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How Not To Install Computer Hardware
ssassen writes "Most computer hardware websites tell you how to get your computer hardware up and running properly and not RMA it after the first boot. Hardware Analysis takes a different approach and tells us exactly how NOT to install computer hardware. They document many of the pitfalls that'll sound familiar to many enthusiasts and have some great pictures of what could go horribly wrong during an upgrade. Very funny, and guaranteed to put a smile on your face!"
if you replace "they" with "we"
bite my glorious golden ass.
The scariest part of upgrading I've found is the daunting process of mounting the heatsink on the processor. Most newer heatsinks have a little latch that helps with ease of installation, but there're always those renegade heatsinks without latches that just give me the jibblies to install.
It wouldn't be so much of a problem if the heatsinks didn't require so much force to fit over the nubs on the processor housing that you have to press on them with a screwdriver, risking the integrity of the printed circuitry around the processor and your sanity as you press down on them in hope that they'll fit. But no... they still make you press like there's no tomorrow.
Thigs that can go wrong: when your new box gets slashdotted!
There are 13 registered and 7025 anonymous users currently online. Current bandwidth usage: 1949.91 kbit/s
---- Take the Space Quiz!
The one that really kills me is when someone plugs in a PS2 mouse while the system is running
The one that really kills me is that there are people who design a system that can be destroyed by reattaching a mouse.
that these enthusiasts are a retailer's nightmare; the constant flow of hardware back and forth puts a considerable amount of stress on the retailer and his service personnel.
The rate at which "enthusiasts" return stuff can't possibly compete with the rate at which regular, frustrated users return stuff for perfectly valid reasons. I suspect more than half of all new computer products don't work as advertised, have serious defects, are incompatible with systems they claim to be copatible with, or don't work at all. That's part of the business, but if companies put out so much defective stuff, the least they can do is take back the stuff that really doesn't work right without complaining. A lot of companies just seem to be outsourcing user testing to paying end users.
Well, I suppose this definitively proves that /. readers actually do RTFA. When they can.
On a more serious note, now that the webserver has lost touch with reality... yeah. Some of the dumb things I see being done on these sites really scares me whenever I think I might want to save money and build my next machine myself... I've been doing a lot of searching for components and suchlike, and I managed to scavenge a PC Gamer feature on building it yourself from about a year ago, but I'm still apprehensive. Money is tight for me, and I really wouldn't appreciate watching a $300 component become an amusing anecdote for a "how-not-to" article. So, are there any sites out there that actually show, step-by-step, what one SHOULD do?
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Behind every stupid statement like that in an owner's manual is a story. In America, our story tellers are the courts, and we call our stories "lawsuits".
Behind every stupid statement like that is a lawsuit where someone actually did the stupid act in question and then sued the manufacturer for failing to warn that such behavior was unwise.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.