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Cybertooth wrote:

It depends on your needs and the field or industry you’ll be working in.

Also it’s possible that you’ll need a specific version of MS Office.

Usually employers provide these to employees, though. At least around here. I’ve never bought MS Office myself… but at work I’ve sold several versions of it various ways, including volume, subscription and single packages.

(One organization ended up buying different versions for R&D, manufacturing and management, for compatibility with the other software they were using.)

And, I know a number of people and even organizations who do manage to use LibreOffice for work. (Won’t name previous clients in public.) It all depends…

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Nathan Parker

Sandra Henry-Stocker wrote:

I’ve never heard anything about laptops being “locked” for Windows. I’m not even sure how that could be done.

Sufficiently esoteric motherboard, with essential functions done only in the closed-source Windows-only driver. Or maybe a boot loader that’s hardcoded to not load anything else.

Last time I saw one of these, the “locked” drivers were Windows 8.0 only. It’d try to upgrade to 10 and brick itself until redone from the firmware on up with vendor-specific tools.

There are other models that require acknowledging a firmware-level warning every boot but will run Linux once you get past that. (Got one of those here, that too only ran Windows 8.0, tried to autoupgrade it and always failed… but a suitable Linux build works, GalliumOS at least came with the right tweaks.)

(Yes, I have a relative that buys laptops based on case color and price, and then throws them at me when they sooner or later fail to work. The pink one was actually fixable to a reasonable condition, my mother uses it now.)

Ascaris wrote:

(or that it may not yet work well with Linux).

This is common in cutting-edge systems, not only laptops. I have mentioned the fancy new parts one of my sons bought some months ago… mainstream distributions still don’t ship a kernel that works right on that thing, but with one of the Ubuntu hwe-edge kernels we got far enough to run “sudo mainline –show-unstable –install-latest” and that worked. (No longer need the –show-unstable after 5.10 got released.)

bratkinson wrote:

As an alternative, I know that some vendors like Verizon used to sell prepaid cell phone USB devices to be connected into older laptop computers that have no cell phone access. Maybe they’re still available.

Well, you could always get a carrier-unlocked Huawei E3372 or D-Link DWM-222 or … one of those others, and separately a SIM with a data plan, prepaid or otherwise?

ISTR that the Huawei one had connectors for external antennas at least, for rural area use.

… assuming your phone’s data connection isn’t going through the same carrier/ISP, anyway.

There are decent inkjets out there, yes, but none of them manage to do much about ink drying in the cartridge… and if you want to do photos at home, inkjets are still just about the only reasonable way to get good quality.

Lasers are a lot easier in many ways, it’s just that they don’t do photos well. Also waterproofness of the results is a plus, especially if you print anything that’ll be used outdoors. (I’ve been doing my own maps occasionally…)

Still, either way, get something that takes a reasonable generic control language. Model-specific drivers get outdated but if your printer can take generic PostScript, PCL or even PDF, you can always revert to that. (And replace the printer with another that can take the same thing if/when it breaks.)

Reminds me of that one time when after a Windows Server upgrade, the new driver for that exact same printer (large laser) had different margin definitions, and label sheets straight from Crystal Reports were misaligned… until I made a second printer definition that fed to the same printer using Generic PS.

(And if it can take generic PS or PCL, it’ll most likely take it from other operating systems too. Unix/Linux has been big on PS for decades by now anyway.)

rc primak wrote:

but these changes also usually get offered for existing kernels.

… and this is exactly what was discussed above – security patches for the 4.4, 4.15, and such kernels.

Upstream mainline is somewhere around 5.10 (released and umpteen patches on top of that already) / 5.11 (release candidates).

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rc primak

I’ve been having issues with my home connection too… ever since the wired connection got pulled (yes, telephone poles pulled out of the ground too).

Well, at the moment I have a load-balanced setup between two LTE mobile broadband connections from different ISP/telcos. Auto failover and all that, along with the dynamic load balancing. Total cost of routers something like 250 € one-time expense, and unmetered mobile data is common and fairly cheap over here.

Cross-platform and code commonality, I’d guess.

The Linux version of Teams comes with its own copy of Chromium… and a whole lot of other things too if you look at the third-party copyright noticers.

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doriel

[mn--]

Ehm. So how do you determine that it’s Outlook that converts it to plain text? What is the original format then?

One of the things I’d check is, whether the plain text format is already included in the original… because “multipart/alternative” messages with both text/html and text/plain versions included are a thing. And Gmail does generate those by default.

… yes, actually, that’s exactly what I got from my test mail. Sending from my @gmail.com identity using the Gmail web interface, to my @outlook.com mailbox only as a BCC without a To: entry (which got converted into “To: undisclosed-recipients:;” )…

So, I have in the message source:

…
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=
…boundary…
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”UTF-8″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
(content in plain text, q-p)
…boundary…
Content-Type: text/html; charset=”UTF-8″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
(content in HTML, formatted, q-p)
…boundary…

… and it’s up to the end-user application to choose which alternative to show.

So, it’s very possible that Outlook doesn’t convert anything, just chooses the first alternative to display. (Because that’s the order they were packaged in, in the message source.) Or maybe there’s a reason it chooses the plaintext one.

There’s at least a mild security implication in that a HTML parser can be attacked with malicious content much easier than a plaintext display – so are BCCs considered suspicious?

Don’t have Outlook at hand myself to check for a configuration option to prefer plain over HTML or vice versa.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by mn--.

b wrote:

I don’t think there’s any way you can have two Personal/Family OneDrives in a single Windows account.

You can only have OneDrive Personal/Family and OneDrive for Business together under the same log-in

… using the OFFICIAL Microsoft OneDrive client.

If you use a separate application, as in a third-party client, then that should be able to have a configuration completely independent of what you have in the official Microsoft client.

At least rclone can sync OneDrive; it’s sort of … very technical, but free. Have used, worked when I did, not using currently.

Insync advertises multiple account capability on their page, but I have no personal experience with it. Multiple pricing plans, apparently has a free trial.

[mn--]

At least you should be able to sync both to the same server, can even use both concurrently.

Using the TbSync add-on (and its Exchange ActiveSync component which is another add-on these days), Thunderbird can sync to regular Microsoft accounts – I’ve tested with a free @outlook.com account recently, and previously with a 365 E3 account.

I haven’t looked into how Win10 Mail stores things locally.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by mn--. Reason: Added links to TB addons

doriel wrote:

Also I have small question.. Teams are built on javascript?

Actually, TypeScript and Angular. So a superset of a superset of JavaScript… that possibly might be compilable to base JavaScript.

Yeah, that’ll add bloat.

And even base-level JavaScript apps that use the Electron framework (which is JavaScript) are not exactly known for leanness…

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doriel

OscarCP wrote:

According to the article this bug can be exploited only by someone who has access to one’s computer, be it by directly laying hands on, and then logging-in to it, or by being given or gaining somehow root access via remote login.

Ehm, that last part… someone gaining unprivileged access by remote login (or a command-execution vulnerability in other software), can use this vulnerability to gain root access.

And I’m fairly sure I mentioned already that this thing probably works on lots of Unix-type operating systems. That ZDNet article refers to someone verifying that this is so on AIX at least.

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Nathan Parker

BATcher wrote:

there are countries in the world other than the US

Well… actually this was quite accurate for here at least. There’s all kinds of services available from various providers, yes, “simplified” 365 too. Just, specific vendor names and other fine details (exact prices…) would be different, but the pattern is the same.

And really, I’ve seen nothing on Microsoft’s side that prevents you from contracting with multiple CSPs. That’s especially useful if you have multiple locations. (On different continents in that one case, but even a few hundred km might be enough that you want another local support provider for that location.)

JohnW wrote:

I have yet to find a monitor with built-in speakers that are worth bothering with.

Eh, I remember having used one that was surprisingly good… in 1996. That CRT looked like it had big “ears” …

JohnW wrote:

Probably better off with a HDTV if you want speakers that you can hear.

Then again some people advocate using a separate soundbar or speaker system with those too.

JohnW wrote:

Some monitors provide an audio output (via earphone jack), which might be an option if you are using either HDMI or DisplayPort (inline audio) cables to the monitor.

This is what I currently have on my desk. Speakers could be better, sure, but then again I do have other things to spend money on, too…

Paul T wrote:

I would not buy a monitor with built-in speakers. Spend the same money on a better monitor.

Once found to my surprise that the cheapest “good enough” monitor available locally at short notice actually also had speakers that were good enough for attending e-learning and conference calls. Entertainment wasn’t a planned purpose anyway.

It’s a question of what is good enough for what, what is available, and how to best use your budget.

Casey H wrote:

Q: If I buy a monitor with built in speakers, can I supplement those with the ones I already have?

Theoretically yes, but in most cases that requires some rather advanced things in software. Then again if it’s an old-style one with a separate input for the audio, you can of course even circulate the audio through an external amp/mixer…