[dba-Tech] Windows 8 and 8.1

On 2013-12-27 10:50 AM, Arthur Fuller wrote:
> First off, I like Windows 8 and especially 8.1 a lot. I know that lots of
> people don't, but I have grown into it. One possible reason is that an
> external monitor is connected to my laptop. That allows me to run the Win8
> UI on the laptop and the Desktop on the external, and just drag the mouse
> from one screen to the other, so I run stuff on both at once. It helps to
> have 8GB of RAM; that helps a lot.
>
> But there are a few things that I still can't find. Such as, which version
> of Win8.1 am I running? I used to know how to find that in Win7 and cannot
> locate this info in Win8.1. I also cannot find, despite the little guide
> that came with this Dell laptop, how to switch from cabled to wireless. The
> guide says it's F2 but that doesn't seem to work. Maybe I'm supposed to
> hold down some additional key as I press F2. Don't know.
>
> I also have a set of Logitcch speakers and I did notice that there are on
> the aide of the laptop a pair of jack inputs, one for microphone and the
> other for headphones., according to the guide. Do I just plug the speaker
> jack into the headphone jack?

No, that output is only big enough to drive headphones. It has to go to 
a receiver and then to your speakers.

PB
>
> Any ideas, anyone? The laptop in question is a Dell Inspiron with 8GB RAM
> and 1TB hard disk (and not that it matters, but a couple of TB USB
> externals attached).
>
> And before closing this message, I want to praise Dell Canada for their
> superb support. The hard disk failed after about 7 months, so the local
> dealer said that I had to deal direct with Dell. I ran Diags and obtained
> the error number and phoned Dell and quoted chapter and verse; they sent me
> a container by Purolator with instructions on how to package it, and a
> number to call for pickup. Purolator arrived a day later to pick up the
> laptop. Three days later it was delivered back to me, with most of the data
> recovered, and a spanking-new hard disk in place/ That round-trip must have
> cost them $50, aside from the labour costs. I sparked it up and Presto!
> Everthing worrked. They didn't manage to recover all my data, but since I
> have several USB externals attached and schedulued backups, it only took me
> a few minutes to put everything back in place. This is the first Dell I've
> ever owned, but on the strength of their support policy I will recommend
> this company to every present and future client, and family member.
>
> One last thing: being a bi-OS-ual, spending half my time in Windows and the
> rest in Linux, with 8GB of RAM this works splendidly. So well, in fact,
> that I have a couple of different versions of Linux in Virtual Boxes, and
> sometimes run them both at once. The only thing I haven't figured out is
> how to create an XP Virtual Machine; I have an old client or two that has
> not yet moved beyond XP and once in a while I need to do maintenance on
> them. In the ideal world, I would have a VM for each client/friend/family
> member, so I could just switch from this one to that one, and essentially
> be running a duplicate of their system, albeit with outdated data, but the
> data doesn't matter, it's the code that matters. So that means that for
> client ABC, he's running XP and refuses to migrate, and he has an Access
> app against a MySQL back end, and refuses the risks of upgrading. Client
> BCD has Win7 Pro and an Access app against an MS-SQL back end, and refuses
> to upgrade. Client DEF has an Unbuntu installation running a PHP/Javascript
> site with MySQL in the back end.
>
> That will suffice for now. Then there is me, always the experimenter and
> explorer, playing with the latest release of Python and whatever else
> interests me (I hereby confess that I'm a coding slut, always interested in
> every available language, from C++ to assembly to VBA to Eiffel (and kudos
> to Bertrand Meyer for showing us the way). I suppose that you could
> describe this as my problem. The only language in which I am confident in
> declaring my fluency is VBA. In the rest, I am at best conversational.
>
> And just to reveal how out of the current loops I am, last night I re-read
> Albert Camus's "The Rebel", for about the fourth time. Tomorrow it's Tom
> Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" for the fourth time. But before I leave
> Camus, a month or so ago I had a conversation with my friend Audra, and
> somehow the topic of Camus and "The Rebel" came up. And I vaguely quoted,
> and said "This book is about the relationship between the Master and the
> Slave, and it proves that The Slave is always in control, because at some
> point he will say, Rather than suffer this abuse, I prefer to die. And at
> that point, the Master has lost all his power. That spoke to my soul. That
> told me almost everything I needed to know. It didn't teach me how to make
> love to a woman and I still don't know that, but it did teach me how to
> behave in the public world. I will never forget that: the moment when the
> Slave says he would rather die than suffer the crap the Master shovels upon
> him, that is the definition of Progress.
>