Why I am getting a Mac again >:(

[fiddledragon]

* Windows 8 does not support DVD playback. Because reasons. Apparently

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

I've had decent results as the kind of Ubuntu user where if it breaks sufficiently badly, I just reinstall the whole OS and hope it works the next time. Obviously this is sort of ridiculous; if I lived in Boston I'd probably be able to make friends fix my computer if I messed something up. (And in fact I'm typing this on my work laptop, which is a MacBook air, very shiny, but doesn't have a DVD drive of any kind.)

[fiddledragon]

Macbook Airs don't have a DVD drive, but if you hook one up to it, they play DVDs. Windows 8 computers look at you in confusion and ask what this strange CD you've just told it to read is. *So weird*.

[crystalpyramid]

That's idiotic. Whose idea was that?

[fiddledragon]

I HAVE NO IDEA. I totally get leaving off the optical drive; that's more and more just done with streaming/downloaded files and it saves space. I'm happy to get an external one. But "this computer doesn't play DVDs" you'd think would be something someone would mention in the specs.

[irilyth]

I like Linux (Ubuntu in particular, for laptops), and I've gotten old enough that I'm no longer really interested in sysadminning my laptop; it pretty much Just Works TM. I use terminals to log in to places to read mail and work with text files, Firefox for browsing (but Chrome works fine too), the Skype client is fine, LibreOffice does pretty well with Office type stuff (but isn't completely interchangeable, so if you need to share files with people who use Genuine Microsoft Products TM that might be an issue), there's music players and video players and stuff.

If you've already got hardware that you can try installing it on, you can try installing it and see if you like it. If you can't basically get the hang of it within a day or two, the heck with it, IMHO.

[tibicina]

I find you can always save things in rich text format if you need to interact with Genuine Microsoft Products and that Open Office opens things /from/ Microsoft stuff just fine. And you can /theoretically/ save in Microsoft's formats, but the Microsoft products sometimes get grumpy for no reason I can understand.

[irilyth]

Yeah, I feel like I had issues with fonts or something -- formatting not quite looking right when I opened some Microsoft documents in Libre Office. It works a lot of the time, but less often than "always".

[tibicina]

Oh, well, if they choose fonts that you don't have, that will always be a problem, but that's more people choosing obscure fonts. I understand the lure - some of them are very pretty. But they do cause problems when you send documents including them to people who don't have those fonts installed.

[tibicina]

There are Linux releases that are stable and don't require being super computer savvy. I suspect we're at about the same level and before we got my new computer several years ago, I'd been using one for a couple of years. Honestly, some of them are less trouble than Windows, really. (Though it may be more trouble getting a particular program not designed for Linux to work correctly initially. So it helps to have a more computery person easily accessible at times.)

Fortunately, I got in at the very end of Windows 7, otherwise, pretty sure I'd be back to using Linux, but I don't know which current distribution would be good for you.

[fiddledragon]

Thanks, that's useful! I don't tend to use a lot of programs outside the internet, though there is one thing I've pre-ordered that I should see if it works on Linux; they seem like the sort of people who'd make a Linux version.

[mneme]

Mint!

Mint, or peppermint for more netbook-like things, is the easiest, sanest modern linux I've used.

[tibicina]

Mint was what I had been using. And I was certainly as happy with it as I've been with any operating system, and happier than I've been with most.

[debka_notion]

I agree. My current computer has the same issue, and since my phone is a plain old "makes phone calls, takes messages" sort of phone, it's totally foreign to me. Also, it took away the functionality of my clicky games, which is probably good for me in the long run, but not a particularly pleasant surprise. Haven't tried a DVD yet.

I did find something in the settings that let me at least remove the need for a password when it was waking up from sleep. I still need to give the password when I turn it on, though.

[fiddledragon]

If you go into the accounts settings, there is a way to turn your account into one that just uses a local password rather than a Microsoft account, but having done it I can't find the menu option now. Knowing that it is a thing the computer does might help search for it, though.

[uncleamos]

Step one: Buy computer.
Step two: Reformat hard drive.

It's annoying, but not nearly as annoying as Apple (says the iPhone owner, admittedly).

[fiddledragon]

What would reformatting my hard drive do?

[mneme]

I think amos left off some steps:

Step three: reinstall windows.
Step four: Install all needed drivers (and nothing else).

The result is that you end up with a windows machine without a lot of junkware that's a pain to install.

[fiddledragon]

Ah, ok, the "put Windows back on it" makes more sense. I'm not sure where I get Windows from once I've taken it off my computer, though; it didn't come with restart discs.