3 ms·

Step 2 definitely counts for something, because "grannies and moms" aren't exactly buying bare bones PCs and installing Windows on them from scratch either.

by snarfy 13y ago

coldtea 13y ago
Well, that's the old wives tale, but I've seen people like my dad (wholesale merchant, never used a computer or cared about them until 55+) that has, in the 3 years of buying one, reinstalled his Windows 2-3 times. It's not that difficult. Insert DVD, next-next, done. With a Mac, perhaps, it's even easier.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  But did he install it on a barebone pc? Getting all the missing drivers etc? This sounds like this was a factory installed PC with all drivers on the DVD ready to go. That's not barebone exactly. Also the question is why he was doing that; I haven't reinstalled anything (not Linux, not Mac) for many years and I actually like screwing around with hardware and drivers?
  - spongle 13y ago
    It's actually pretty easy these days. I haven't seen a single machine since about 2008 that doesn't work straight away off a vanilla windows cd. occasionally you get a missing graphics driver but windows update just pulls a WHQL driver. As for recovery DVDs: these are the first point of call usually and are pretty good generally. there are many paths and they are all navigable by an average user.
    - tluyben2 13y ago
      Yeah ok, I didn't know that. I have the same experience with Linux these days, but I'm not a good example. I know what hardware to buy and what distro's to use in what cases. The last Windows install I personally did was Windows 7 on a 2007 Acer and 2009 Toshiba and that was an incredibly horrible experience; almost nothing worked out of the box and finding drivers was hard ('no drivers found' was the message and on the vendor sites it said that it didn't have drivers for Win7 yet; the drivers for XP half worked and half did not). Needless to say this was not the DVD or partition I installed; I used a shiny new Win7 USB. I think though that although some people will reinstall their system (why?), it should not be needed and that's where we are growing to with, on the low end, tablets (mostly linux: android)/chromeos (linux)/windows laptops and on the higher end macbooks. These machines get thrown out before a reinstall would be needed by the less computer savvy (and even by the computer savvy who earn too much :). In the mac space people buy a new macbook / iPad when the new shiny upgrades are announced (october?) and on the other end of the spectrum people abuse the stuff OR it gets 'too slow' and replace it. In between is the high end Windows market, which, so far, seems to be split between business users (which are more and more going tablet), high end gaming and geeks. And those three all do (or their company does) in fact reinstall / upgrade (hard and soft) their systems. But that's very far from 'most users'.
- ledge 13y ago
  Installing Ubuntu is incredibly easy, same next-next done process. IIRC, it's also a lot faster than installing Windows. Even setting up dual boot is simple. Granted I have had problems even recently with wireless not working out-of-the-box on linux systems.

Step 2 definitely counts for something, because "grannies and moms" aren't exactly buying bare bones PCs and installing Windows on them from scratch either.

by snarfy 13y ago

Step 2 definitely counts for something, because "grannies and moms" aren't exactly buying bare bones PCs and installing Windows on them from scratch either.

coldtea 13y ago

Well, that's the old wives tale, but I've seen people like my dad (wholesale merchant, never used a computer or cared about them until 55+) that has, in the 3 years of buying one, reinstalled his Windows 2-3 times. It's not that difficult. Insert DVD, next-next, done. With a Mac, perhaps, it's even easier.

tluyben2 13y ago
But did he install it on a barebone pc? Getting all the missing drivers etc? This sounds like this was a factory installed PC with all drivers on the DVD ready to go. That's not barebone exactly. Also the question is why he was doing that; I haven't reinstalled anything (not Linux, not Mac) for many years and I actually like screwing around with hardware and drivers?
- spongle 13y ago
  It's actually pretty easy these days. I haven't seen a single machine since about 2008 that doesn't work straight away off a vanilla windows cd. occasionally you get a missing graphics driver but windows update just pulls a WHQL driver. As for recovery DVDs: these are the first point of call usually and are pretty good generally. there are many paths and they are all navigable by an average user.
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    Yeah ok, I didn't know that. I have the same experience with Linux these days, but I'm not a good example. I know what hardware to buy and what distro's to use in what cases. The last Windows install I personally did was Windows 7 on a 2007 Acer and 2009 Toshiba and that was an incredibly horrible experience; almost nothing worked out of the box and finding drivers was hard ('no drivers found' was the message and on the vendor sites it said that it didn't have drivers for Win7 yet; the drivers for XP half worked and half did not). Needless to say this was not the DVD or partition I installed; I used a shiny new Win7 USB. I think though that although some people will reinstall their system (why?), it should not be needed and that's where we are growing to with, on the low end, tablets (mostly linux: android)/chromeos (linux)/windows laptops and on the higher end macbooks. These machines get thrown out before a reinstall would be needed by the less computer savvy (and even by the computer savvy who earn too much :). In the mac space people buy a new macbook / iPad when the new shiny upgrades are announced (october?) and on the other end of the spectrum people abuse the stuff OR it gets 'too slow' and replace it. In between is the high end Windows market, which, so far, seems to be split between business users (which are more and more going tablet), high end gaming and geeks. And those three all do (or their company does) in fact reinstall / upgrade (hard and soft) their systems. But that's very far from 'most users'.
ledge 13y ago
Installing Ubuntu is incredibly easy, same next-next done process. IIRC, it's also a lot faster than installing Windows. Even setting up dual boot is simple. Granted I have had problems even recently with wireless not working out-of-the-box on linux systems.