Windows Failure Hits My Dell Hard (And Zoho Saved My Day)

Earlier this week, I've tried to install Ubuntu on my laptop PC - just because I was getting tired of Windows (ever seen a slowing 2GHz CoreDuo ?). The IT guy gave me his so-called official off-the-shelf blahblahblah PartitionMagic CD, for me to partition the hard disk accordingly - I still need Windows for some software demos and apps.

Guess what : got the BSOD right after the reboot. Since then, impossible to repair the damages (don't ask, please), as I couldn't even access to the DOS.

So, yesterday evening I decided to do it the hard way, formatting the hard drive and installing Ubuntu 7.0. Pretty comfortable OS, by the way : I got WiFi up and running in less than 1 minute, and I don't have to re-enter the WEP key each time I wake the machine up.

Now, the really good thing of all this mess : I can get back all my mission-critical files, PDF docs, URLs, etc. Thanks to the lovely Zoho suite, Zoho Projects in particular.
I use Zoho everyday, as my mission planner and database. I put almost everything on it : draft presentations, spreadsheets, web links, PDF documents...

I can now restore my offline base, without fearing files losses.
Outcome : I'll use Zoho Show to create my next presentation.

post-scriptum : I'll install Opera for Ubuntu as soon as I can get rid of those typical Linux messages (missing this, missing that...). So I'll be able to sync my bookmarks and prefs, in the blink of an eye.

Comments

[Lail Carneggy]

I've not heard of Zoho before. Does Zoho Projects have Gantt charts and does it integrate with email? The software that I currently use - http://www.wrike.com/ - does have a lot of useful features. My personal fave is the email integration, it's really cool when you create tasks via email - you save so much time.

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Hello Lail,

Zoho Projects has Gantt charts and much more.
For the time being, no email feature such as the one provided by Wrike (i.e. update the project by email messages). I'm not sure this is key, as we do use Web-based apps to avoid email overhead.
However, I'd certainly like to see some Zoho+Twitter mashup.

_Marc

[J. Lai]

I also killed my hard disk (physically) by installing ubuntu. Hope that you won't get tired with ubuntu. Good luck!
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J. : Should the lesson be : "get a Mac" ? ;-) Look, I've been installing WinXP on my new MacBook : a painless task, since BootCamp takes care of everything. Why the heck MS can't provide such solutions is a real mystery to me (well, not that much, indeed).
_Marc