Not exactly the entry I promised before my exam, but I’ll get around to that one shortly - I want to include results as well, so by the end of the week… I think.

No, this post is to observe something very simple and profound in a PC/Mac sense. Sure, yes, same processors/ram/hdds etc, different OSes and firmware. No, my point isn’t platformic in that sense.

I’m sitting in the infants computer lab at Thirroul, in the middle of my first experience with Symantec Ghost. For the unaware, Ghost is a program for a number of things, but the most relevant here being the development of a ‘perfect’ machine, which you can then use Ghost to clone and restore across the network - effectively allowing you to make duplicate machines. I’ve just spent the past hour and a half building a working boot disk, so I’m understandably miffed with Ghost itself.

To do this? I installed Ghost on the server and the client machines, hunted a correct driver, edited it in Ghost Boot Wizard, and created a boot floppy. THis failed, so I had to keep going back and reconfiguring the Boot Wizard until I discovered an incongruous field that required me to enter a specific alphanumeric name for the driver I was using, which I had to take out of the PROTOCOL.INI file. Okay then… I’m working with step by step detailed instructions, never said that. I had to google for ten minutes to find that out. Insert, bam, woo, we have working boot disk!

Of course, the disk was booting earlier. I just couldn’t do the whole multicast-data-across-networkt thing, which was kinda the whole point really. Basically it would boot and come up with the most god-awful interface you can imagine (yeah, booting directly from the dos/firmware crap on the disk) with a nice list of interface options. Once they were all active? Well, I click on Multicast, make sure there’s a session running on the host computer (in my case, named ‘Test’), insert the name of the session (ie: Test), click okay a few times, choose a compression level… and go. Seventy five minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Install two versions of the software, find the necessary drivers, create a boot disk, configure a session, configure the client, multicast.

Now, I’ve done the same kind of thing for Macs here before as well, using Netrestore. Netrestore? It is a lot easier. To create an image, well, first you build the perfect machine. Easy. Now - take a firewire cable. Plug it into your ‘server’ imaging machine. Plug the other end into the client. Reboot the client, holding down “T”. It boots as a removable drive. Now? Just launch “Carbon Copy Cloner”, select the appropriate host drive and destination folder… and hit ‘clone’. No fucking around with boot disks, drivers, whatever. Just image it. When the image is done, incidentally, I have no idea what to do with Ghost - hence the manual. With Netrestore? You run it through the Netrestore helper app, and then drop it in the appropriate directory on the server, and you’re done. You can no broadcast the image around the network, without installing anything on any client machines - just boot them up holding down ‘n’.

I’m sure Ghost will work just as well. I’m sure it’ll do a good job. But this example here just showcases what I’ve always felt about the whole PC/Mac debate - they can both do it, but it’s just so much easier and more intuitive on the Mac. Plug it in, click ‘clone’ and save it. Oh, and that’s not counting pricing either - Netrestore functionality is built in to OSX. You don’t have to use Carbon Copy Cloner, you can do it almost as easily with Disk Utiliy and ASR Utility. Only one or two more steps, seriously. Whereas, for a Windows PC, you need to buy Symantec Ghost licenses. Which cost what, anywhere from $15US per license (in batches of 100+) to $50 per license (10-25 copies). Economical? No, not for something that does more or less the same thing, with greater complexity and a hell of a lot more effort.

This of course ties in too with another hate I have for Windows - why hasn’t Microsoft ever included a disk imaging/mounting utility? Apple’s been offering Disk Copy (now Disk Utility) since System 7 which came out in freaking 1991! Hello Microsoft, this is the stone ages, we’d like our OS feature set back please. Seriously, why should so many users have to either pay for or “obtain” software that should be built into the damn OS? Sure, Alcohol is a nicely done app, but Disk Utility beats it hands down in user friendliness and features, and it’s free and natively supported by the OS!

But these questions will have to wait for another day - time for me to go back to work I guess. Yay. Ghost. :/

Alcata’riel.

-Andiyar