Detroit, MI
Maricelle Thomas has a MBA with a background in Engineering and IT. She started out as an Industrial Engineer and later moved into supporting and implementing ERP systems and Web Applications. A strong interest in the Arts and Creative fields led to her current gig as a Tech Blogger. Her deep experience in Business Analysis and various technologies enable her to provide her readers with a rich perspective on how technology can improve their daily lives. Check out her videos on YouTube or read up on her latest posts at Google +, Blogger and getlinuxanswers.com.
Authored Comments
Robyn, great example about creating a "stable" computing environment that changes ONLY when you make it change. I agree about writing an article on setting up and using VirtualBox correctly would be very helpful.
I tried to use the Windows 7 system restore discs that came with my HP Pavillion but they don't work. Period. All it did was bring back awful memories of the tedium I experienced having to:
1.) Run the Anti-Virus software to update the virus definitions.
2.) Run the Anti-Virus scanning software.
3.) Back up Windows 7 at the current state.
4.) Restore Windows 7 from the last backup.
5.) Defrag hard disc.
There was a time period in 2009, where I caught some malware on my Toshiba Satellite, probably during surfing the Web, where I constantly had to do steps 1-4, because my laptop was working very slow
Then I finally got the Blue Screen of Death, which forced me to buy a new laptop, which is the HP Pavillion that I have now. The Toshiba Satellite, originally with Vista, I have recycled once again into my Production PC with Linux Mint 14 and Ubuntu 12.04. It's been running great. I do very little system maintenance on it. The HP is used to experiment with different distros/versions on.
Here's a link from a reader who did something similar as you to accomodate Windows software usage: http://www.creativevisionsenterprises.blogspot.com/2014/01/windows-xp-support-ends-april-8-2014.html#comment-form
It's very liberating not to have to do steps 1-5 constantly which definitely eat away hours/minutes of time that can be better spent on executing the computing tasks you love to do rather than administering your PC.
I appreciate that you read the article and gave your opinion. So now I'm giving mine. For those users who are either unaware that there are viable and reliable desktop alternatives other than Windows and MAC or are disillusioned with Windows 8 or 8.1, read this article. Try a Linux distro because it's free and doesn't take much effort. You can decide for yourselves whether you want to make the tradeoff between more costly and more system maintenance intensive OS's versus Linux alternative OS's which are more reliable, less costly and more flexible. Besides, with the way computing is changing, software abundance on the tablet and smartphone is becoming more important than on the PC, especially for Home users. We know on that end Windows is a minority.