When upgrading goes too far.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

So we got a phone call this morning. Here's our side of the conversation:

Yes sir, I'm sure your 10 year old VAIO is a nice machine (and it would have to be to still be running). Yes, I am quite sure that 512MB is the maximum amount of memory it will support. No, there is no way around it. You want to what? Upgrade to Vista? No sir, I'm afraid you wont be able to do that. Yes, I'm sure it's much nicer than the copy of Windows 98 you're currently using, but you won't be able to install it on on your machine. Yes, I'm quite sure. You really should look at replacing the machine if you want to do a major OS update.

Oh the wonders of a dead drive and up-to-date backup (if one actually existed)

[alexanderc.livejournal.com]

Ok, so a user's got a dead drive. Very dead drive. Won't spin up dead drive. Plus the backup is very old (of course, right?). So I get the wonderful duty of recovering the data ("It's irreplaceable data." "So why haven't you been burning DVDs with the burner on your desk?") but I haven't had to actually send one out like this before. Have any of you out there sent your drive off to a data recovery service? Recommendations on a service that you found very good or warnings for one that you would ever stay away from?

In the mean time, the user has learned the error of his ways and has agreed to a full archival system using full and incremental DVD burns. Later there will be a RAID system but at the very least the DVD burner is going to be better than nothing.

I have a headache and I have no alcohol.