>> Because they don't expect anyone in a business setting to go through that 
>> manually, and they couldn't be bothered to actively change it for the few 
>> business people who see it.
>
> Yeah, I guess that's it. Why build a business edition when a large 
> business can customise it themselves?

I suspect the business edition is mainly just a way to get more money.  The 
settings and what's included or not probably only took one person a few 
minutes to decide :-)

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>> Yeah, I guess that's it. Why build a business edition when a large 
>> business can customise it themselves?
> 
> I suspect the business edition is mainly just a way to get more money.  
> The settings and what's included or not probably only took one person a 
> few minutes to decide :-)

Quite likely, yes...

Still frustrating though. :-P

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> Still frustrating though. :-P

Installing and setting up any version of Windows manually is time-consuming 
and often frustrating, luckily for most users (who install it themselves) 
they only need to do it very rarely.

If you are in a position where you have to do this quite regularly for lots 
of machines then you are doing it wrong!  The Windows OS installer as you 
describe is not designed to be used for that situation, there are much 
easier ways!  Do you think every new machine at, say, Ford has some IT guy 
sat there for 2 hours while the OS installs and he then sets everything up?

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:49e49c47$1@news.povray.org...

> Technically yes. Anything that involves a computer but doesn't make the
> company money is strictly speaking prohibited.

Can you share with us your secret of how one makes the company money by
posting to p.o-t?

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scott wrote:
>> Still frustrating though. :-P
> 
> Installing and setting up any version of Windows manually is 
> time-consuming and often frustrating, luckily for most users (who 
> install it themselves) they only need to do it very rarely.

I especially like the way it won't just ask all the questions and then 
install, or install and then ask all the questions. It has to keep 
stopping half way through to ask you something else. That way, you can't 
just walk away and come back when it's done. You have to actually stand 
over it the whole time.

I also like the way the estimated time remaining bares no relationship 
to reality.

> If you are in a position where you have to do this quite regularly for 
> lots of machines then you are doing it wrong!  The Windows OS installer 
> as you describe is not designed to be used for that situation, there are 
> much easier ways!  Do you think every new machine at, say, Ford has some 
> IT guy sat there for 2 hours while the OS installs and he then sets 
> everything up?

No. I imagine they can afford to buy half a zillion completely identical 
machines, and have a full time staff who's only purpose is to set up a 
standard machine image and test that it works right, and they then copy 
that onto every new, identical, machine they buy.

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>> Technically yes. Anything that involves a computer but doesn't make the
>> company money is strictly speaking prohibited.
> 
> Can you share with us your secret of how one makes the company money by
> posting to p.o-t?

I'm going with Scott's "letting off steam here prevents me from finally 
snapping and torching the whole building" theory. :-)

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> No. I imagine they can afford to buy half a zillion completely identical 
> machines, and have a full time staff who's only purpose is to set up a 
> standard machine image and test that it works right, and they then copy 
> that onto every new, identical, machine they buy.

Of course that will only work if you copy the drive images to identical 
hardware, but I have never ever seen a company where every employee has the 
same hardware, not even close.  The needs are usually just so different, 
plus people get upgraded at different times, there is always a good mix of 
hardware.  Sure, a huge company might have drive images for all the popular 
hardware they have, but they always have another method.

By the way, you do realise that the Windows OS install is highly 
configurable?  You can make it silent, add extra drivers, remove components, 
add settings, add service packs and patches etc, add the corporate license 
key etc, you can basically make it however you want and then burn it to make 
your own custom installation disc.  That would then just install the OS 
exactly the way you want on any hardware without requiring you to watch over 
it.

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scott wrote:
>> No. I imagine they can afford to buy half a zillion completely 
>> identical machines, and have a full time staff who's only purpose is 
>> to set up a standard machine image and test that it works right, and 
>> they then copy that onto every new, identical, machine they buy.
> 
> Of course that will only work if you copy the drive images to identical 
> hardware, but I have never ever seen a company where every employee has 
> the same hardware, not even close.

Really? I thought that's how all the real companies do it.

> By the way, you do realise that the Windows OS install is highly 
> configurable?  You can make it silent, add extra drivers, remove 
> components, add settings, add service packs and patches etc, add the 
> corporate license key etc.

Really? Interesting. As far as I can tell, you can make a file that 
presses the buttons and types in the information automatically instead 
of you having to do it by hand, but that's about it. And since the 
install process doesn't let you configure much, that doesn't get you 
very far. (Also, some of these options apparently don't work. E.g., 
setting the administrator password always fails.)

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> Really? I thought that's how all the real companies do it.

Real companies can't replace 80000 PCs overnight, and don't buy 80000 PCs 
that meet the highest spec needed by any one person.  Of course eg 40000 of 
those might be all the same, in which case they obviously just drive-image 
when they install, but there are enough "rogues" out there that mean they 
use a custom install and not the standard installation media.

> Really? Interesting. As far as I can tell, you can make a file that 
> presses the buttons and types in the information automatically instead of 
> you having to do it by hand, but that's about it. And since the install 
> process doesn't let you configure much, that doesn't get you very far. 
> (Also, some of these options apparently don't work. E.g., setting the 
> administrator password always fails.)

Here is just one example that I have used before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLite

I don't think it's that hard to do, certainly a large IT department can 
manage it.

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On 4/14/2009 7:23 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Is there a codec on Earth that would make a video small enough to send
> by email?

Sure.  I receive many emails that are 3-4 megabytes in size (10 megs 
seems the limit for a single message these days).  With a good codec, 
you can get ~1MB/min.

> It's just that I would have thought they would make a version of Windows
> taylored to business use without anybody needing to spend hours
> reconfiguring it.

Tailored to which business, though?  It's easier to include everything 
they *might* need, rather than have a business complain that something's 
missing.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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