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Dell Rugged Laptops Not Quite Tough Enough
An anonymous reader writes "Trusted Reviews has put the new Dell XFR rugged laptop through the grinder and it hasn't fared as well as expected. Considering that these guys drove a car over a Panasonic Toughbook, they went pretty easy on the Dell, but it still couldn't take the punishment. It looks like Dell still has a way to go to steal the ball from Panasonic when it comes to all terrain computing."
So the Dell blends after all!
I've seen Panasonic Toughbooks in police cars, fire trucks, and in the vehicles of industrial companies, but I guess I don't get why; the laptops are well protected in the car or truck, and it's not like a cop is going to use it as a shield in a shoot out, or a fireman is going to be typing something inside a burning building. When a plumber came over to fix some pipes, he brought with him a battered Compaq laptop that was missing several keys, looked like it'd gone through hell, but was still working and wasn't "ruggedized" in any way I could tell.
This is pure ignorance on my part...I can appreciate there is very likely a need, or they wouldn't make them, but I really don't know what that need is; especially, under what circumstances would it be possible to get my laptop run over by a truck as part of a normal day?
That said, they definitely *look* cool and wouldn't mind having one myself, especially if I thought I'd need to check my email outside, in a snowstorm, in the Sierra Madre. :)
Er, what? This Slashdot summary does not jive with the article at all. The laptop was perfectly functional after all of their tests. The only problems they had were a minor cosmetic issue of the adhesive coming off around the trackpad (which they just called "fit and finish") and that some of the doors might pop open during drops since they weren't double locked. Their conclusion was that it was indeed quite rugged.
Did they compare the Dells to regular Thinkpads? They're not officially ruggedized, but they can take an awful lot of punishment.
Incidentally, I just had a book shelf collapse under its load of books (apparently I wasn't supposed to stack them that high) and fall on my open Macbook. Huge dent next to the keyboard, but everything works fine.
Entirely context dependent. Their testing would be excessive if it were performed on an ordinary "it'd be nice if it survives the daily grind for a few years, and not feeling like cheap plastic crap is always a bonus; but no actual claims are made" laptop. Yours is one of those.
However, this is the special OMG-MIL-SPEC, super durable, extra rugged, no-expense-spared model. If Dell wants to sell a machine in that segment, this sort of testing is perfectly appropriate.
According to the moderation history, nobody did. I believe TrisexualPuppy starts at a score of -1, probably due to his long and illustrious history of trolling and being modded down for it.
A regular laptop won't start up at -40 after a North Dakota night. The toughbook says "Please wait, warming up" on the BIOS screen while it pre-warms the hard drive. It also works just fine when it's baking in the sun at 150, whereas the old Dell I had would crash at those temperatures.
I couldn't help but notice that in the video the guy pulled up the dot mouse thing, in the keyboard and there was a gap when he pushed down on the mouse pad. if they are going to market these as rugged laptops they should try to seal them a bit better.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Laptops are weak. They should be able to defend themselves against dangers such as smashing into the ground, like this experimental Lenovo model.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
We used to believe that the ToughBooks were the end all be all of ruggedized computers; that is until the day someone actually managed to break one!
If you read the warranty statement from Panasonic you will see the following under Section 3 - Limited Warranty Exclusions
"Failures which result from alteration, accident, misuse, introduction of liquid or other foreign matter into the unit, abuse, neglect, installation, maladjustment of consumer controls, improper maintenance or modification, use not in accordance with product use instructions"
That means that if your coffee somehow spills on the laptop and fries the motherboard Panasonic will not repair it under warranty!
On the other hand if you purchase a Dell or an HP ruggedized notebook with the accidental damage protection the notebook will be repaired with no questions asked.
Considering the cost of the Panasonic ToughBooks, I would take a Dell XFR + CompleteCare any day!
Besides, regardless of what notebook you own, if you roll over it with your vehicle (by accident) and it happens to break, would you not rather be covered?
I'm at a loss as to why your post was modded insightful.
- "It's no surprise that the military customers would require a lower ruggedness spec than civilian users. "
- "Civilian usage, OTOH, requires a device that is durable and lasts for years and can be used in any environment. They don't need great processing power, they just need something that can run their dedicated apps well enough."
I'm guessing your perception of military laptop usage to be something out of "Hackers?"
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
This is pure ignorance on my part...I can appreciate there is very likely a need, or they wouldn't make them, but I really don't know what that need is; especially, under what circumstances would it be possible to get my laptop run over by a truck as part of a normal day?
Not so much run over by a car but and decent sized IT dept will probably tell you that people abuse the hell out of laptops. Most of them quickly accumulate a veritable junkyard of spare parts from laptops that have been killed through various acts of neglect, malfeasance and random accidents. I've personally seen laptops get destroyed in countless ways. It's a fairly safe bet that a field service technician or traveling consultant is probably going to beat his laptop up pretty quickly. I've had a few clients myself where I wished I had something a little more rugged. We had one guy who killed 3 laptops in the space of a month through various acts of stupidity.
I don't know that I'd get a toughened notebook for someone irresponsible. Sometimes firing the guilty party is sometimes cheaper. But I've seen plenty of cases where a toughened laptop is a good idea.
This isn't a uber traveler laptop. It's for people working in harsh environments. Do you work on an oil rig, war zone or the middle of the amazon? If you answer no, then you don't need a rugged laptop.
For policemen or many industrial companies, where if your computer went down it shouldn't delay service by much, or the service would be cheap to reschedule, using a regular laptop makes sense.
But for other uses, like firemen or refinery maintenance technicians, who need to refer to building schematics and hazardous material contents before they decide how to attack a fire, or need to see maintenance documents to repair a piece of equipment keeping the refinery down at a cost over $100,000/hour, only a Toughbook or similar would do.
I worked for the county sheriff's office for several years as an IT / network guy and can tell you that the more durable laptops are DEFINITELY useful in the police context. No matter how often you tell them to be careful or even discipline them, cops will be cops, and most of them are pretty rough around the edges. They toss their notebooks around, drop them, spill coffee on them, you name it. We had one notebook in for updates and servicing that looked like it had fallen into a threshing machine. My coworker asked the officer what the HELL he'd done to it, and he defensively said that HE hadn't done anything to it. It was his K9 partner who had decided to use it as a chew toy, not his problem. At least it stall ran. Oh, and we did have one stop a bullet, although nobody was actually in the car at the time.
Did they compare the Dells to regular Thinkpads? They're not officially ruggedized, but they can take an awful lot of punishment
Depends on your definition of "awful lot". My brother-in-law's previous company has used thinkpads as their primary laptops for years and the consultants there managed to kill plenty of them. A shocking number actually. I agree that Thinkpads have historically been well constructed - I've had several myself. But they aren't *that* tough. Certainly not much tougher than most other non-ruggedized machines.
It's no surprise that the military customers would require a lower ruggedness spec than civilian users.
And then there's this story that utterly contradicts you: http://www.toughbookuniverse.com/?p=16
I think he was talking about it not being worth ruggedizing against hand grenades and rockets.
I'm not sure I agree, but I think that was probably the line of reasoning there.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
A construction site would qualify. Normal laptops can't really go outside site offices because of the copious quantities of general shit floating around (dust, water, temperature extremes, etc).
See my journal, I write things there
Considering the cost of the Panasonic ToughBooks, I would take a Dell XFR + CompleteCare any day!
You are missing the point. If you happen to work in any sort of extreme environment (very hot, very cold, very dusty, etc) your Dell is going to die pretty quickly if it even works at all. Furthermore there are jobs where equipment failure has serious consequences. The point is that it doesn't die in the first place, not that you can replace it. Take a standard laptop on a polar expedition or into the middle of a desert and getting your laptop serviced isn't exactly going to be an option you can exercise. And thanks to our good friend Murphy odds are it will break at the least convenient time possible.
Ruggedized laptops aren't for office workers. They are for people who work very far from climate controlled offices.
The Lats aren't at all bad, but for home/office/general light travel only. I wouldn't think of dragging mine up a mountain or something.
See my journal, I write things there
But as for ruggedness testing, do you think that they were going a little overboard? I have been using my Latitude D810 for about four years now, have dropped it multiple times at the airport, the wife stepped on it while the lid was shut, and my aging cat urinated on the keyboard. Thing is that it still works. I am impressed with Dell's quality for the higher-end models made to withstand abuse. I would have bought two or three HPs in the time that I have had my Latitude. End of story for me.
Overboard?
You do understand what a "rugged laptop" is, right?
These are things like the Panasonic Toughbookdaily basis. They're supposed to be used at construction sites, or by the military.
I've seen Toughbooks get run over by cars and keep working.
They've typically got a metal case, as opposed to plastic. They've usually got plenty of vibration dampening and shock absorption built in. Their ports are usually somehow protected from foreign objects and/or moisture. They're usually underclocked or cooled at least partly passively, so they don't have as much trouble with dusty environments.
Fine, your Dell is fairly durable for a more-or-less normal home/office environment. That's great. But when you call a laptop "rugged" people expect a bit more than resistance to cat urine.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I dunno man, I'd rather buy a notebook from a company that knows how to make things rugged, verses a company that makes VCR's and questionable quality audio products.
So much for the "DoD's MIL-STD 810F heat, dust and vibration requirements"*
It looks cool as shit, but that's about it. I guess the only requirement to meet DoD specs is testosterone appeal.
[*] -
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/09/super-rugged-latitude-e6400-xfr-is-tougher-than-you/
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
A Vet turned History teacher had a saying on his door...
A computer with a bullet hole in it is a paperweight.
A map with a bullet hole in it is still a map.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Apparently so. We have a lot of toughbooks and the Dell version thereof (XFRD6300, actually). The Dells are pieces of shit. The Panasonics are less POS but slower and harder to work with - poor ergonomic design. None of them are fixed in place, though. They move a lot and get broken keyboards, water damage, and scoring of the screen via sand. Not to mention dead optical drives from the 'moondust' common in the Middle East (I saw more in Kuwait than in Iraq, honestly).
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I work for a small police department, and did considerable research before choosing the Toughbook. They're certainly not made for speed, and they're heavy and ugly. But they're not made for that, they're made to take the abuse that is almost inevitable in the hands of people who are, shall we say, not exactly delicate flowers.
Before actually mounting these computers in our cruisers, I dropped the Toughbook while holding it above my head (I'm about 5'10"), I punched the back of the screen (only succeeded in giving myself a bloody knuckle), poured hot coffee on the keys, and generally did things you would REALLY not want to do to your laptop. They took it with just little scratches here and there, but no issue other than cosmetic.
One thing I did find is was that, of course, the screen is tough but it's still a laptop screen. The clamps used to mount the laptops on a swing arm in the cars goes slightly over the sides of the Toughbook. If the screen is slammed hard, that can actually cause a crack. Fortunately I'd paid the extra dosh for a better warranty covering such things, and was able to remind the officers that they need to be aware of that issue.
Dells offerings are really GOOD laptops, and not bad if you need rugged, but not insanely durable. I finally settled on the Toughbook not just because of the abuse I put them through, or just from asking other local PDs what they used. One of my users, a recent hire only a year or so out of the Army Rangers, told me that the Toughbook are what they jumped out of aircraft with. The abuse a grizzled old geek like myself can throw at a computer is pretty much NOTHING like what an Army Ranger could do.
So far, the TBs have been worth every penny we spent.
...and my aging cat urinated on the keyboard...
Some years ago my cat urinated on my Apple powerbook. It never worked again. There were no Apple stores then so I had to take it to CompUSA, again and again and again.
It was Toast!
Looks like Dell wins the pissing contest!
Actually, if you look at the OP's history, his posts are always followed by an AC message asking it to be modded up. Either a big coincidence, or Trisexualpuppy is trying to draw attention and upmods to his own posts.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
my aging cat, may he rest in peace, urinated on the keyboard
That is how that line should have read.
I clicked on "parent" to reply to this post but it didn't do what i expected!? I wanted to add "Do you work on an oil rig, war zone or the middle of the amazon" or are you a parent? Anybody with small children around the house needs a rugged laptop.
The five-finger discounter. One operation bought two of the $3,000 beasts and one walked. They got another and it walked too! The last one they got I got them a cable lock and LoJack service. I slapped LoJack stickers all over both of them. That put the kibosh on the thefts.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Unfortunately, even when he gets upmods, he can't resist trolling for long enough to stay above -1 for long.
The Dells are pieces of shit. The Panasonics are less POS
Going forward, which of these will be procured in greater numbers?
Are you kidding? I'd blend the cat.
"May he rest as liquid" is how it should have read.
not so fast! Check this out.
No, no, the line is "may he rest in pees".
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This reminds me of a trip I took once with a federal sales person who used to work with IBM. Around 2000-2001 he was working with some section of the Marines and trying to sell them some thinkpads. They were non-rugged, but had to hold up to certain standards just in case they ever were in use on/around a war zone.
After telling them about the tests they did, etc, one of the officers asks if he can try something with the demo model they brought, to see if he could break it. The sales guy tells him to go ahead, if it breaks, no problem, we're trying to sell you what you need, figuring the guy is just going to drop it.
Instead, the officer walks over to the laptop, pulls out a knife and rams it through the screen and pulls it out. Other than a hole where he shoved it it, the laptop kept going, no problem.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Unless it's an IBM mainframe, in which case a mainframe with a bullet hole is still a mainframe, just with one CPU showing a fault condition. Redundancy is a virtue whenever bullets are involved, whether you're the shooter or the owner of the target.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It depends. With the Army at least, we buy laptops locally for use in our TOC (headquarters), but the laptops used for particular field functions are 'fielded' by central Army organizations - one in particular called PEO C3T is the blanket headquarters for various programs that send out 'systems' for use in the field, including ruggedized laptops. A lot of the C3T programs will field Toughbooks regardless of what we think, because it reduces their long-term service costs after the fielding. Locally, we may purchase Dells because the local purchasing people are looking for bang for the buck.
Bottom line is that if we can get away without buying even a theoretically ruggedized system (Dell), we will. Most of our laptops are E6500s and Dell Lat 830s. I discourage ruggedized systems because of the excess cost and limited ROI in most cases. Also, experience has taught that even the most ruggedized system is not soldier-proof.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Had a D810 and now have an 830. The 810 had dual external fans but the 820/830 has just one. My issue relevant to this is that the cooling system is an incredibly efficient vacuum cleaner for the desk. All the shit gets sucked up and ends up in a general pile of crud which usually lodges in the heat sink. The tip I got from a Dell tech after the first such incident is to put a vacuum cleaner on max to the air intake on the bottom - with the machine switched off. This seems to successfully uncruft the heat sink.
See my journal, I write things there
I have to agree as I work with a lot of construction SMBs and the amount of funk that gets into machines at some of these job-sites is just crazy. I have cracked open cases and found solid masses of sawdust, smoke, and other serious funk. On job-sites where there is plenty of construction going on a 'tough book" style laptop if you are gonna be mobile is a must.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And lest you forget, there's always more pee where that came from.
some years ago, my backpack's zipper failed and thus unloaded my 15" iBook down a whole flight of stairs; my heart stopped as I watched it bounce up and down every couple of steps (on its edges), all the way to the ground floor!
Once I unbent the hook that would normally lock it when closed, it worked just like new!
Or someone like myself, who wants to buy exactly ONE laptop that will last forever, and which I do not wish to have to protect like a newborn infant.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
and my aging cat urinated on the keyboard.
Please remark this if you ever try to sell it on eBay. I mean your Dell, not the cat, of course.
I don't think they even showed the whole test, or they did it wrong. The MIL-STD-810 drop test is actually 26 total drops. Once on each face, edge, and corner.
They didn't show if they actually measure 4' or just eye-balled it. Also, they were dropping onto some kind of surface, but not directly on the ground. That can have a large influence on the amount of energy transferred to the laptop during the test. Where I work when we do a drop test we do it on a bare concrete floor, and there is fixture to ensure the exact height is used.
Unfortunately, no amount of "ruggedizing" can prevent obsolescence.
Dark Reflection
I work with people who require laptops where surviving being run over by a truck is a minimum requirement, because that or worse is a distinct possibility. Things like dropping a laptop from 20 feet up onto concrete because you had more residual lubricant on your gloved hand than you realized happen on occasion.
If you're going to spend $3,000+ on a ruggedized laptop, it should be able to handle anything. The ToughBook line comes pretty close, but apparently Dell is nowhere close.
On the other hand, I do not understand why Panasonic drivers change for every single component of every model of a particular line (cf-30k vs cf-30n, for example). Sure I could see some parts being different, but a different MODEM for each version? Really?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
They've typically got a metal case
Not just generic steel or aluminum, Toughbooks have titanium cases, to keep them light, stiff, and strong. Now you can get a Toughbook with a solid state drive, and the biggest weakness to the system is eliminated. With an SSD on board, it becomes extremely difficult to damage the laptop. You have to hit something so hard you literally tear the components off the motherboard (very hard to do) or overcome the strength of the titanium (which is not thin, btw) to crush it. Even then you're more likely to damage the LCD than anything, and destroying the hard drive would be nearly impossible.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
"Not quite evil enough"
"It's a doughnut stuffed with M&M's. That way when you finish the doughnut, you don't have to eat any M&M's."
My own experience with Dell, and I have had and currently support over a dozen, is that the nVidia cards are just crap. I have been using the Intel graphics, and they work fine. Don't know if the problem is nVidia's fault or Dell's. If you stick with the stock intel graphics though, they are fairly durable.
Had the similar problems with my d820, due to speedstep it would hang around 1ghz on both cores due to heat problems, dell changed the inners like 3 times. Finally our company bought me a precision m6400 instead, has been spinning like a dream.
True enough. But not everyone needs latest-and-greatest, or even fairly-recent; for some of us, durable is more meaningful.
Frex, I'm typing this on a PC whose major innards are now 11 years old. It has outlived several newer machines, all of which annoyed me by failing, while this one keeps on truckin'. Durable is GOOD.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Things like dropping a laptop from 20 feet up onto concrete because you had more residual lubricant on your gloved hand than you realized happen on occasion
Yeah thanks for that. Fscking TSA... how you accidentally dropped it *up* 20 feet is beyond me though. And geez, ferchrissake change gloves after the cavity search before inspecting my notebook.
Why yes, I *AM* new here. Why?
Not just generic steel or aluminum, Toughbooks have titanium cases, to keep them light, stiff, and strong.
Magnesium, actually. Just as tough, half the price. Titanium would have to be machined, which would double the price of the toughbook just in machine time. Magnesium can be formed and stamped.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
Sorry, but it would appear that you don't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
One rests in pieces, and the other rusts.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It sounds like the employees are abusing the laptops because: They know the laptop can handle the abuse, and they aren't responsible for the laptop if something happens to it. Your average student on other hand doesn't have a tough book, and doesn't have much money to replace the laptop.
No disagreement here, and I salute you. Care to tell us the brand name?
Dark Reflection
Magnesium's also easy to injection mold or die cast. There are some difficulties in safely melting magnesium (as this amazing picture showing a Volkswagen magnesium casting foundry burning in 2006 demonstrates) but it's far easier to do casting processes with magnesium, which melts at a very reasonable temperature, than it is with titanium, which destroys mold materials. Titanium also burns fiercely, and goes so far as to burn in a pure nitrogen environment, the only metal that will do so. Magnesium's also cheaper. However, it isn't anywhere nearly as tough. Titanium has yield strengths on the order of 40,000-140,000 pounds per square inch, while magnesium's more in the 20,000-50,000psi range. However, since magnesium's like 1/3 the density of titanium you can put a *lot* more magnesium into a structure for the same weight, and since stiffness rises as an exponential function of cross-section, you get hellaciously stiff, light structures that are reasonably tough.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
This story reminds me of the tail of the Compaq salesman when they first started making "portable" computers. He would walk into a sales presentation and slide the portable across the floor into the wall pick it up and turn it on and go on with his presentation.
I call bullshit on obsolescence officially at this point. If you don't play games and keep your OS clean then I'm betting a $300 netbook will be fine for any office productivity, browsing, movie watching, or any other non Cry or Caramack based app on the planet for at least a decade.
Clone :) Tyan S1830S motherboard (P3-550) of 1998 vintage, 3 W.D. hard drives (the oldest, IIRC is now 8 years old), LiteOn DVD drives, random swapmeet RAM (I think it's Panasonic, same age as motherboard), Matrox G200 video card (ditto), Teac floppy (15 years old). Just had to replace the 15YO PSU last month, original got fried (thru 2 layers of surge protection) by a major power surge. It has run 24/7 its entire life.
I also have its twin brother, my XP media machine that is never rebooted (uptime record 14 months, lately disrupted by last month's storm) and has been running 24/7 since early 2002.
The clone sitting next to it is a year older (and its oldest HD, another W.D., is now 11 years old running 24/7), ACorp/Supermicro mainboard, otherwise all clone parts. Needs new RAM stick (gone flaky), otherwise still all good.
Conversely I have a large pile (about 3 pickup loads worth) of dead namebrand machines of all ages, from donations to our user group. From which I deduced that of OEMs, HPs are the least likely to die, Gateway middling, Dell and Micron the worst.
BTW most of my household electronics are Panasonic, and some are over 25 years old.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This is pure ignorance on my part... under what circumstances would it be possible to get my laptop run over by a truck as part of a normal day?
I remember one summer when I was working in Boston and saw a fella riding his bike down one of the cobbled streets with his laptop, sans cover or bag, strapped to the rear bike rack with a single bungie cord. At the time, I saw a lot of folks with laptops strapped to bikes, just not usually this poorly protected.
After one particularly hard bounce, his laptop shot out of its bungie and flew a short distance before falling to the street. By the time he stopped his bike to retrieve it, it was already too late--he turned around just in time to watch a truck run it over.
All I can remember thinking at the time was two things:
1) How I couldn't wait to get back from lunch to tell everyone my first personally observed laptop horror story (I worked in MIS at the time, and we saw all sorts of sorry states of stinkpads, always accompanied by the most amazing stories.)
2) One bungie cord--that's the best he could do?
As has been said, certain folks seem accident prone, and some just plain dumb. I don't know if this guy learned his lesson or not for his replacement, but I can easily see how someone who rides their bike with their laptop attached would benefit from the extra insurance a more durable laptop can give.
Until progress stops, I'll always be a webn00b.
Dell Latitude [...], and my aging cat urinated on the keyboard.
It wasn't your cat's age that made him urinate on your laptop.
It was Caturday. Anything goes on Caturday.
That, and it was a Dell of course.
"Trusted Reviews" indeed...
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
Wow, your PC is older than most of the people on Slashdot (mental age).
LOL! Yeah, that's for sure :D
Probably more reliable too!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And the reason that you run so many machines non-stop is...? For fuck's sake, turn them off when not using them, or at least put them into hibernation. Just because you can afford the electricity doesn't mean that there's no impact from your actions.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
One that's in use pretty much all day long, one that is in intermittent use most days and is also the multimedia machine (and being insecure is not allowed online), and one that does misc. tasks while the others are busy (or not speaking to the printer, as happens occasionally).
Also, considering the temperature changes in here at night (down to 55F indoors), turning them on and off would create a lot of thermal stress, and the radically shortened lifespan and consequent need to regularly replace major components would probably more than offset the impact of what little power they use (none of them is a real power-hog; in fact they barely show on the bill). It does get cold enough where the media machine is that if it's powered off for long, it won't boot until it's warmed up for 15 minutes first. That's damned rough on the HD, both on the bearings and the risk of condensation damage (and it can cause data corruption too).
Only one monitor on all-day, tho, and in summer I let it sleep when not in use. Can't do that in winter cuz it gets cold enough that it doesn't work right, or won't come back on at all.
I guess I could keep my house warmer instead, but that costs about 4x as much electricity as letting the PCs run (and thereby provide some of my heat at no extra charge).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
A computer with a bullet hole in it is a paperweight. A map with a bullet hole in it is still a map.
...however the soldier who was holding the map up to look at it is now a paperweight.
I think it should be pointed out that it's magnesium _alloys_ we are talking about. As opposed to titanium which afaik can support structures in pure form.
Sorry, but I don't buy it. You're talking about leaving them on for years, not just in the winter.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Buy it or not, I'm still not turning my computers on and off 50 times a day. The thermal stress isn't worth it.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Agreed. This is why my main everyday machine, whose main innards are at 11 years old and counting, is in no serious danger of being replaced for being "obsolete". It still does everything I require of it -- frankly the only place it can't keep up anymore is ill-tempered scripts on web pages, and I count that more as a Mozilla problem than an aging-PC problem.
And I'd like it to support more disk space... oh well, that's what networked storage is for!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Except that the Hunchback of Notre Dame was published in 1831 making it firmly public domain. Also they could have already paid Disney. I mean look at Shrek he's out there pimping toothpaste and vehicles.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused