Another day, another laptop that has crashed - gee I just gotta love M$ stuff - it's just so reliable, ain't it ?. Boot a 'nix live_cd and look at those partitions. Gee - what's that? A yellow triangle against the C: drive - that's SDA3 - ain't it? Must be, as that little, boot, partition is SDA1. No that's not right - SDA1 is PQrecovery, SDA2 is boot, SDA3 is C: drive. That's better. No it's not -the live 'nix cd can't read the partition's data - rat's that means that I can't copy out this person's...

Been playing with this for a while now,
seems quite a good gadget - to play wih.
this one came with Mint13 - cinnamon - partially installed.
just had to complete the install - username, location etc.

haven't used cinnamon before - so was keen to 'give it a run'.
probably prefer Mate - though - but happy to use either. . .

the H/W is quite up-to-date & uses several usb's to connect,
the video is via hdmi & sound vis 2.5mm socket....

Just looking at a gov't grant to buy a pile of <wiped> used notebooks.

may be able to get several 2nd hand ones.

at least - there won't be any previous O/Ss that I would have to get rid of.

these would be used to show other people, how to use a 'nix O/S
without them getting concerned / afraid the their M$ will get altered / damaged / wiped out.

went to a local auction the other week, - never have had a chance to do this before,
& wanted to get some notebooks - maybe 6 - 10 or so of these, but I was quite surprised
at just how high the price for 2nd hand notebooks were.

almost 40% of a brand new one, with only slightly higher spec's ??.
- new one would have more memory or a larger hdd - but only just.

Installed a M$xp as a guest in a virtual box under Mint, yesterday.
Then tried to install & run some older M$ games on the virtual M$xp system, but it was a real NoGo.

A bit of a pity about this, as it would have been the best of both worlds - secure O/S & the M$ virus in a sandbox.

However, some more research, shows that the VB graphics may not be up to scratch. - no direct9x layer.- Now will have to see if the VB guest additions make any difference....