How will UEFI affect you?

["Robert G. (Doc) Savage" <dsavage@peaknet.net>]

We all have to upgrade our hardware sooner or later. My turn came last
week. An old desktop with an early Athlon mobo hadn't worked for some
time. The guys at The Computer Room diagnosed a bad power supply --
which I knew -- and about a dozen leaky/blown electrolytic capacitors on
the motherboard -- which I hadn't noticed. They also found a scorched
spot on the underside of the board where a component-side chip had
burned out. That old motherboard was literally toast.

I asked them to scout around for a recommended replacement. The OEMs
Kara prefers are now replacing their current models, so it may be a
while.

It occurs to me that *all* of these new generation mobos must support
UEFI so they can be certified to run Win8. What I need is a mobo that
supports Win7 with a WinXP virtual guest (this will be a dedicated
TurboTax box).

A UEFI mobo offers us four options:

        1. Run Windows 8 (be a sheep).
        2. Disable UEFI mode (if the mobo allows) and run a legacy OS.
        3. Run Fedora 18 (and soon RHEL7) with a UEFI key.
        4. Crack and bypass UEFI.

Option 1 is a non-starter for most of us. Option 2 will be very popular
-- except where corporate security policy (theology?) mandates UEFI. In
that case there's Option 3. But in the long run, we'll all benefit from
Option 4.

--Doc Savage
  Fairview Heights IL


-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@silug.org with
"unsubscribe silug-discuss" in the body.