Re: [PLUG] Microsoftian Encephalitis & failure to WindowsUpdate

[jeff <jeffv@op.net>]

Art Alexion wrote:
> While we always talk about doing this, I find the hardware -- and consequently 
> the drivers -- to vary so much from machine to machine, that I feel we'd 
> almost have to create an image for each machine..

very good point.

> 
> Sometimes its seems that we can get 3 new machines from Dell with the same 
> model number in the same shipment, and there are still some variations in the 
> hardware drivers.

in theory, Dell Corporate lines are supposed to avoid this.  The 
consumer (Dimension) lines will be latest and greatest or whatever is 
popular that day.  The corporate lines are *supposed to be* uniform.  My 
experience has been that they were horrid until the last 2 years or so, 
when they started keeping track of what they put into them and the 
driver cd's could pick up the configs regardless.


> To solve this, we've tossed around the idea of installing a lightweight Linux 
> and having Windows run in a VM.

The most well-behaved Win install I have is the one that runs in a VM on 
my main Xubuntu box.  It went up the day after Xubuntu was installed and 
hasn't failed or gotten corrupted.  Recently I've started using it to 
run Outlook as my main mail client.  Aside from the PITA of having to 
hit ctrl-alt to get out of the window, it behaves. [someone did put up 
articles on how to do this seamlessly with VirtualBox, but I don't want 
to create a new image to do it]


>  The image might then be less hardware 
> dependent if I understand the virtualization correctly.

Yup.
Everything gets installed to a vanilla-ish set of virtual hardware.


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