Daengbo's Journal: Oh, the embarrassment

Well, my friend wanted me to change her operating system. My other friend got his new Mac and has been raving about it non-stop to her, and "they" decided she'd had enough of Windows, (despite neither of them being tech-smart in any real way). Since I didn't know anything about her hardware, I went to her place equipped with four options:

1. A hackintosh disk. She's flying back to Canada and buying a new computer in a couple of months, and based on what my other friend has said, she's leaning toward a Mac. I though that giving her a couple of months to try out the OS would be cool, even if it's completely pirated. (My reasoning? She'd probably get used to it and give Apple the sale so that they made money off the deal.)
2. A hastily-burned version of the Ubuntu 9.04RC which I didn't have time to md5sum. I figured that she was more likely to find info about Ubuntu on-line and among friends than any other Linux variant. Since the thing is due out in a couple of weeks and I'm running it on one machine now with few problems, I figured there wouldn't be any issues.
3. An Ubuntu 8.10 DVD I got out of a Linux Format magazine when I visited Thailand. It didn't have Asian language support built in, but she didn't want that anyway.
4. An OEM Windows CD in case she changed her mind or something.

Backing up was a nightmare. I guess there must be tools for it, but finding all the places here documents, music, and photos were was tedious. It was made simpler when she told me that she only wanted to save a couple of document folders and that everything else could go. I still backed up as much of the stuff as I had space for on a couple of flash drives, then I double checked by asking to make sure that I had backed up exactly what she wanted.

OS X installed but didn't boot once installed, and since I don't know anything about it, I just went to option #2. The disk was corrupted (of course) and wouldn't boot. 8.10 installed, but I was so worried about the stupid PulseAudio problem for her that I immediately upgraded to 9.04 (she got download speeds of 4000+KB/sec from the local mirror ... wow). She watches American TV via emule normally, so I installed Miro and taught her how to set up with TVRSS. Then I went to dinner and asked her to play around for a little while so that she would have some questions for me to answer when I got back.

The first question when I got through the door was "Where are my photos?"

"Well I saved as much as I had space for, and they're in the Photos directory. You can use the photo manager application to work with them." I'd already imported them.

"Not those. I had about 2000 photos of all my vacations."

There was a blank stare from me and a sinking feeling in my stomach as I meekly muttered "You didn't ask me to save any photos ...."

She swore that she did, but that didn't matter. She got past it quickly and I think she truly forgave me. There were two points that I could have used to avoid all her pain, though:

1. When I was staring at Picasa, I thought "I could back everything up online for her. Nah. She said it wasn't important."
2. I could have gone with Ubuntu first and set up dual boot. If I'd done that, all the data would have still been there.

I'm an idiot for thinking both times ... "Nah, she said it was OK." Never trust the user.

You're not an idiot

[Corporate Troll]

I rarely get to that point because by now, I make sure to have a USB harddisk big enough to back their stuff up completely. Oh, and the backup is done while being booted with a LiveCD, just in case.

I usually tell them what's going to happen and that they have to say me *now* what they want saved. I usually also remind them of stuff like Outlook Data, etc... Anyway, then I keep the disk for an unspecified amount of time.... If anything of value was lost, odd are I have them on backup.

I also make clear tha

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[Daengbo]

I make it a habit not to work on friends computers if I can avoid it. The woman has done so much for me that I couldn't say "no" in good conscience.

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[Corporate Troll]

I don't mind doing it, because I know I'm way better than anyone else. (Not to be blasé, but I have encountered few people IRL which have as broad knowledge of computers as I do....) I further have a complete and utter distrust of "computer help services". They are not worth the money and employ people who haven't got a clue.

I know that if I do it, it will be done right. Because if some other dolt tries and fails, they'll invariably end up on my doorstep with worse problems than before.

I am, howe

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[Daengbo]

You're the only person (besides myself) that I've ever heard say "You can eat your cake and have it too."

I don't like to pirate (except TV, but I can't get any legal TV here in Korea ... damn Hulu, NBC, WB, YouTube, and all them for limiting by IP). I'm not particularly worried about installing Windows on someone's computer because they certainly have a valid copy already, Home vs. Pro be damned -- none of them are joining any domains, anyway. I just don't like to install Windows then be the guy they come t

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[Corporate Troll]

You're the only person (besides myself) that I've ever heard say "You can eat your cake and have it too."

Heh... That's because I frequent slashot. Despite all its flaws, slashdot is an excellent place to actually enhance your English. I'm not kidding. English is only my "third" language, you know.

I'm not particularly worried about installing Windows on someone's computer because they certainly have a valid copy already, Home vs. Pro be damned -- none of them are joining any domains, anyway.

Yes, I can und

NEVER EVER OVERWRITE a hard drive

[Nicolas MONNET]

Disks are too cheap. Always install on a new disk. Copy back the data to the new install. Keep the old disk around.
If your user can't spare $40 on a 120G disk, well, just don't do it.

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[Daengbo]

Good advice.

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[Captain Splendid]

Seconded. The easiest way to do a backup for somebody these days is just copy (or, as above, sequester) the entire HD. It just works out faster/simpler, and most importantly, scales well.