Jumping to Conclusions on BIOS, Phoenix, and Windows 107
tomlasusa writes "In a post on LinuxQuestions.org, user 'chessonly' cites a 2003 article from Networkcomputing.com by writer Steven J. Schuchart as evidence of that Phoenix Technologies has made its BIOS more Windows-friendly — thereby locking out users from using other OSs. In a rebuttal posted at nwc.com, Schuchart says that this is just not true."
Spazamataz? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardware development isn't going to stop just because 4 out of 5 kernel devs agree to release a driver as stable.
I think the programmer side of the community is flexible enough to deal with hardware changes, and it's just that annoying end-user whining because he wants hardware X to work today, and the fact that he doesnt have it proves some world conspiracy against him.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Which, of course, is utter bullshit. Slashdot does that all the time.
This story was posted only to take a shot at Digg. It's otherwise completely non-newsworthy, something I can't say about Digg's current stories.
Bah! (Score:4, Insightful)
They are just covering thier own backs that on the slight chance that the data changes in the ACPI could cause some crap on other OS'es. The user probably set a password, or corrputed his BIOS during the flash phase, and is pointing fingers at anyone else so he no longer looks like a dumbass.
I get this all the time with people who bring thier CellPhones in for repair becuase they locked thier phones and forgot thier password. They state clearly that they never changed it, and when I load the phone into my PST's and retreive the code the look of realization comes over them and say, "oh yeah, I remember it now"
Re:What are the facts of the case? (Score:3, Insightful)
What'd be effective is to verify the purported fact first - the guy hasn't taken it in for servicing. The Phoenix guys do not have any information on the problem from the blog post and you want them to duplicate it, and figure out what is going wrong. Come on. If its a BIOS password a work-around or a fix is rather well known - its called flashing the bloody BIOS.
You go on to ask what Phoenix's response is - apparently you did RTFA so let me summarize "They didn't do it. They won't do it. This article is to spread anti-MS FUD. They do not know where the problem is and they won't find out from a bloody blogpost. And ofcourse the last line - I suspect that chessonly's problem is somewhere between the chair and the keyboard."
You could check [tuxmobil.org] couldn't [comcast.net] you. There I am linking to sites that apparently have the linux on his laptop. PROOF: that chessonly is a moron. [/sarcasm]
Re:Toshiba :( (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmmm, well there could just be a reason for that.
I am no BIOS expert or anything like that, but it seems to me from a logical POV that Windows, *nix, or any other OS would have to rely on the state of the machine when comming back from hibernation. If the BIOS allowed you to boot into another OS while a different OS was in a hibernated state, when you attempt to bring the hibernated OS back in, then the machine state would be quite different then when it went into hibernation. It would seem to me that this could cause any number of problems and a significant amount of chaos.
It also seems that the machine does not completely power down on hibernation. Try an experiment. Hibernate windows then disconect the power cord and pull the battery out and leave it out for say 5 minutes. Then pop the battery back in and see if Windows restores to its correct state. If it does, then perhaps there is something to be said for your asertion that this could be something evil. If it fails to come back to life properly then its all about preserving the machine state.
Re:Toshiba :( (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Toshiba :( (Score:4, Insightful)
I've fixed 300Mhz old Dell laptops using freely available service manuals with detailed assembly and disassembly instructions from their support.dell.com site.
But it's good Toshiba does it too.