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Song Parodies -> "Microsoft™ Is Suing Me Because I Dissed On Vista™"

Original Song Title:

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"

Original Performer:

Julie Andrews

Parody Song Title:

"Microsoft™ Is Suing Me Because I Dissed On Vista™"

Parody Written by:

Tommy Turtle

The Lyrics

Geez, you write *one* little song, "Please, Vista, Please", and they ... well, OK, there *was* another, "Patches (Microsoft Version)" ... and before ya know it, their lawyers ... hmm, actually, I guess that makes *three* ... fergot about the oldie, "Newcomputercamewithwindowsxphowatrocious" ... anyway, their lawyers start sending me threatening e-mails, they're gonna sue for libel, etc., etc. Yeah? Yeah? Well, screw your silly e-mails, Sirs, *I* shall reply with my *strongest* weapon: parody.

TOMMY TURTLE:

Dumb software engineering; no one would buy
No sense of humor: geeks? At least, can't you try?

Why,
Microsoft is suing m because I dissed on Vista
If my little parody is really what has pi**ed ya
How about you suck on this: Last night, I shtupped yer sista!

ALL AMIRIGHT:

Whassa matter, Billy G? Can't take a joke there, Mista?

Sent some subpoenas saying soon they will sue
Hey, bite my poenas, aholes; to-wit: eff you!

MICROSOFT NERD:

Our Vista: newest masterpiece
And was supposed to be,
With "Aero™" look and other crap, [1]
Replacement for XP™
The schedule called orig'nally:
Release: 2003

NERD, BILL GATES, AND MS CHORUS:

Poor Longhorn™ was prolonged so long [2]
Because such klutzes: we!

See?!
Microsoft will sue TT for giving us a blista
What if we can't tell a microchip from a transista?
It's not fair to give our product such an ugly twist, huh?
Send our lawyer after him, to wave, in face, his fist! Hah!

Sales aren't going quite as we'd have preferred
Big advertisting bucks, but buck "mouth of word" [3]

TOMMY TURTLE:

Denied that they were really cooked
But finally admit
Releasing Windows 7™ now [4]
And Vista, they will quit

NERD:

We simply didn't rea-
-lize, how many bugs, 'twas bit
It isn't fun; must be undone:
This worthless piece of s**t!

NERD, TOMMY TURTLE, AND CHORUS:

Twits!
Apple's™ gaining market share; the savvy folks, amidst-a
Linux™ loved by lots of geeks, it's high up on their list-a
How much longer, Microsoft, on this path will persist, huh?
Lots of users told them that "My backside can be kissed-a!"

Why can't their software geeks write func-tional code?
So many customers have told them it blowed

TOMMY TURTLE:

You know, they code all bass-ackwards
Folders: cet'raandetdriverstwoandthirty-systemswodniW [5]
These wacks seem awfully bizzarre,
Don't you think?

Indubitably!

Impairs the user's puter use
Its resources, it eats

Won't fit! [6]

Can't use all of its faculties;
Class action lawsuit, greets
Came out with basic versions, two
For those less than elites [7]

Um, your opinion?

Yes?

THE BILLY:

While we thought 'twas a good idea
We now admit defeats!

Oh, and a effed-up thing it is, too!

ALL:

Though...
Microsoft's disputing Tommy Turtle's rights exist-a
He won't back down easily; continues to resist-a
Free speech: Constitutions's Bill Of Rights, One, does insist-a
Sneers and sneezes; snot, he squeezes, on this slap of wrist-a!

There's a lot more to it, folks, but now you know the gist-a!




[1] "Aero" look: Some sort of Alice-through-the-looking-glass, semi-3-D look that ate up a huge amont of computer resources (memory and processor time), for ... uh, why? I can read my own, plain, "Windows Classic"™ screen just fine, thank you. (Got rid of even the soft, fuzzy "XP theme". Soo much eaiser to read the old 98™ style. Right-click any empty area of your Desktop; click Properties; click Themes; click the drop-down menu and click "Windows Classic". "OK")

[2] Vista's code name during development was "Longhorn"

[3] In its first year of availability, PC World rated it as the biggest tech disappointment of 2007, and it was rated by InfoWorld as #2 of Tech's all-time 25 flops. As of August 2009, combined surveys indicate that of all desktop computers, XP had a little over 69 percent, and Vista, less than 23 percent, market share.

A study conducted by ChangeWave in March 2008 showed that the percentage of corporate users who were "very satisfied" with Vista was dramatically lower than other operating systems, with Vista at 8%, compared to the 40% who said they were "very satisfied" with Windows XP.

Due to Vista's relatively low adoption rates and continued demand for Windows XP, Microsoft continued to sell Windows XP until June 30, 2008 instead of the previously planned end date of January 31, 2008. Actually, as this is written, you can still buy a computer with XP; it will come with Vista, but with "downgrade rights" (as MS calls them), or "upgrade rights" (as TT calls them), and a set of XP disks. TT bought one last year, took it out of the box, plugged it in, and popped in the XP disks immediately. Therefore, MS's sales figures for Vista are actually significantly overstated, as they count those that include the XP downgrade, even though many others besides TT have done the same thing.

You can still get one with just XP installed, although you may have to go to your local puter shop and have them custom-build it. There's a "small-system-builder" exception that allows said to sell XP as part of a custom, or small manufacturing, operation. One Australian sales rep for HP™ said that about 30% of his customers paid for a dual-licensed (Vista and XP) machine just so that they could get XP. Of course, MS counts those as Vista sales.... Great full-color pie chart comparing all operating-system usage at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems

[4] Vista's replacement, Windows 7, was released to computer manufacturers on July 22, 2009, and will be released for general retail sale on October 22, 2009, less than three years after Vista's release. Vista wasn't released for more than five years after XP's release, the longest interval between OS releases for MS *ever*. (See song mention of the planned date of 2003 versus the actual Vista release date of Jan. 2007.) XP's present availability, eight years after its release in 2001, makes it by far the longest-available MS OS in their history, and really says it all about Vista.

Figures released by Amazon.co.uk in the UK show that sales of Windows 7 in the first eight *hours* of its availability surpassed the demand for Windows Vista in its first 17 weeks.

[5] Windows\system32\drivers\etc. Don't open any of those unless you know what you're doing, 'k?

[6] While Microsoft claimed "nearly all PCs on the market today (2005) will run Windows Vista", the higher requirements of some of the "premium" features, such as the "Aero" interface, have had an impact on many upgraders. According to the UK newspaper The Times in May 2006, the full set of features "would be available to less than 5 percent of Britain’s PC market"; however, this prediction was made several months before Vista was released. This continuing lack of clarity eventually led to a class action lawsuit against Microsoft as people found themselves with new computers that were unable to use the new software to its full potential despite the assurance of "Vista Capable" designations.

The court case has made public internal Microsoft communications that indicate that senior executives have also had difficulty with this issue. For example, his laptop's lack of an appropriate graphics chip so hobbled Vista features that MS vice president Mike Nash (Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management) commented "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine."

[7] Added Windows Vista Home Basic™ for budget users. Still too expensive and requiring too much computing power for third-world and emerging-market users, so they threw the sop of Windows Vista Starter™ (You can't buy it, unless you live in one of those countries, or buy it from there.) Um, excuse me, but couldn't you just keep selling those folks XP, and still make money on a product you've already developed and tuned for eight years?

Microsoft and all of its operating systems, versions, brands, trademarks, etc. ® Microsoft, Redmond, Washington, USA. There, does that make yer stinkin' lawyers happy? What else ya want me ta do, huh? Look at all this free publicity fer Win 7! It's *I* who should be charging *you*!

Apple ® Apple, Inc. Linux OS licensed under GNU General Public License, but web site © Linux Online.

Actually, none of this happened. They probably haven't even read the others, or, if so, probably post them on the walls and LTAO, but would never admit it. But TT thought it made for a good parody concept .... how 'bout you?

© 2009 Tommy Turtle. All rights reserved. E-mail: tomm...@yahoo.com

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Original Song: 
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Voting Results

 
Pacing: 4.9
How Funny: 4.9
Overall Rating: 4.9

Total Votes: 16

Voting Breakdown

The following represent how many people voted for each category.

    Pacing How Funny Overall Rating
 1   0
 0
 0
 
 2   0
 0
 0
 
 3   1
 0
 0
 
 4   0
 1
 1
 
 5   15
 15
 15
 

User Comments

Comments are subject to review, and can be removed by the administration of the site at any time and for any reason.

Glen S - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
The depth of your obsession is undeniable. I can sympathize with, and respect that.
alvin - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
mind boggling
Phil Alexander - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
"Windows 7" doesn't have as many rhymes as Vista
I can only think of two or three, but there's a list-a
Of Vistary-rhyming words to drive you round the twist..er
Sod 2000, XP, 7... I'll write songs 'bout Vista ;-)
EmiLoca - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
Holy. Crap. The wordplay here was hilarious and what a splendid subject of ridicule.
Dr. Oliver Clozoff - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
Brilliant, TT! This must have taken forever to do!
Timmy1000 - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
Nice job of storytelling and rhyming. Good old Softie - can't live with it and can't live without it (unless you get a Mac, of course)
Silver Power - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
Another amazing parody, TT. They should record this and play it on one of those Mac & PC commercials...

WAIT: How come Apple can talk doodoo on Vista, but you can't? Their commercial probably reaches more annual viewers than all of the parodies on this site combined - no offense to ChuckyG or any of the authors. That's bull!

But don't worry, TT, I doubt that anyone who brings an ectotherm reptile to court will surely be laughed out of the room. That will definitely suck for Microsoft, seeing as they can't seem to take anyone laughing at them.

Anyways, you get 5s from me, and if those Microsoft a-holes give you any more trouble, I'm sure that Franklin, the Koopa Troopas, and everyone that plays for the Maryland Terrapins will have you back in beating the snot out of Mr. Gates.

Oh, and that "bite my poenas" line killed me. xD
Andria - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
I don't see how Microsoft could send you threatening e-mails about your Vista-slamming parodies without doing something illegal. After all, I didn't get threats from Nationwide, Wal-Mart, former President George W. Bush or General Motors when I ridiculed them in parodies, and Michael Pacholek probably didn't get threatened with litigation by Sears, Roebuck & Co. with some of his parodies about Sears stores. (The list could potentially go on and on, but I won't let it.) This was a great parody as usual, and I'll give you 5s.
Fiddle Activist - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
"Free Tommy!"
Tommy Turtle - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
Glen S: I got back at them in my own way. I've deleted about 93% of XP, cutting its original 4 Gb or so down to about 275 Mb.... Including no pagefile, and *don't* let anyone tell you that it can't run without it. It can. (You have to have enough physical RAM, of course). I've been doing it for a year. .. The entire HDD is well under 1 Gb, ranging from 825 - 930 Mb, including 3rd-party AV and FW, apps, personal and business data. And man, is that sucker ever *fast* for a bottom-end laptop - faster than many macines costing 3-4x as much. Thanks for v/c.

alvin: thanks!

Phil Alexander: Do you remember asking me if I would ever do a Vista follow-up to the XParody, "Newcomputers..."? This makes two :D (see top link for the first.) ... As for 7, I thought all along that that would be a code name, as Longhorn was for Vista (engineers self-deluding? he heh), and that the marketing d***wads would come up with some "catchy" name. But have no fear; where there's a will, there's a parody way ... Will wait until there's enough info to document it, as per here. Thanks for v/c.

EmiLoca: Thank you very much. I try.

Dr. Oliver Clozoff: Thank you, but now I'm torn between my customary modesty (barf!) and truthfulness. (tosses coin; truth will out). It was written while awaiting FG's next response to my emails about our Big Project debuting next Wednesday. (She can be sooo slow to respond at times ;) So, a couple of hours to the first full draft; minor tweaking and polishing; format; submit.
... In all true modesty -- DK if you've ever seen TT's parody "Riff Three Times (On The Same Song...) .. having done TOS four times before, it's like murder -- gets easier every time you do it. (The rhyme structure and meter are already in your head.) Thanks for v/c.

Timmy1000: ... and even if you do get a Mac™, you usually end up getting a Win emulator for it, for all of those programs that are written for Windows only and don't have a Mac-compatible version. Thanks for v/c.

Silver Power: If you email it to Apple and sell it to them, I'll give you 10% agency fee :D ... as for the remainder, TT' is well aware that very few people read his footnotes and bottom comments, but this might be one time where at least the bottom comment would be worthwhile. Thanks for v/c. (and yeah, that was one of the author's fave lines, too!)

Andria: See above comment to Silver Power re: outtro comment. Thanks for v/c.

Fiddle Activist: Thanks, but as per comments to the above two, Tommy's already free. So, if you wouldn't mind redirecting your efforts to freeing Willy..... ;) :) ;)
Shirley Temple - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
I have Windows 7 on my PC. It does hog my pc quite a bit, but yeah, it is better than that Vista BS.
John Barry - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
Any parody that bashes the evil empire is OK with me.
Guy - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
TT - You actually had me going but you know that I always read your bottom comments. Nice spoof. If only...

And all this hype about Gates being some super geek is bullshot. When he first "wrote" DOS I had been using it from 1978 to 1984 on DEC10 mainframes. DEC10's used DEC's TOPPS 10 OS ™ which was actually DOS. Digital Equipment Corporation™ used this original DOS for it's operating system on their mainframes. People loved it back then - I cannot count the times when old Sperry Corp.™ and IBM™ users remarked that "Hey this thing actually speaks English".

Gates actually pirated the TOPPS 10 OS™ and made some minor changes to the CMD language, just enough to get around copy right laws and thus he becomes one of the richest guys on the planet. The guy couldn't program an etch-a-sketch let alone write an OS for a PC. He stole everything he put his name on. I couldn't believe it in the late 1980's when we got our first 80/80 PCs that they actually talked like a DEC10. I functioned as the computer support guy for a USAF comms analyst group. Two junior officers opened the first box and were still trying to figure it out when I had the other 14 up and running and teaching the analysts how to operate them. Military officers get very humble when they are outdone by an enlisted person. They were playing out of their league and I had an unfair advantage, but then they were in my ball park so I ruled.

Ah yes - those were the good old days when doing IT for a living was actually fun. Now it's like war with all the cyber attacks that hit you day in and day out. We spend more time circumventing hackers efforts to deny service or hijack our systems than we actually spend doing real work on the beasts. Anyway this is a brilliant piece of work and I can really appreciate it because of the geek in me. Well done sir.
TT - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
Shirley Temple: Interesting report from an actual Win 7 user. Don't suppose they'd let you "downgrade" that back to XP? Are there any *actual* "advantages" to 7? Thanks for v/c.

John Barry: I got a ton of 'em ... but this'll do for a while. :) Thanks for v/c, John.

Guy: I too was aware that MS-DOS was bought from Seattle Computer Products, and that Gates concealed who his end customer (IBM) would be, to keep the price low. Supposedly, the seller's wife did the negotiations, as he was flying to a meeting with another customer.

The strange thing is that BG was a hacker in high school, and in fact kicked out of school once for hacking. Which you'd think would make Windows much safer -- takes a thief to prevent a thief. Undoubtedly a brilliant guy, but he let greed and marketing override minor items like security and trampling on others' rights. He's not at the helm anymore, but I don't expect the company to change -- and as per Phil A., when there's enough juice on Win 7, I'll be there. :D ... Thanks for v/c, Guy.
TJC++ - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
TMGLTM... pure parodic (and otherwise) genius! And I can barely stand it that you wrote it (metaphorically) standing up, at a taco stand, whilst waiting for extra salsa! Primo, perfectly paced MonSter Mash! As you know, it's gonna take every ounce of my self-control to hold off turning it into an(other) 'unauthorized YouTube submission'!
AFW - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
This tale of a lawsuit has a very funny fit...great job, TT
Tommy Turtle - September 25, 2009 - Report this comment
TJC++: Methinks that referring to FG's taco is caddish enough in itself, but the salsa reference ... I'm afraid I'll have to defend her honor there, Sir! Choose your weapon -- parody or prose -- at twenty pacings, turn, and fire that sucker up to YouTube! (The diff? (*This* time, ya waited until *after* it was posted -- and asked. :D :D :D )

LOL at your continued caps steganography (capsten?... far-fetched sailing pun on "capstan"). Thanks for v/c, and lemme know when the video is up -- can't wait! (Any chance you've a singer in the house?)

AFW: Thanks... fictional, fortunately as footnoted, but appreciate v/c!
Pirate Party-san - September 26, 2009 - Report this comment
Windows won't have an OS hit again until they have one that comes with a built in easy to use for Joe Schmoe P2P-client that takes filesharing to the general middleage public too and not just the teens and the geeks. Copyright violation you say? Hey, they never cared about that when the Navigator Webbrowser threatened their monopoly. Besides, with all the money M$ has they can buy they big four record companies and put the RIAA in their pocket - copyright problem solved!
Tommy Turtle - September 26, 2009 - Report this comment
Pirate Party-san: Very savvy comment, but would you *trust* any P2P client (or anything else, for that matter) that came from MS? 'Twould be Swiss cheese, for sure.

I can't endorse copyright violation, and I'd rather not use MS as my moral standard, but FWIW, the secure, encrypted chat client described here:
http://www.amiright.com/parody/60s/thebeatles2472.shtml
includes file-sharing capability in the paid version, and you don't have to worry about unauthorized users crashing the party with worms, viruses, etc. Thanks for v/c.
Shirley Temple - September 26, 2009 - Report this comment
@Tutrle: Well, I do need some more RAM, but I guess I hogged the PC myself, since I had a lot of apps in my hard drive as of now, and I'm yet to spring-clean my system due to a lack of a backup device at home. Billy did hack and stuff, and rose in the ranks as an industry giant, but greed and evil, get this, evil, desires kept him from being universally admired. @Guy: Gates is pretty much a copy-pasta poser.
Tommy to Shirley - September 27, 2009 - Report this comment
My *entire* hard drive is about 900 Mb (no Gb) -- see TT reply to Glen S. comment.

Any USB drive (Flash drive, thumb drive, dongel, whateveryacallit) can be a backup for your data, at least, and you can burn stuff onto CDs and DVDs. Yes, I do use a full-disk-imaging backup tool regularly, as well.

Example of space-saving: Adobe Acrobat Reader™ v9.0 = 367 Mb. What it does: Opens .pdf docs so you can read them.
Foxit Reader™ v2.0 (get the old one without the Javascript capability; then no worries about security) = 3.69 Mb. = 1/00 of Adobe. What it does: Opens .pdf docs so you can read them.

100x as much space consumed by Adobe, for "features" that already have been the target of multiple vulnerabilities. Garbage.

Same thing with Open Office™ vs. MS Office™: 300 Mb vs 800 Mb, and it's *free* besides. And will open/create MS docs, xls, etc. as well. Lots more examples. Plus getting rid of thousands of useless log fies that apps create, etc.

Agree 100% about our friend Billy. Thanks for re-visiting. (LOL @ pun to Guy! :D)
Log Phile - September 27, 2009 - Report this comment
So *that's* how ewe feel about me!
Log-o-phobe - September 27, 2009 - Report this comment
Log Phile: If you wouldn't keep continually breeding new ones, who eat my HD out of house, home, and space, and clog up your Master (the Master Phile Table), and are lazy, good-for-nothings, I wouldn't mind s much keeping you around . You *could* stop multiplying -- Have you not heard of the (Blue) Pill? ...(DK ref? Seach "Joanna Rutkowski"

My HD presently totals about 3,500 files, including a couple hundred for aforementioned Big Project. I've had it down to 2,700.... ATM, the Windows folder has only 1,285 files. Most machines start with 7-10,000 just for Windows, and most peeps have tens, or hundreds, of thousands of files total. I had about 70,000 before realizing how many were useless. If you earn your living (by doing something useful), you can stay, OK? ..ho hard feelings, it's nothing personal; it's not you.
Jeffrey - October 02, 2009 - Report this comment
We didn't get Windows 7 early, only preview release that expires in March next year unless replaces with a full release. Vista is also well knows by OEMs as the worst OS and my company won't even carry it. In order for something to be libel it can't be the truth ;)
Tommy Turtle - October 02, 2009 - Report this comment
Jeffrey: Thanks for confirming my vista of Vista. And indeed, you are correct: truth is always an absolute defense against libel. Thanks for the vote and comment, and would still be interested in your feedback from the preview release.
Shirley Temple - October 03, 2009 - Report this comment
@TT - I had to use Acrobat and MS Office due to other people creeping in my PC. If I'm the only one using it I would've settled for OpenOffice and other free alternatives instead. But meh on MS and Adobe on inefficiency and too much DRM.
Tommy Turtle @ Shirley Temple - October 03, 2009 - Report this comment
Shirley Temple: So, the DRM problems that caused such howls in Vista haven't been improved any in the Win 7 preview, eh? That's not going to help sell a lot of it.

One question, please, if you have the time: Does W7 actually *do* anything that I can't do with XP, and *that I would WANT to do*? (not something MS or the movie industry etc. thinks I should do, or just more snazzy graphics that I don't need and waste RAM.). In other words, if I'm perfectly happy now, is there any reason why I'd *want* to buy Win 7?
Curious, and appreciate your answer if you have the time. Thanks.
Shirley Temple - October 03, 2009 - Report this comment
I still do have problems in 7 just as most of us do with Vista, but I don't mind that much; XP was no different from any piece of BS Microsoft came up. I can turn off Aero if I wanted to save on resources, but yeah.
Tommy Turtle - October 03, 2009 - Report this comment
Thanks, Shirley. You've answered my question: No. :) (no reason to ditch XP for 7).

Of course XP was BS; the third link up in the intro expressed my opinion of it. The difference is that thanks to Vista's flop, XP has perforce remained available for eight years, far more than any other MS OS in history (yes, including the DOS days). Eight years is *almost* enough time for even MS to get something fairly right. Plus I've tweaked it myself to just where I like it.

It is interesting to see the Patch Tuesday updates. Very few are for the core XP system any more. IE, Win Media, Office/Word, etc., but over time, gradually many of the bugs in XP itself have been worked out. This is called "maturing", and it's unfortunate that a more-or-less mature (by MS standards, haha) and fairly proven workhorse of an OS is going to be phased out in favor of more marketing hype -- but that's MS, and I guess they don't make any more money if all of us with XP just keep it, huh? :-)
The Terminalator - October 05, 2009 - Report this comment
Hasta La Vista, baby.
Arnold Turtlegger - October 05, 2009 - Report this comment
The Terminalator: LOL! ... why didn't anyone else think of that?! .... good one! thanks for v/c. Will you be baaaack? -- TT.
Shirley Temple - October 05, 2009 - Report this comment
@TT - I still have my XP and Linux installers just in case, though.
The Terminalator - October 06, 2009 - Report this comment
I never left yet, but if I do I'll be back. It takes a geek to think like a geek. Happy to have given you a chuckle. =;-)
Stuart McArthur - October 06, 2009 - Report this comment
astonishing and mind-blowing - which makes it just an average TT parody

(What exactly do they put in the water on Planet Turtle?)
555
Tommy Turtle - October 06, 2009 - Report this comment
Shirley Temple: Smart girl! No wonder you were named Ambassador!

The Terminalator: No doubt! And sooo much better than being a mere Kindergarten Cop!

Stuart McArthur, Resurrected From The Dead: Very heady praise from one who is no slouch himself -- one of the best, in fact. Nice to see you, anytime!

I think it's something in the seaweed. Or maybe the Turtle's mind has mutated from all that sludge and pollution you humans are dumping in the oceans? .... thanks Stu! :-D
Shirley Temple - October 07, 2009 - Report this comment
@TT - How shrewd of me. I use a Linux Mint Live CD mostly for emergency/recovery purposes, although I might dual or even triple-boot with XP and/or 7 just in case.
Tommy Turtle - October 07, 2009 - Report this comment
Ms. Black: And a child star, too -- woman of many talents! Awesome!

I have a DOS CD that saved my life once, and since have full-disk-imaging sw, with which regular backups are made; it comes with its own bootable OS. So when it went in the shop and they reainstalled Win, I just booted from the backup program's CD, loaded the CD with my disk backup, and in ten minutes, it was exactly where it was the day before it went into the shop. (The entire HDD fits on one CD, as I keep my HD at about 825-950 MB *total*, with XP at only 275 MB, so with compression, the backup CDs are about 330-350 MB. Can put a human-readable, drag-and-drop backup of data on the same CD, along with several incremental backups of the original full HD backup.) Cheers!
Shirley Temple - October 07, 2009 - Report this comment
@TT - As for my case I do settle on backing it up the hard way, since I often make system-wide changes (plus I have GBs of data/photos/whatever), although I would like to do such a backup procedure. I bet you use that Hiren CD or something. Haven't tried downloading the ISO yet, but I bet it's worth the 10-15 minutes. And it's been years since I left the Good Ship Lollipop.
Tommy Turtle - October 08, 2009 - Report this comment
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm: I'd think it safer to have all those GBs of photos on DVDs, where no electromagnetic surge or whatever is going to get at them, plus the machine runs a *whole* lot faster without all of those animal crackers in your soup.

I use Acronis backup sw, and would say good and bad things about it. Support is non-existent, and the on-disk "secret partition" bit I never could get to work. But the making of external full-disk backups to a flash drive takes only a few minutes, depending of course on how many gigs you've worked -- er, stored --, and incremental backups are even faster. I'll make a full one once a week; more often if doing frequent changes, maybe every 2-3 weeks during quiet times. Then make an incremental backup a few times a week to once a week, same criteria. Also copy current work -- for example, these parodies in progress, or our ongoing "My Fair Lady" parody, of which I'm enclosing two complementary front-row tickets, to a flash drive regularly. I lost *one* epic work in progress a few years back. Never again.

After making about the third incremental backup, it's time to burn that from flash to CD -- or DVD, of course, for a larger HD. (I do have a backup machine that hasn't been so severely trimmed.) Then defrag and make a fresh full backup.

Where this really comes in handy, aside from catastrophic failure, is in testing system changes or new sw. You can make a fresh full or incremental backup, do the change, and if you don't like the results, in five or ten minutes (maybe twenty in your case), you're right back to where you were. Since I volunteer as a part-time tech support rep for a browser security tool, it's useful when someone says that App X is causing this problem. I don't know about App X and may not like it at all, but I can do the backup thing, install App X, diagnose whatever, then reverse the machine back to the pre-App-X condition. Like having one's very own time machine. :)

Got a pair of bobby socks stuffed in your drawers somewhere? (your dresser, not your undies -- sorry!) Put 'em on, and we can be The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). :-D
Shirley Temple - October 08, 2009 - Report this comment
@TT - I'm yet to buy an external HDD (a serial ATA one by the way), so I'm making do with a rather anemic 80GB drive. I'm not the type who likes piles of stuff around my room. I would like to back up regularly, it's just that space and media are in short supply in my case. Torrenting a truckload of my movies is fine, but losing it to a head crash or malware attack isn't, obviously.
Tommy Temple -- or is it Shirley Turtle? - October 08, 2009 - Report this comment
Sorry, trying to keep track of who said what.. :D

I don't have an external HDD either, as they're subject to the same failures as internal ones, about 3%/yr, I've heard. I too make do with an "anemic" 80 GB HD, of which 79+ GB are free (or, in binary, a 74.33 GB drive, with about 73.4 free.)

I bought a three-ring binder that holds 400 CDs or DVDs, not much larger than a regular such binder, just thicker. Handle on the binding; can sit on your bookshelf upright, taking up only about 4-6" of shelf space. Should solve that problem.

With flash memory expanding in size and coming down in price, you can buy a 16 or 32 GB flash drive very reasonably. Takes up about as much space as your thumb, and even if your 80-gigger is full, the full-disk-image backup should fit on the 32-GB flash (about 60-65% compression, depending on type of content), though I admit that would be a lot of DVDs to burn. But if buying an additional flash drive is out of the question, you could keep updating/overwriting the single existing backup for years. ... Just food for thought.
Shirley Temple - October 09, 2009 - Report this comment
I guess I'd had to buy a 32GB stick instead.
Tommy Turtle - October 10, 2009 - Report this comment
newegg has 32 GB off-brand for USD $60, and the very reputable Sandisk and Kingston names for $80.

64 GB from $124 off-brand; 140-145 Sandisk/Kingston

128 GB, bigger than your whole HD, so no compression necessary, but start at 300.00

FWIW, IMHO, as prices continue to drop, eventually HDDs will go the way of floppies, and we'll all have solid state flash memory internal drives -- no moving parts, less heat. Some high-end tablets already do, I think.
Shirley Temple - October 11, 2009 - Report this comment
Despite the fact that they wear out over time as you write on it. But yeah, that's life.
Tommy Turtle - October 11, 2009 - Report this comment
IIRC, they've increased the read/write life cycle from ~10k cycles to ~100k. The better ones have wear-leveling mechanisms so that the same sectors aren't constantly written to, unlike HD, where might as well write your sys files and freq used apps to the front, for speed. 'Course, if you're using 1 % of the drive, they're *all* at the front. ... :) and position on the drive makes no diif in eprom, since there's no head-seeking, etc. :-)

Expect they'll raise that lifetime, too, but it's certainly enough cycles for you to do a backup a day for the next 100k days = not quite 274 years. Is that a problem?:-D

Also, if it did wear out as a sub for HDD, think how much easier to change., esp. in a laptop, if they had a little trap door to it. Unplug - plug. 'Sides, don't most puters become obsolete before the flash drive would wear out? Cheers. Life is good!

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