Well, if needed, I can bring a Thomson TG782T WiFi/4PortEthernet modem/router, which has a USB port to mount USB drives as network drives. I'm getting a new one tomorrow, so this one is just going to go on eBay or in the bin. <div style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;color: #999999">-- Sent from my HP TouchPad. Please excuse any brevity or typos.</div><hr align="left" style="width:75%">On 30/12/2011 10:36 PM, Jared Norris <jrnorris@gmail.com> wrote: On 29 December 2011 08:38, Chris Robinson <fabricator4@yahoo.com> wrote: > I don't know about setting up a local repository, but I'll see if I can work > something out. It might be as simple as enabling the local drive as a valid > source as you do for the install CD, but this doesn't get around the problem > of updating the package lists. I'm not sure how that works. Yeah it sounds like a good idea but I don't know how useful it will actually be. Unfortunately it was someone else's idea, I just happened to implement the "download the whole Ubuntu repository and set up a cron job to rsync every day" part of it. > There's currently over 200Mb of update downloads required for a typical > Oneiric install. I do have a procedure for easily putting these on the > target drive at install time so it gets around having to actually download > them. (It's a script that you can run alongside the installer) This doesn't > get around the need to update the package lists either. Even if we can't > update the user's computer at the time of install I recommend we put the > files on the target machine to improve the user experience when they get it > home, with the warning that it's going to take 15 minutes or so to install > all the updates which will have a performance hit. Regardless, I recommend > installing without updating, or even with an internet connection present. > This speeds things up _immensely_ and the updates can be done later even > while the user is using the machine. Sounds great! > I have a brand new 1.5Gb USB drive that can be used for backing up data if > necessary. It's something I'm used to doing for PC customers for > re-installs, including the mail files for Outlook, Express etc. Of course > we need to ask before backing up, but most people will not have a problem > with this. > > It's important to ask the question about data and backups before doing > anything to a user's computer: In my experience people can have things like > years of family photos on the hard drive that they've never bothered backing > up, or in some cases have little idea of how to do it. Exactly. I have a spare stack of CDRs that I'd be willing to take along for people to burn to and keep "just in case". > If someone wants Ubuntu installed alongside Windows how are we going to > handle this? I haven't done a lot of that, but my recollection is that it > can take some time to defrag partitions and move them around, though > defragging can speed up the move/resize quite a bit. If time is an issue we > might have to be satisfied with a Wubi install, though that can benefit from > defragging the Windows partition also. I haven't done anything to do with Windows outside using it at the work office in over 5 years so I'm a bit out of date and practice. I was hoping there'd be someone along who knew more than I but worst case scenario I was going to scour https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot for pertinent information. > Chris > Thanks for your input, I look forward to see you and others there in just over a week. -- Regards, Jared Norris JP(Qual) BBehSc(Psych) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JaredNorris -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au