.

Thanks for the super detail Alistair - all food for thought. I only want a bigger screen to ease eye strain. Nothing more. MissW has a tablet which I'm let loose on when I visit, but it's not really what I want. Although it may well be what I need!

I use Linux...
Ian

Good point, it is often surprisingly easy to repair/replace bits in an old box. Shops just don't want you to. I am happy to have a go at it for you if you wish. I have enough spare tin in my study to build a load of them.

If you want to ship it down I will happily do it FoC. Believe me there is little in these things I cannot sort. I should also be able to get your data off unless the failure is the disc.

If you do then please feel free to drop me a PM.

Very kind offer Alistair. I'll see how SIL fares first though. The hard drive is undamaged and intact so all the content is on this loaned laptop. Except Firefox which seems to be playing hide & seek. But I don't want to mess too much or MissW will never stop lecturing me...............

Howard, can you advise whether its possible to get saved data ie photos etc of the Hard drive of a crashed and dead L/Top, no one we have spoken to seems to have a resolve for this,

Google 'data recovery', if you have deep enough pockets firms will take a physically smashed hdd and piece it together again although that's the extreme end of the spectrum. Most data is recoverable to some extent.

You have all my respect Ian Linux has a lot going for it but requires a fair learning curve.

Worth noting that Android ( Android mops floor with Apple, new sales figures show ) is based on Linux. There is a team working on Android for PCs but at this point it is PC specific. I suspect it is only a matter of time before we start seeing Android PCs. An Android interface and the ability to run effectively with Wine (runs Windows software on Linux) would be very interesting.

If the laptop is dead due to a hardware problem not related to the hard drive and you didn't previously use encryption then all you have to do is remove the drive, put it in a suitable caddy and plug it into another PC. You just need something like this: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-external/harddriveenclosures/

~iw

An acquaintance of mine had a hard drive corrupted. He took it to an expert who charged him £50 to tell him there was nothing that could be done. I had a look at it with a piece of software called photorec. All partition info & file names had gone, but the software recovered all the files ( as far as we could tell) but without names ( just the suffix, .jpg, .pdf etc.) It also found a lot of rubbish ( file starting blocks of deleted files) but he got back the files he wanted with a bit of searching.
Ian

A lot less so nowadays, Peter. Have you tried something like Mint Linux? Very user-friendly, I understand ( must try it some time, but I'm too lazy. I stick to Debian, the one I know )
Ian