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posted by janrinok on Monday March 03 2014, @04:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the its-my-way-or-the-highway-said-the-Borg dept.

An Anonymous Coward belatedly writes:

"Sandisk changed the configuration, beginning in 2012, for all USB drives they make so that in future external USB devices will be seen as physical hard drives. This has been done to meet requirements set by Microsoft for Windows 8 which states that all USB devices must be configured to be recognised as fixed drives (nb. this is possibly related to Windows-to-Go). This has caused havoc for many users as Sandisk drives can no longer be used with Windows Recovery or any program that will only write to USB External devices. Sandisk deleted the support page that described why Sandisk USB drives are now configured as fixed drives, although the blog author includes it in his blog.

Beware any USB pen drive which states it is "Windows 8 certified". The device will not be detectable as an external drive in Windows 8. The HP Recovery Disks page says to avoid any Windows-8-certified USB devices."

One comment on the blog suggests that Sandisk might have reverted to more conventional practices for subsequent USB devices.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by iNaya on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:46AM

    by iNaya (176) on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:46AM (#11777)

    I get your reasoning about Google, because they do provide products for free. However, with Apple, you have never done any business with them, so using that as a comparison versus Microsoft is unfair.

    And let me reiterate that I am well aware of all the anti-competitive and anti-consumer activities that Microsoft has undertaken since its inception.

    Apple does actually sell products for money. The fact that you have never given them your money doesn't change this. I personally haven't given any money to Microsoft in the last 6 years, but I have given money to Apple. Apple has never had the chance to abuse me, apart from the overly high cost of their products, which do have a much more polished feel about them, which makes me feel better when using them.

    As for your PCs coming with Windows, why not change vendors? There are quite a few vendors around that supply bare PCs. With laptops, it's harder to avoid. The laptops I personally like the best tend to come with either the Windows tax or the Apple tax (I put linux on most stuff). One could argue there is no Apple tax, but, if not, why is Apple stuff at the same spec as a Samsung, so much more expensive? IMO I'm paying extra.

    But Apple has certainly done many evil things. I will leave that as a Googling exercise for you. For instance, in the EU they tried to charge customers for a warranty, which by law they had to offer anyway, so they were basically trying to literally steal money of people through deception. This is not the only greedy, self-absorbed thing they have done.

    Neither Apple, Google, nor Microsoft as organisations would have any qualms taking every cent you have. If they could, they would. Microsoft has done it in a very direct way, whereas Google supports their things through advertising. The cost of this is harder to calculate, as it comes in the form of lost privacy (which is neither a concern to you, apparently, nor is it to me), and in the form of products being slightly more expensive to cover advertising budgets (but this is not Google's fault, as they would use another agency if not Google).

    I have worked in and with many organisations, including the a large Australian bank, a large British Financial organisation, a security organisation, the US military, a few New Zealand Government SOEs, and the Korean police, among many others. The only two organisations I worked for where my boss' eyes didn't light up at the idea of being able to scrape a few extra cents out of existing and potential customers - whether it benefited them or not - were the US military and the Korean police. Which also happened to be the only two organisations I've worked for who don't rely on revenues to survive.

    The British financial organisation I worked for, for two years. And they were greedy bastards. They built multi-million software product for a particular customer, who also paid (much more than just the salaries) for a certain number of developers to always be working on fixing ongoing issues. The organisation for which I worked put less than half that number on it, and completely lied to the customer.

    Then once the product was nearly door, they simultaneously fired about 30 developers while telling the customer that they were increasing efforts to get the product released on time. They were also making the largest profits they had ever made. The product was still going to get released on time to miss penalty payments, and I got some measure of justice by collaborating with several others to leave the org at roughly the same time as me (it wasn't hard, many were just as disgusted as I was), so they lost two project managers, the entire testing team, and most of the graphics team.

    What it comes down to, I guess, is that I have had too many bitter experiences to put any faith in the kindness any business other than a small business where the managing director personally knows the customers. Once the hive mentality takes over, caring about people, the environment, etc. all go out the window; except when doing so has an obvious (positive) effect on revenues, or a negative effect on costs.

    Anyhow, the reason I dislike the use of "M$" or "fanbois", is because they are words which detract from any meaningful content in a conversation, and are instead an appeal to emotion. Which is all very well when discussing an emotional topic. However, organisational ethics are not an emotional topic, though it is certainly something that provokes extreme emotions in many people, including myself.

    Using angry words however (and my original reply here is a prime example of that), never gets people onside with one's line of thinking. In fact, it serves to alienate people, even if they were people who would have tended to agree with you. So I did that and I got modded as flamebait, which is a correct mod considering how I wrote what I was thinking.

    I guess, what I'm trying to say, is that using monikers which mock an individual or organisation makes one look childish when there are better ways to express those opinions without resorting to name-calling.