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 One of the few moments I require Windows in my (personal) life, is ironically, when I need to support OTHER windows users. I’m a big fan of Logmein as a remote-assistance tool to support friends and family. It saves me a lot of trouble having to either “go over there and fix it” or do even more tedious remote support over the phone. (None of the previous options are to my liking). However : With a “mostly mac” household there is one little downside to using Logmein : Keyboard incompatibility. When I’m in OSX (on my Imac or Macbook pro) I can access the Logmein website and even remote control the other computers via the browser, but there is one downside : Keyboard incompatibility. Because I use a French AZERTY Mac keyboard and the other parties mostly use a AZERTY Windows keyboard, Logmein somehow has the greatest trouble “mapping” the right keys to the right output on the remote machine. This results in not being able to find the correct key for the “.” sign, or hopelessly looking what key to press to get a colon or semicolon. This has been the case in many versions of Logmein, and to be honest , I’ve learned to live with it. I COULD use the Linux machine I have in the house but Ubuntu sometimes has a little trouble with the Java code that Logmein uses, resulting in bad screen refresh performance.
So my quick workaround used to be to just slap open the Acer Aspire TZ1810 and boot it into its 64-bit version of Windows 7 that was on there when I bought it. To be honest , i LIKED using windows 7 on that machine. It was snappy , responsive and the OS was not that bad at all. I even dare to go that far as to say i “liked” Windows 7. That was until I booted it last week and it just kept trying to start up (giving me the black screen with the windows logo, but nothing more). I hadn’t “DONE” anything to the operating system apart from just “using” it, so I was a bit puzzled when it did not work anymore. Safe mode, last known good config, nothing worked. The W7 was borked. No worries , I could just use the system restore partition on the Acer to restore Windows 7 from scratch. Sure it would probably destroy the Ubuntu 10.04 version on there, but you can’t win em all (and the Ubuntu needed a clean install anyway). So i booted the restore partition and told Windows 7 to nuke the entire drive in favor of its new installation. I gave the baby all the berth it could take. The initial recovery went fine, it booted into windows 7 and the Acer OEM scripts got on their merry way of installing all kind of crap-ware (an automated process) So i just let the machine do its thing. The OS rebooted and ..... rebooted ... and ... rebooted some more .... This automated OEM Recovery had brought the PC in such a state that it would constantly reboot, pass the bios, reboot etc etc .. Probably something seriously wrong at the master boot record or something.
I was pretty disappointed with this poor performance. So instead of spending a couple of hours trying to find out what went wrong in order to “repair” the fresh install of Windows 7 , I decided to “have a life” instead, plop in my Ubuntu Installer usb disk and just install that. After installation of Ubuntu 10.04 (which went flawless) I did try the recovery partition again, only to find out that THAT TOO was damaged in the ‘recovery’ process. So now I dont even HAVE a copy of Windows 7 to install on the machine ( With the oem netbooks you don't get a cd , you just get a recovery partition) So .. that was that. No more Windows for me. It took me a good few years to get where I am right now when it comes to open source and cross platform software (and of course OSX) that I don’t even NEED to have a Windows machine in the house anymore. Most (of not ALL) of the things I do do not REQUIRE an exclusive Windows OS. And if it DOES , its probably something I won”t be interested in. So I have let go of the last Windows Install in the house and moved the Acer Laptop from a Dual to a Single boot machine using just Ubuntu. And you know what, thanks to the Ubuntu Pluging from logmein (from their LABS section) I now have excellent remote screen quality WITH the right keyboard layout when I’m using the Acer.
I do know that , if i ever want to sell the Acer laptop’, i WILL need to get the original OEM copy of Windows 7 on there, and in order to do that will have to BUY the CD (not the license) from Acer. I don’t want to even get mad over this , cause a faulty WINDOWS recovery nuked the WINDOWS operating system AND the recovery partition .. but what the hell.. I’ll look into it.
So if you don’t mind I’m going to perfect the installation of my Ubuntu 10.04 now and, just for fun sake , use a W7 wallpaper instead of the original one ;-)
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Hi there
At my work we use Teamviewer for remote assistance. They just released a Linux version, and it is free for personal use. It have helped med keeping Ubuntu at my business computer too. You might want to check it out...