Ha Ha Ha - eMachines are crap, they were always crap, and always will be crap. Only ignorant first timers purchase them.
If you buy from a quality vendor, they may have machines without Floppy drives or their cases may require a special mounting kit for one (Dell), but almost all vendors still provide a Floppy if you want it.
We don't. We only use a floppy for maintenance or the initial install, and the floppy comes out once that is done.
We save to a network server - still a single point of failure, but it's more reliable that any user controlled hardware. The other problem is that the typical document being saved is getting larger - especially those saved in crayon. An HR type mentioned we received a resume - a single page written in MS Turd that was 7.6 Megabyte. It contained 3 bit-images of various versions of the resume - that contained 40 lines of text, about 70 characters to the line, or 2,800 bytes. Needless to say, it made everyone laugh.
Old guy
And that is the way it will HAVE to be done in the future, as computers of the future will have the connectors on the motherboard for a floppy drive, but no bay to permenantly install a drive. That is what a Compusa sales rep told me.
Well, I had a good one, that was much more expandable than most eMachines products, becuase it was based on the VIA chipset, which a lot of the clones use. That one went ka-put ina power surge a year ago, but it was one of the best computers ever made by eMachines. If you are going to buy eMachines, get one with the VIA chipset, as it will give you the best in expandability.
Only if you buy the cheap shit - all of the systems we buy have drive bays, even the 2U rack mounted boxes we use for servers. Maybe if you went to a better class of store, like Best Buy or Frys Electronics.
And they're as much of an expert on computers as the instructor who taught you networking according to microsoft. Remember that sales droids are interested in selling stuff. They will lie if that's what it takes to sell what ever they have.
So, when are you going to start learning UNIX? You don't want to be left behind when microsoft brings out their latest abortion.
Old guy
Emachines and the phrase "best computers" should never be used in the same document.
The Compusa sales rep obviously knows as little as you do, which is probable as s/he probably only knows what their supplier tells them. Obviously if eMachines only sell machines without 3.5" bays they will claim that is the way things are going even if every other manufacturer I look at still sells machines with 3.5" bays and at least the option of having a floppy drive fitted.
This cracks me up. Charles bought a piece of powdered dog poop (and in doing so, probably paid more than if he'd gone to MallWart) and because it was totally lacking in capability, he decrees than this must be the way all computers are being sold everywhere. I guess he doesn't want to admit that the sales-droids at CompUSA made a fool of him again.
"If you buy dog poop, buy the freeze-dried version - you can do so much more with it."
How about "Best Computers Inc. don't sell Emachines" - or - "Emachines are perfect examples of what is not the best computers"
Old guy
LOL, it's not unique to e-machines, and I wouldn't own an e-machine if you gave it to me :)
One thing I discovered that eMachines PCs can do, when one of the hard disks in my server machine failed, is that it can boot from a network. If you really want to prevent mailware from running, get an eMachines PC that can boot from the network. When the hard disk that boots the system failed, it tried to boot from the two NIC connectors on the machine. Of course, networking systems like Internet Connection Sharing, and AllegroSurf, do not support network boot. To boot from the network, you would need some flavor of NT server (you cannot do this using non-Windows OSes". The eMachines T6212 will try and boot from the network, if it cannot boot from any drives in the machine. So, if you really want to keep users from installing unwated software, just get a eMachines T6212, and set it to boot form the network, and you are done.
How does booting from a network prevent users from installing software?
We had workstations booting from network cards in the late 80's before windows came out, this is hardly news...
-Russ.
Wow, Charles discovered a whole new (to him) concept. I won't even bother laughing about the eMachines disk failure - you remember we all warned you about quality - and eMachines lack thereof?
How would that prevent clueless idiots from loading stuff? You just proved that stuff can be loaded over the network.
More toy software lacking capabilities, huh?
Charles, why do you persist in making blatantly false statements that anyone who can use a browser can prove are false in under a minute? Please take your toy browser, and look up RFC0783
0783 TFTP Protocol (revision 2). K.R. Sollins. Jun-01-1981. (Format: TXT=23522 bytes) (Obsoletes IEN 133) (Obsoleted by RFC1350) (Status: UNKNOWN)and then follow that into RFC1350. Did you notice the date above? Do you have some concept what the words 'revision 2' mean? What was the most current version of a microsoft operating system in June 1981? Then look at RFC0951
0951 Bootstrap Protocol. W.J. Croft, J. Gilmore. Sep-01-1985. (Format: TXT=28354 bytes) (Updated by RFC1395, RFC1497, RFC1532, RFC1542) (Status: DRAFT STANDARD)You'll want to read the first paragraph of section 2 of that document. What you probably don't understand is that RFC0951 was formalizing a number of existing techniques for booting a diskless client, some of which go back to the late 1970s. Why do you think old ISA network cards had a 24 or 28 pin DIP socket, or haven't you noticed that because you don't know what a network card is, and never heard of ISA or DIP, or the magic words "Boot ROM". Look 'em up.?
Old guy
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