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On 11/09/2016 17:54, Gordon Henderson wrote: > < stuff> > > Yours, > > Gordon > An Artisan Baker > Haha, yikes - I was expecting a little flak for this and I knew I'd get the sharpest answer from you! Fair enough :] > the usual bleats, whinges and criticisms. Hmm, seems a little harsh specifically as I went out of my way to state explicitly that I was only criticizing your specific non-answer and in no way criticizing you personally. Was it too much to expect the same courtesy? Perhaps you'd like to point out in what way I was actually wrong? I'm waiting. > Get real, will you? This is an ordinary person who dabbles in a bit of Linux, etc. Guess you're talking about Eion here, although I'm not exactly sure as to the relevance of this. > My wife has iphone, watch, mac book pro, backups and insurance. If she loses a physical device it's replaced within 24 hours and backups are restored. Job done and its not expensive. Umm, congratulations I guess? I currently deal with a hundred or so Apple ecosystem devices across my various clients and have dealt with thousands over the years. I'm excruciatingly familiar with Applecare, insurance and replacing said devices and restoring backups to them. Agreed, it is *usually* quite painless and *if* everything goes smoothly then great, another success story. It doesn't always work out that way though and you're still ignoring the plainly stated fact that she is a poor student, and presumably has a very different idea of what constitutes affordable. Coughing up for Applecare+ on an ageing and beaten up hand-me-down (if that's what it is: could be a spanking brand new fully insured/Apple-cared present from her father for all we know) Mac can be a false economy. Applecare additionally doesn't cover loss or theft so she's looking at potentially coughing up for both insurance and the Apple plan. More money, for a broke student. Guess how I know you didn't think through your flippant answer and are now scrambling to cover it? > My answer: None. Which with provisos, is 100% false as I laid out in depth. There are ways for Linux to handle even full HFS+ R/W even if they're not particularly easy. Let's not forget, that is what Eion was *actually* asking for information on, not whether or not to insure it or make backups. He's not an idiot, he knows the value of both full well himself and presumably between the student and himself they will make their own informed value/benefit decision on whether that's suitable for their case. In short, replying "insure it and back it up" was both offtopic and unhelpful considering how profoundly obvious it is, no matter how untechnical the user. Insure and backup a valuable computer? Why thank you Gordon, we'd never have thought of that on our own! > My reasoning; it's not worth it. Value judgement: to each their own. Eion and the student will obviously make their own decision here. > That's because it is easy. It's far easier to replace hardware like for like and restore than to spend hours/days/weeks farting about with old PCs running VM/hackintosh/whatever to try to emulate a nice shiny MBP or read all that Mac data. Do you really think a young person at uni really wants that these days? Look, you're still wilfully missing the point here - Eion would obviously be handling the IT setup, not her, and he explicitly stated it would be for an emergency interim measure *just in case* of theft or loss. I quote: "I would like her to have a 'secondary computer' at her lodgings just to read her backup USB external hard disc in case her Mac-book air is stolen". Nobody is excluding the obvious fact that the Macbook would have to be replaced, and probably very rapidly, in such an event or that it would indeed be pretty easy to do so and restore it fully, but Eion is specifically looking at providing a temporary fallback system with the modest and free/spare hardware and software he has to hand whilst waiting for this to take place. I.e., a creaky Core2 laptop + Linux which is exactly the question he asked and you failed to address completely. Don't just say "insure and back it up", he knows that! He even stated he's backing up already to enable the restore to a "backup USB external hard disk"! Don't blame me because you failed to read his question or respond appropriately... To add a final point, none of the really complex stuff regarding HFS+ R/W is even necessary in Eion's stated case, I only provided that information for completeness (because he explicitly asked). In the event her Macbook is lost/stolen he's enabling a method for her to cover her ass and still be able to work and meet course deadlines whilst the insurance/replacement/restore are taking place, even if that is only a 24 hour turn around. Instead of sitting on her thumbs, she'd fire up the Core2 with Linux, use R/O only access to *copy* the bits she needs immediately to the Linux box and still be able to work on it whilst the replacement is sorted. Coursework deadlines wait for no man and medical students are seriously overworked. So do I think a young person at uni really wants a free and effective failsafe system and method to keep working if her Mac is lost in action? Why, yes, yes I do. > This is a personal laptop for a student. The medical aspect of it is pretty much irelevant here. Here is where you're really out of your depth, and it shows. Let me tell you how it works for medical students - they are not issued computers from the hospital or university in the same way as we might expect our employers to issue us corporate gear. They provide their own computers (and for some reason medical students almost universally prefer Macs, I have no idea why) which will become subject to DPA standards the moment they have medical data on them. Which will be on about day 2 of their first term. They will install IBM XPSS (usually on a subsidized volume agreement through the institution) or similar to crunch statistics on medical cohorts, install special programs to deal with the custom formats spat out by MRIs and other medical imaging tools and will have spreadsheets full of medical data for their studies. Along with papers, patient notes and other material without which they CAN NOT DO THEIR STUDIES. Even the partially anonymized datasets favoured for teaching purposes fall under the DPA and on literally day 1, all students will have the confidentiality of medical data, the rules of Data Protection, and the importance of compliance and ensuring data protection drilled into them mercilessly. So your contention that the "...medical aspect of it is pretty much irelevant here" couldn't be more divorced from reality. Now, I'm not calling you out on this because you'd have no way of knowing this without having worked within medical IT and specifically with trainee medical students: however, one of has done this and speaks of which they know. The other is an artisan baker! (Incidentally, I *love* baking and *love* artisan breads particularly - I wouldn't try and tell you the first thing about it though because I've never had any proper experience with it. Do you see where I'm going with this?) Right, that about covers it I think - I sincerely hope I've made my point and fully rebutted yours politely and without snark. For the record I'll state again I have nothing but respect for you (love your RPi work, lightyears ahead of anything I could do) and was only trying to answer - probably with way too many words, as per usual - the exact question Eion asked. I feel that your initial reply was unhelpful and completely irrelevant and your reply to me just doubled down on the signal to noise ratio. You and everyone else are of course free to disagree and I promise to respond (politely!) to any other replies that may come up, even if they're critical of me. Cheers An amateur baker * Now I'll just cross my fingers and hope Joseph doesn't take offence and decide to have a go - I was actually a little bit rude about his answer after all. Only trying to help guys, only trying to help. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq