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BIOS-Approved PCI Cards For Laptops
derek_farn writes "First there were printers that would would only work with vendor annointed ink cartridges; now we have laptops that will only boot with vendor annointed PCI cards. Keeping a list of approved PCI cards in the bios is one way of ensuring that customers renew their maintenance contracts. How else are they going to be able to plug in a PCI card released after the last BIOS update?" My HP laptop is several years old; can anyone confirm this?
Please work to undermine the Great Strength of the PC market, the open architecture.
Brilliant move.
They should find everyoen who supported this decision and make sure they never work in any decision-making capacity anywhere again.
We can keep our own list of venders who do this... ..and don't buy from them.
...because apple does not market it as a miniPCI slot, but rather an AirPort card slot. It doesn't claim to be something that it's not - a place to plug in whatever you feel like plugging in. It's there just for the AirPort card, and nothing more.
Seems to me that if they don't want their computer to be compatible with PCI cards, they shouldn't advertise it as being compatible with PCI cards.
But maybe I'm crazy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
(note: this is not Apple fanboyism -- I don't complain about the proprietary slot on the lid of of my Compaq laptop either.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Your post is hilarious because IBM has been known to be doing this for some time now. You ahve been fortunate to only use IBM whitelisted products so far.
In fact your post reminds me of an incident I experienced a few years ago. I was approached and reprimanded by a WWII veteran for driving a "Jap car". At the time I was driving an Isuzu. After the man was finished reprimanding me, he jumped into his Chevrolet and drove away. I burst out laughing because the particular model of Chevrolet that he was driving was actually a re-branded Isuzu.
If Carly were still in office, she'd probably find a way to convince you that your printer is out of ink and you need to buy refills!
Aside from that, if this under-handed marketting strategy is going to keep us from running servers/workstations, what's next - BMWs whose engines suddenly stop working because there's a Fram oil filter installed? What if I decide to use a generic dollar-store bulb in my socket instead of the "approved" Philips bulb? Based on this theory, can you imagine what would happen if I were to eat a bag of knock-off raisin bran?
It sounds to me that this is just a marketting gimick to screw customers over and force them to buy what the manufacturer wants you to buy. God forbid I should find a better alternative to what the manufacturer wants me to buy.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
He probably bought some generic made-in-god-knows-where card
Look, *all* the PC cards are made in the same giant sized factory called "Taiwan". I ran into a problem with an HP Netserver that HP blamed on my Crucial branded memory by saying only HP branded memory was good enough. Of course the solution ended up not involving the memory. Heck, HP doesn't own a memory fab; they just slap their sticker on whatever they get the best bulk rates on. In the article about the mini-PCI card, HP has no legitimate way to claim only thier PCI cards have to be used or the dang thing won't even boot. It's one thing to say 'we don't support it because you installed a third party peice' and it's completely different to actively prevent even trying.
The FCC regulations don't actually require what IBM does - the closest is a requirement that you not be able to use unauthorised antennae with an authorised card, which is the direct opposite of IBM's solution. The amount of the planet over which the FCC have jurisdiction is also fairly small compared to the size of IBM's market...