For some reason, I forgot the password I chose for my OpenPandora, so I had to reflash the device, which gave me the occasion to install the latest firmware. It was quite simple: unzip at the root of an SD card, place the card in the first slot, boot while holding the "R" corner button, select the SD, and off it goes.
This is quite the opposite of an HP Folio I started maintaining at work. The basic premise of new PCs nowadays is that they don't come with their system restore disk: You have to make it yourself. Being an "ultrabook" with no DVD drive, I could only do it using an 9GB USB key, after a huge warning about the fact that a restore disk can only be build once.
I do understand now why in their newest firmwares Apple's latest laptops and Macs can all be restored from an online download directly. Yes, you'll have to download about 3-4GB, but that's not the point: Users should be punished because they weren't paranoid enough to build a restore disk. Also, you shouldn't punish users that want to create more than one recovery disk if their original media broke or got lost. In effect, with "open" hardware and with Apple (the complete opposite of "open"), they both don't mind if you wipe clean your whole computer every other month. But with PCs using OEMed versions of Windows? You should be trowing away the PC and buy a new one each time, which I suspect is what people end up doing.
Published on May 22, 2012 at 21:51 EDT
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