How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 04:27 AM

And while not a rider, personally, I might question whether external USB drive(s) are the best way to go.

It might be but with Janie's computer, a laptop and her sons, and assuming a network, I would certainly be considering NAS

I don't know what it's like but a 2Tb unit here for £125.

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: EBarnacle
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 10:47 AM

Interesting. Janie, how many computers are you serving? Among the questions to be considered is whether you and your kid need to be on the same data "holder."

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: Bettynh
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 12:53 PM

I agree that bigger is better, always, but I'm sure money comes into it, and 1 terrabyte is huge. Janie didn't say her computers were connected, or that her son actually has his own computer. But you can use the same external hard drive to backup your PC if you want to. I think formatting issues are over (PC types feel free to jump in). I swap files with one of my kids (HAH, he'd be insulted, turning 30 next summer) by loading a thumb drive. He takes it home and unloads it to his PC with no fuss. He brings me files the same way. It's the new form of sneakernet.

My first external hard drive was for the Apple IIGS. 2 MEGs! Enormous!

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 01:35 PM

I'm not up to date with the current state of play with operating systems and file systems but I usually use a Windows FAT format for a thumbdrive, Linux can read and write this but my Windows Vista can not read a Linux eg. ext4 formatted drive. As far as I can remember, doing this puts a 4Gb limit on a file - rarely a problem for me.

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 04:54 PM

Conventional wisdom has been that the time to buy a new computer is two weeks before your current one fails.

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: Janie
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 04:58 PM

We have two desktops, (1 Mac and 1 Dell) two laptops (1 HP and 1 Toshiba, (and an iPad.) However, since getting his iPad my son almost never uses his laptop and the only reason the Dell desktop is still set up is I need to move files off of it. It hasn't been turned on in close to a year. It still has some photographs on it that I want.

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 07:46 PM

OK, seems little or no reason there to want to haves some central data store. I'd think externals like USBs have won for you.

Subject: RE: How often to buy a new 'puter?For non-techie folks
From: Janie
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 03:40 PM

Me again. *sigh*

Bought a Seagate Go-Flex portable hard-drive -one that will allow sharing of files between Windows and OSX.

Seagate support is closed until Monday and I am impatient. (Not only that, come Monday it is back to the rat race with little time to mess around with this.)

My Mac recognizes the hard drive. When I click on the Mac installer.dmg file it appears to work in that it installs an icon and opens a window for the Seagate Setup Assistant Mac Install. But nothing happens when I click "open" on the Setup Assistant. If I understand correctly, this is necessary to download the Paragon driver.

I've crawled all over the Seagate support website and can't find anything helpful at all.

I'll reiterate my operating system is OSX 10.4.11.

Any ideas?