We still have the opportunity to avoid all this. Do not buy a preistalled PC / notebook, or even better a notebook at all. Buy a PC. If you have knowledge about hardware, choose your favorite hardware and assemble the PC If not go for a shop who offers already assembled PCs for special purposes (gaming / office) The mainboards of Asus / MSI / Gigabyte are not restricted. This will not change at UEFI. Most important is DO NOT BUY a complete OEM PC / notebook, especially when w8 will be preinstalled. Example for a 'free PC' with some of my favorite brands. Asus mainboard Corsair RAM / PSU OCZ SSD /Samsung HDD Intel CPU (core I7) Lian li case Any SEPARATE license of your favorite OS. It's not a dead-end situation. I mod BIOSES since 2007. Affected from restrictions are ONLY complete systems and notebooks. For instance there are Asus mainboards which are used by HP at their complete PC systems. Those BIOSes then come from HP and are restricted, even though it is an Asus mainboard.
i dunno, yen.. you may well be right..i bet that you are.. and yes, i looked at that link, unhindered by too much expertise.. but letzenendlich; what is the good old bios for? not for imposing restrictions.. for loading a few things and then handing over to the os,,
@berretta8mm good to meet an other oldtimer! used the same software, on the same hardware.. BUT i`m still here........
It depends on your point of view. BIOSes of notebooks already have whitelists. I have started to mod these at Lenovo notebooks with phoenix BIOSes. Recent Asus mainboards have EFI already. They still are modifiable and have got no whitelists. EFI is the successor of BIOS and its GUI can be more comfortable to use. BIOS is old and its setup can be difficult. Also EFI can be accessed directly from the OS. Since HDDs will have more and more space to store the MBR (BIOS) will get to the limit. Also the recovery procedure seems to be improved at EFI. I have killed an Asus mainboard when I simply wanted to update a official BIOS. No modifications at all. As I have mentioned already a knife can be used to cook a delicious meal or to kill...... I hope manufacturers such as Asus will stay to their politics and remain non restricted and their EFIs modifiable. I can understand those who say the old guys fear everything new.....(Btw I consider me as one of those old guys, my first 'PC' was a Sinclair ZX spectrum, lol). To keep oneself informed is what is important. The general idea to retire the good old BIOS is not bad. Bad are those ideas which can be implemented to it....EFI will offer new ways, but when used properly it will open other ways that are useful for every user. EFI is nothing but an pre_OS, BIOS is made to initialize the hardware and to provide low level features, such as RAM / CPU settings. Simply don't support those who restrict.
You know sooooo much about BIOS and that stuff,you remember when i told you how much i know LOL I didn´t send you the PM because your mail was full and i couldn´t,i´m a beginner and it wont make sense that you waste your time to help me around Yen-chan,then i´m so not good in PC´s that´s almost not normal LOL As you see i only write in chat,i can´t help anybody here around. Again thank you so much for your time and help,really appreciate it BTW you´ll always be my little FURBALL,no matter how much you like me *Red is important for me*
Sinclair ZX spectrum, now that`s way before my time.. but no matter, i can still see a great many benefits coming from efi.. if someone bothers to use it for loading instructions, maybe even an os, then so much the better.......... it is the tendency to use the extra space to load whitelists etc, that is causing the headaches, imho.. so quote simply don`t support those who restrict unquote is indeed the last word..and good on you! but. your average buyer just compares prices, and then buys something with good value for money. thats how i got landed with a hp machine, a few years back.i simply had no idea about restrictions until i UPgraded from vista home 2 xp pro..i found no available xp drivers, etc.. your average buyer needs this info, and it is just not available..
I don't know much about these technical stuff (like- bios,uefi,slic,oem,efi etc.) and the discussions are beyond my level of understanding but what I know is that if I buy anything say a computer , I won it and do whatever I like. I can change from os xp to win7/8 and use Mr Daz's loader to activate it and I think nobody can impose any restriction on my machine, unless proven counterfeit by the Microsoft, till then I'm genuine.
@sid 16; if you think nobody can impose any restriction on your machine, then i respectfully suggest you read around on the forum a bit more..