[fleamailman]

Hi, I have had the growing feeling that comps are getting ever bigger, faster and more complicated. And yet, I feel that for the Internet I don' t really need more than a 6gb harddrive, or at most 10gb because I am backing up to cd or external harddrives. The fact that a comp has 80gb or 100gb or even 200gb only invites that client to put all his stuff onto it, making it easy to hide malware amongst the pile of stuff which I believe should have been backed up elsewhere. I have so little in my comp that if ever I get anything odd, it sticks out a mile and the steps against it are easy too and lastly if in the rare case that I reformat/reinstall, it is so simple. In short, I feel that the clients are increasingly going in the wrong direction then of having all the eggs in one basket.

Ok, I know I am nuts, but am I also alone in this view then?

Edited by fleamailman, 18 August 2006 - 01:07 PM.

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Flea, you are on to something. MS has introduced the Windows Live which is gambling that people will want to use remote servers for storage (they are lousy at backing up now, so maybe this will actually help!) so they can access their accounts and data from any computer. Yes, I agree with you- simple is better. Because of what I do with my comp, I need the larger hardrive, but I use partitions. I have trashed XP and the C drive a few times, so I had to reinstall XP and all my programs, but so far, I've never lost my data partition. If I did, my info is either stored on remote servers (my websites, gmail etc) backed up to cd (my music collection) or backed up on my external hard drive.

My laptop is fairly lean, like you described your computer. I have my bookmarks and address book stored, but I don't even download email- I read it from the web. I don't want any data on there that I'm not currently working with, but I did load 20 gigs of music so I can change my MP3 player around when I'm on the road. ;-) I mean why not? I've got 50 gigs left to play with, or the space to do an emergency back up for someone else's system, in a pinch.

My feeling is that if someone is worried about losing data if his hard drive fails, dies or explodes, he is not using a back up routine suitable for his needs.

Flea, my friends with huge hard drives are usually working with video/music and other large files, or using VM or multi-booting, like many of the malware fighter folks do. The "average" person who is surfing and reading email probably would never fill a 40 gig hard drive, which is about the smallest you can easily get these days. Old timers will remember when a gig was A LOT. LOL
Johanna

[Johanna]

Flea, you are on to something. MS has introduced the Windows Live which is gambling that people will want to use remote servers for storage (they are lousy at backing up now, so maybe this will actually help!) so they can access their accounts and data from any computer. Yes, I agree with you- simple is better. Because of what I do with my comp, I need the larger hardrive, but I use partitions. I have trashed XP and the C drive a few times, so I had to reinstall XP and all my programs, but so far, I've never lost my data partition. If I did, my info is either stored on remote servers (my websites, gmail etc) backed up to cd (my music collection) or backed up on my external hard drive.

My laptop is fairly lean, like you described your computer. I have my bookmarks and address book stored, but I don't even download email- I read it from the web. I don't want any data on there that I'm not currently working with, but I did load 20 gigs of music so I can change my MP3 player around when I'm on the road. ;-) I mean why not? I've got 50 gigs left to play with, or the space to do an emergency back up for someone else's system, in a pinch.

My feeling is that if someone is worried about losing data if his hard drive fails, dies or explodes, he is not using a back up routine suitable for his needs.

Flea, my friends with huge hard drives are usually working with video/music and other large files, or using VM or multi-booting, like many of the malware fighter folks do. The "average" person who is surfing and reading email probably would never fill a 40 gig hard drive, which is about the smallest you can easily get these days. Old timers will remember when a gig was A LOT. LOL
Johanna

[fleamailman]

Thanks Joanna, it is a Dell pentinum II, 6gb with all generic drivers. Emails done on line like you. And uses a rooter.

Ah, I have just thought of one drawback to this idea, if everyone thought like me I wouldn't be able to find these type of comps on the skip as I do.

[wannabe1]

*wannabe1 remembers when a 1 gigabyte hard drive was science fiction...

[warriorscot]

I partition my drive and only keep a big C drive cause i enjoy gaming and cant be bothered to install games every time i fancy playing them and malware tends to like that rabbit warren of files that is the windows folders.

Large drives are cheap and effective however if you are concerned about malware and such a good thing to do is set up a pen with a linus OS and boot a fresh OS on any PC you use.

[admin]

*admin remembers his first hard drive was 40MB, not GB.

Later this year the first terabyte drive is expected to be released (~1,000 GB).

My desktop currently has a 300GB drive, and a 160GB I use for backup. I mostly like the bigger drive for speed, but I also create and backup a lot of data, and I install a lot of software, VM's, OS's, etc. As is Johanna's, my laptop is lean and mean. I could backup what I needed on a thumb drive and format it tomorrow with little effort or concern.

[fleamailman]

Could I have a little more infomation on the pendrive os idea, I imagine we are talking about Dam Swall Linux but perhaps you aren't. Would the pendrive os recognise the drivers of the material of XP system, seeing that my problem with kubantu was not finding the sound driver.

Also, are you saying that most malware sits in the windows system itself and therefore my idea of keeping it lean/mean is wrong or unnessersery?


[btw if there are any linux os producers reading this, any chance of returning to os with easy names, I find spelling hard enough but kubantu, ubantu, knopex, etc., a little bit hard remember let alone spell, please a nice name like sari or joanna]

Edited by fleamailman, 19 August 2006 - 04:12 AM.

[warriorscot]

It would be linux although if you had a big enough pen you could have windows i suppose, what you do is basically format it and partition it and essentially stick your live CD on your USB pen with the proper boot up routine, i dont like DSL i prefer slax just as small but with a better GUI and preinstalled apps, although ive just in my curiosity found https://wiki.ubuntu....drivePersistent this i might try myself.

And as far as i know most malware does hide in the windows folder or in applications everyone has no matter how much stuff, ive never heard of malware for example hiding in a game or a media player or photoshop.

[SRX660]

I too would like to see a cheap new computer just for internet surfing. I have 5 computers for various tasks( each is specialized) that never get on the internet. I would like to see a intel 3.0 puter, 512 Mb ram, 20 gig HD, a good graphics card like the 6800 nvidia, and an audigy card, and a single DVD-RW. All for around $200-250. What more do you need for surfing, watching movies, and just playing around. Specialized software i usually buy the cd's or dvd's for installing so i don't need to download these. I would like this type of puter to be built for many many years to where the hardware parts are easily and cheaply bought. Thats all i'm really doing now by using my oldest computer to surf the net and entertain myself. Alas as the computer slowly dies a hardware death i have to upgrade to newer components which may not be compatable in a never ending cycle. Money talks and all the rest just goes by the wayside.

While we are on the subject why is it taking so long to make a bulletproof operating system that has no problems. Guess i'll be long dead before that ever happens. From what i've seen on Vista we are going the opposite way.

I have just bought a bunch of CF to IDE adapters. I plan on using them to have non moving parts hard drives in a system. I can buy 8 gig CF cards and i'm sure there will be 20 Gig and larger ones soon. We will see how it goes.

SRX660

Edited by SRX660, 19 August 2006 - 08:07 AM.

[fleamailman]

Thks scot, downloaded slax, and am now burning it to a CD, looks good.



srx660 is right, there should be a henry ford type comp with basic apps.

[warriorscot]

If i can find my USB pen im going to stick ubuntu on it this weekend just to see how well it works, henry ford computer you know they allready made them the $100 laptop per child its more than capable of basic funtions like surfing the net and other basic tasks, a basic comp is easy to get doesnt need to be fancy look at slax it runs well on pretty much anything. You dont need a powerful PC for the internet they last pretty long now you can get full systems here with older athlons from pre builders like time and tiny for £200 with monitor and printer included more than capable of basic tasks and even not so basic ones.

[fleamailman]

Thanks, I didn't know about the henry Ford comps and will google it.
Good luck with Ubantu. I downloaded Slax but then realised that I hadn't Nero nor a program that would automaticly excicute the CD to boot, any suggestions then since at this point it skips past and boots into XP instead.

[warriorscot]

You need to put the CD drive before your hard drive in boot priorities in bios after that you should get the press any key to boot to CD propt once you have a CD, CD burning software is easy to get hold of try http://isorecorder.a...isorecorder.htm its a powertoy for burning iso files.

[fleamailman]

Tks, the boot sequence was Ok, it was not having the powertool you suggested (since I burnt it with XP's generic burner) so it just bypassed the boot from CD and loaded XP from ide. Will download and try your suggestion then.

[SirKenin]

Old timers will remember when a gig was A LOT. LOL
Johanna

A gig??? I do remember when a friend of mine paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a 100MB HDD. He was the envy of the entire computer crew that went over to his place on Sunday afternoon. It took me a long time before I finally built a system better than he had.