Microsoft Attempts to Woo Students With 'Crowdsourced' Laptops 128
theodp writes "Q. What do Chris Brown and Steve Ballmer have in common? A. They both want you to Beg for It. GeekWire reports that Microsoft is touting its new Chip In program, a crowdfunding platform that allows students to 'beg' for select Windows 8 PCs and tablets that they can't afford on their own. Blair Hanley Frank explains, 'Students go to the Chip In website and choose one of the 20 computers and tablets that have been pre-selected by Microsoft. Microsoft chips in 10% of the price right off the bat, and then students are given a link to a "giving page" to send out to anyone they think might give them money. Once their computer is fully funded, Microsoft ships it to them.' Hey, what could go wrong?"
Re:Bah, US only... (Score:2, Informative)
UEFI is a pain - 'secure' or not (Score:5, Informative)
There are more problems with UEFI than 'secure' boot. I bought an HP box with Windows 7 and secure boot disabled. The thing wouldn't boot Windows after I installed the drive from my old PC as a secondary SATA drive (believe me, I tried every available BIOS setting). The Windows EFI bootloader insisted on trying to boot from the secondary (MBR-formatted) drive if it was there - even though a live-booted linux CD was fine with it. But if I left a gap in the SATA drive numbers, Windows would boot (and mount the SATA3 dirve as drive F:), whereas my live linux CD didn't even see it as SATA3 (apparently the BIOS didn't report it there with the gap).
Essentially, I was only able to 'use' this drive after I completely wiped it and replaced its MBR partitioning scheme with a GPT scheme. But my point is UEFI has 3 problems as I see it:
1) Secure boot locking out non-signed stuff (why can't it just warn you when you try to boot non-signed stuff and let you continue).
2) Weird implementations producing crazy, inexplicable behaviors. Including inconsistent ability to boot from external media, and some systems actually getting bricked by booting a Ubuntu CD.
3) Forcing use of GPT partitioning, which many Linux distros don't handle yet, and which even Windows doesn't need till you go over 2 TB drives.
Most of this is the result of an awkward transition to a possibly better partitioning and booting scheme, but forcing it on everyone - combined with poor implementations of much more complex firmware. Maybe it only seems intended to make dual booting hell. In any case, it succeeds beautifully.