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Brian Krebs (Krebs on Security) mentions AskWoody on a fairly regular basis. Granted, his column is geared to security issues. He tries to stay out of the more technical issues. He does comment on “Patch Tuesday” and encourages his readers to comment on their experience with the patches. I usually read Susan’s comments, then Brians and then wait for two weeks before actually updating.

IT Pro’s vs the home user:

The pro is supporting many, many users. The recent print nightmare fiasco was geared specifically to the corporate user. Most home users don’t have the network setup that a corporation has. Yes, many home users are using their ‘home’ computers for business applications and can run into some of the same problems the pro. They have a duty to their operation to get and keep their computer system working as expected. Sometimes the the suggested fixes for the pro’s, help the small business operation.

BTW, I put $20 toward Ask Woody early last month. I like getting the entire story.

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Susan Bradley

I wrote the message starting out with “Why would anyone…”

I misread the intent of the article.  I thought the idea was to move the HDD to another computer while keeping it spinning.  I thought there may be a problem with getting the drive to physically spin and then you were trying to recover files.

 

I have moved many computers with spinning drives.  Like the article says, avoid quick, sharp movements, drops of almost any distance.  My opinion is that the newer physically smaller drive have a lot less spinning momentum and might actually be more robust than the older larger drives.

 

I’m sorry about my interpretation of the original question…

Why would anyone need to move a spinning disk?  Assume that you were successful in actually moving it (USB external drive?), would the operating system recognize it and read the directory and set it up for use?

A current drive is SATA and uses a pretty small connector for the data stream.

My opinion is that this action is fraught with danger, both physical and data.

I would then suggest, if you really want to do this, to practice on an expendable drive.  Personally, I don’t think you will be successful.

Good luck…

While you were/are having issues with this upgrade from W11 Home to Pro, was there any contact with/from Microsoft concerning your issues?

This site, as far as I’m concerned, is a respected sounding board for computer related issues.  One would think that ‘someone’ reads these comments and problems and addresses them with what I will call ‘the upgrade group’.  From the article,, it seems that there was no person-to-person contact with anybody at Microsoft.   Surely you are not the only person/organization that is having this problem.  Maybe I’m not aware of all the communication channels available to/from Microsoft.

 

If the knowledgeable members of this staff is having problems, what is the common user doing with the problems.  Granted the common user isn’t trying to change from one version (Home) to another version (Pro).  They would probably call their geek friend and hand off the issue to them.  They would then proceed to tear their hair out trying to fix a potentially un-fixable problem.

 

my 2 cents worth…

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Cybertooth

I just assume that the ads at the top of the search results are sketchy.  I don’t click on them.  I will scroll down past the ads to find what appears to be a real url for a real company that at least seems to be related to my search.  I still hover over the address to check that it matches what I think it should be.  May not be foolproof but it seems to work.

 

As far as the ads are concerned, I don’t feel like contributing to an advertising campaign, that might not be what it appears to be.

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wdburt1, OscarCP

To continue with my previous post…

Would you like to be the programmer assigned to support a dead product?  Would the newer programmers be put to the test to see how they react to this potentially career limiting assignment?  Maybe six or eight months in the ‘dead product’ support group before being turned loose on the latest and greatest.  Could be a way to learn from the ‘mistakes’ and how to avoid them in the future.

What kind of issues would be appropriate to fix?  Drivers for current operating systems?  Security fixes? That would seem to be a black hole of problems.  Would there be a selling price below which updates would not be provided (cheap products get no continued support)?

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wavy

Another issue with long support times is the availability of “knowledgeable” programmers.  I would hazard a guess that many of today’s programmers are not familiar with the various software tools used maybe ten years ago.  There are enough differences  between C$, C, and C++ to confuse someone not intimately involved with any or all of the versions.

You also have the situation where the originating personnel have retired or passed on.  Remember Y2K and the call for COBOL and FORTRAN programmers?

Companies go out of business.  Their assets may be scattered among many other competing entities.  What happens to all the documentation that should have been saved.  Source code?

Even building a product with a LONG life cycle (geosynchronous communication satellites, and Mars rovers for example).    The original set of engineers have moved to other companies or retired.  Any (bio)medical product has requirements for long-term support.

For a regular consumer product, ten years from end of production would seem reasonable.

Even if you can get the manufacturers to support up to ten years, whats to keep an auxiliary process updated?  Look what happened when Adobe killed Flash.  Granted, it was a nightmare to keep up-to-date, but it broke the scanning function of my (admittedly very old, vintage 2006) HP printer-scanner.  Printer works fine.  I found a workaround for the scanner, it’s just not as convenient as the original setup.  HP doesn’t have a fix for the scanner function.  They have kept the drivers updated so things seem to work okay on W10 for the printer functions.

 

What about SaaS?  I think it was Quickbooks is going to a subscription model.  Your old versions won’t work anymore.  I understand that every 3-5 years QB would obsolete the old versions causing the user to buy the latest and greatest.

 

My 2 cents worth

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doriel, OscarCP