Re: T40 Battery {was: Opinions on Presario Laptop}

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Michael Norman  on Tue, 03 Feb
2004 10:05:53 -0500


>> I asked
>> him to call me when the T40 was available -- and two months later, he phoned.
>> I couldn't believe it.

> Ah, the siren song of the salesman. Was he Greek?

No. Most salesmen, I think, are trained to go for the sale (a bird in hand).
This guy, _before_ I offered any vague assurance that down the line there might
be a slightly more lucrative transaction, he urged me to wait -- for months!
That's unusual.

> How do you backup the distant laptops?

I back up their Word directory to another machine when they're home, which is
the only crucial stuff they've got. Otherwise, I don't. And they certainly
don't. (Fingers crossed.) Hard disks usually fail gradually, in my
experience. You can see it coming. There is time.

> You've written about your Firewire backup HD. Do keep some kind of backup
> with each T-Pad?

My own, only. With a Firewire 1394 PCMCIA card.

> I too bought a child a T-Pad and we're trying to work out
> a scheme for him.

Burn compressed image to DVD periodically. The catch is, they have to _do_ it
-- whether they will is another matter. In my experience, they're all children
of Gates. They expect the machine to "just work". And because, generally, it
does, they don't think further. Good hardware is probably the best insurance
you can buy for a student. Plus, I was stunned when I took my daughter to
college as a freshman, and had to configure it with mandatory software before
they would even let her join the campus network. Unbelievable amount of stuff.
First it did a 30 minute scan of all her disks, looking for viruses and the
like (none, of course -- fresh off my LAN!). Then it installed every
conceivable kind of encryption, protection, virus traps, complex logon scripts,
proprietary Email program, whatever. So, in the end, she actually is probably
insulated from most of the garbage.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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