Sigh... There are to many statements in this that are way to true. I miss the day when the US was a production powerhouse. If you wanted something then you got it at your local store and it was stamped Made in America. Of all the times to not have any mod points....
Here in S. Texas you find the majority of new roads are concrete. Mainly due to they last longer and have you ever seen what 100+ F temps does to an asphalt road? It turns it into a soft mess. It's not uncommon to see weak asphalt roads that have grooves in them due to the high temps and heavy trucks.
I'm a part of a world wide organization that uses Dell machines exclusively. On the whole most of there machines we have very few problems with but there are series of machines that have major issues. Take the Precision 380 and 390 desktop machines. They have corrosion issues due to the motherboards not being coated like in past revs. This has been corrected in the T series machines, but that doesn't stop the fact we have had a ton of these machines die on a regular basis due to this known issue. Also, we have also seen a trend in the PowerEdge 28xx machines that have sticks of memory being reported as bad. I can count 7 servers at one location alone we service that has had at least one stick of memory replaced and several have had two or more replaced. The old PE 26xx and the newer 29xx series haven't had the same issues.
The next think that really pisses me off is Dell's Warranty Parts Direct now called Dell Online Self Dispatch. We pay dell for each tech that works on machines. This last month when we renewed they had upped the price of the program by $20 per tech and they have removed all phone numbers for us to call them. This includes administrative work like renewals and account issues. Now you can chat with a person, which takes forever, or you can put a request for them to call you back. This also stinks, because as soon as I get up from my desk to leave for a customer site they are going to call.
So while I don't totally agree with the quality issues, while they are there, it really irks me that I can no longer call and talk to a person on the phone. There are times when chat just doesn't cut it. If Dell doesn't start taking there customers, home and business, they are going to go the way of so many other companies that thought they could treat there customers like crap and they would take it.
What really bugs me about the rate changes is how much they are charging per MB when compared to a standard DSL or cable connection at home. Comcast now has a 250GB / 250,000MB data cap and my service runs around $43 per month. So my cost runs around.017 cents per MB assuming I use my full 250GB allotment.
With AT&T's model the cost per MB on the $15 plan is 7.5 cents per 200 MB and the $25 plan is 1.25 cents per 2,000 MB. This is roughly a 440% and a 73% respective increase of the cost of my home bandwidth.
Yes I know it's not quite a apple to apple comparison, but the cost of the bandwidth and wireless support can be no where near the prices they are charging. Unfortunately in the states this goes for the biggest two wireless carriers ATT and Verizon.
I have no problem paying for what I am using, but the pricing of there data is way out of the ball park.
Note: Yes I know my numbers are not exact and I also know I didn't use the standard 1,024k when doing my calculations from GB to MB.
I can throw my vote in for the Toughbooks. We use them internally and we setup the fully rugged models for our customers to use in the middle of chemical plants and refineries. So far we see very few of them come back with issues and the ones we do see come back someone has screwed up the applications on it.
Now against sand I would think they would be pretty good. Every entry point into the laptop is covered by a latching door that is fully sealed when closed.
I get the on call service once every 6 - 7 weeks or so and hold it for a week. We don't get paid anything for being oncall, but we do get OT for after hours and Saturdays. On Sundays and holidays we get DT. During the week the service may call once, but it's rarely more than twice.
When I moved in to my house four years ago I replaced all of the lights with spiral CFL's. I have yet to have one fail on me. If you purchased a Sylvania or GE most of those bulbs have 3 - 5 year warranties on them. When I had one of those fail I called the company and they sent me a coupon for $20 which was good to buy a new 4 pack of bulbs.
I have talked to several people that own or have owned netbooks. Most of the people don't like them. One person in general got a netbook from there husband. He got it since it was the cheapest thing he could buy. She hates it with a passion, but it does sorta what she wants just slowly. If I had to guess this type of story could be repeated over and over again. It was the cheapest thing so it was purchased even though the person that actually has to use it doesn't like it.
There is good article on howstuffworks.com on turbo chargers. The basic principle is to take the exhaust run it through a fan which is then used to push more air into the motor for more power.
Ok it's just dumb in today's world to have to display the ticket on your window to show that you paid for your parking. With technology today why not use the license plate of the vehicle. You park, walk up to the box, pay for your car using your license plate. The transaction gets entered into a secure database that the meter police can access. All they need is a small camera to read the license plate, which are already available, and then the system would query the database to verify that the car still has time left on it. If it doesn't then they would get a ticket. Of course if the system screwed up the person that parked there car could take there receipt to the place where the fines are paid and show proof that they paid.
I agree with you. I preordered the $100 Pro upgrade, but I'm not even going to think about installing it until Win7 SP1 comes out. By then most of the drivers for my hardware will be available and the initial annoying bugs will then be squished or others will have already figured out how to squash them.
The oldest machine that I work on is a QBUS Digital RT Vax 1000. It has a whopping 80 MB MFM hard drive that is about 3x as big as a 5.25" hard drive. The machine dates back to the early 80's. Amazingly enough the machines still run pretty well. Once you get them booted they'll run for years. The weakest point of them is the hard drive. It's not uncommon to have a 20 - 30% failure rate on drives fresh back from repair.
One thing you need to consider with most consumer/prosumer NAS devices is they are not running a true hardware RAID. The RAID array is done in software via some flavor of Linux. While this does work very well in most cases I can say they are not flawless.
We just has a Buffalo 2TB Terrastation Pro II that took a dump. Something in the Linux partition got corrupted to the point that the unit would not boot. We had to pull the drives wipe the boot sector and reload the NAS. We did have an identical box with everything backed up so when the original unit was backup we moved everything back to it.
If you don't makes Ethernet cables on a regular basis then there could be problems, but over all they can be fixed quickly.
As for handmade cables being worse than manufactured cables, that's a bunch of bull. In our office we routinely make patch and trunk cables. The patch cables are made on a bench and then tested with our Fluke DTX-1800. I can make 100 ends and only have one or two bad ones, but they are easy to find and fix. Trunk cables are pulled from point to point, made, and then tested. Due to the equipment we install we use plenum rated 5e that's shielded and screened which makes it a bit harder to install connectors. The crimp tools we use are made by Amp and run around $300. The Fluke we use is 10K+. Expensive, but really fast and has a lot of niffty addons for doing other things like fiber and coax.
Just recently I had to battle with an AT&T rep to get 18 text messages on my phone and 18 on my wifes phone credited back. They came from an unknown source and they all had two letters in them that was pointless. After talking to the rep for 10 mins or so he finally consented and gave us credit for them. I forgot to mention that I don't have a texting plan so each message received, that I didn't want or ask for, was going to cost me.35 each!
I haven't seen a major provider with text included in the plan in the US. The only one I can think of off the top of my head was the older iPhone plan that included 200 texts, but with the new plan they increased the price and removed the 200 texts.
Go to your local AT&T store. They will allow you to pay for one up front and they will then order the phone. As soon as it comes in you go pick it up. No waiting in lines or getting up at 5am just to get to a store in the hope they will have enough.
I finally got the spreadfirefox site to come up and clicked on the Download Firefox 3 link which directed me to the Mozilla site. Looking at the download link it's sending me to download FF 2.0.0.14 not 3.0! Below is the link to a screen shot of the D/L link.
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh... There are to many statements in this that are way to true. I miss the day when the US was a production powerhouse. If you wanted something then you got it at your local store and it was stamped Made in America. Of all the times to not have any mod points....
Here in S. Texas you find the majority of new roads are concrete. Mainly due to they last longer and have you ever seen what 100+ F temps does to an asphalt road? It turns it into a soft mess. It's not uncommon to see weak asphalt roads that have grooves in them due to the high temps and heavy trucks.
I'm a part of a world wide organization that uses Dell machines exclusively. On the whole most of there machines we have very few problems with but there are series of machines that have major issues. Take the Precision 380 and 390 desktop machines. They have corrosion issues due to the motherboards not being coated like in past revs. This has been corrected in the T series machines, but that doesn't stop the fact we have had a ton of these machines die on a regular basis due to this known issue. Also, we have also seen a trend in the PowerEdge 28xx machines that have sticks of memory being reported as bad. I can count 7 servers at one location alone we service that has had at least one stick of memory replaced and several have had two or more replaced. The old PE 26xx and the newer 29xx series haven't had the same issues.
The next think that really pisses me off is Dell's Warranty Parts Direct now called Dell Online Self Dispatch. We pay dell for each tech that works on machines. This last month when we renewed they had upped the price of the program by $20 per tech and they have removed all phone numbers for us to call them. This includes administrative work like renewals and account issues. Now you can chat with a person, which takes forever, or you can put a request for them to call you back. This also stinks, because as soon as I get up from my desk to leave for a customer site they are going to call.
So while I don't totally agree with the quality issues, while they are there, it really irks me that I can no longer call and talk to a person on the phone. There are times when chat just doesn't cut it. If Dell doesn't start taking there customers, home and business, they are going to go the way of so many other companies that thought they could treat there customers like crap and they would take it.
What really bugs me about the rate changes is how much they are charging per MB when compared to a standard DSL or cable connection at home. Comcast now has a 250GB / 250,000MB data cap and my service runs around $43 per month. So my cost runs around .017 cents per MB assuming I use my full 250GB allotment.
With AT&T's model the cost per MB on the $15 plan is 7.5 cents per 200 MB and the $25 plan is 1.25 cents per 2,000 MB. This is roughly a 440% and a 73% respective increase of the cost of my home bandwidth.
Yes I know it's not quite a apple to apple comparison, but the cost of the bandwidth and wireless support can be no where near the prices they are charging. Unfortunately in the states this goes for the biggest two wireless carriers ATT and Verizon.
I have no problem paying for what I am using, but the pricing of there data is way out of the ball park.
Note: Yes I know my numbers are not exact and I also know I didn't use the standard 1,024k when doing my calculations from GB to MB.
Nope... the results are also running through the secure site.
Give it a shot and see.
I can throw my vote in for the Toughbooks. We use them internally and we setup the fully rugged models for our customers to use in the middle of chemical plants and refineries. So far we see very few of them come back with issues and the ones we do see come back someone has screwed up the applications on it.
Now against sand I would think they would be pretty good. Every entry point into the laptop is covered by a latching door that is fully sealed when closed.
Kage_
I get the on call service once every 6 - 7 weeks or so and hold it for a week. We don't get paid anything for being oncall, but we do get OT for after hours and Saturdays. On Sundays and holidays we get DT. During the week the service may call once, but it's rarely more than twice.
When I moved in to my house four years ago I replaced all of the lights with spiral CFL's. I have yet to have one fail on me. If you purchased a Sylvania or GE most of those bulbs have 3 - 5 year warranties on them. When I had one of those fail I called the company and they sent me a coupon for $20 which was good to buy a new 4 pack of bulbs.
I have talked to several people that own or have owned netbooks. Most of the people don't like them. One person in general got a netbook from there husband. He got it since it was the cheapest thing he could buy. She hates it with a passion, but it does sorta what she wants just slowly. If I had to guess this type of story could be repeated over and over again. It was the cheapest thing so it was purchased even though the person that actually has to use it doesn't like it.
There is good article on howstuffworks.com on turbo chargers. The basic principle is to take the exhaust run it through a fan which is then used to push more air into the motor for more power.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/turbo.htm
Ok it's just dumb in today's world to have to display the ticket on your window to show that you paid for your parking. With technology today why not use the license plate of the vehicle. You park, walk up to the box, pay for your car using your license plate. The transaction gets entered into a secure database that the meter police can access. All they need is a small camera to read the license plate, which are already available, and then the system would query the database to verify that the car still has time left on it. If it doesn't then they would get a ticket. Of course if the system screwed up the person that parked there car could take there receipt to the place where the fines are paid and show proof that they paid.
I agree with you. I preordered the $100 Pro upgrade, but I'm not even going to think about installing it until Win7 SP1 comes out. By then most of the drivers for my hardware will be available and the initial annoying bugs will then be squished or others will have already figured out how to squash them.
Someone I was talking to the other day made a good point. Every other OS Microsoft has put out in the last 10 - 15 years or so has sucked.
Win7 = TBD - Looking good as of now
Vista = Horrible
XP = Pretty Good
ME = Rancid
2000 = Not Bad
NT 4 = Not Bad, but severely limited
Wow that car is light... I'm 20 lbs shy of weighing the same as it....
The oldest machine that I work on is a QBUS Digital RT Vax 1000. It has a whopping 80 MB MFM hard drive that is about 3x as big as a 5.25" hard drive. The machine dates back to the early 80's. Amazingly enough the machines still run pretty well. Once you get them booted they'll run for years. The weakest point of them is the hard drive. It's not uncommon to have a 20 - 30% failure rate on drives fresh back from repair.
One thing you need to consider with most consumer/prosumer NAS devices is they are not running a true hardware RAID. The RAID array is done in software via some flavor of Linux. While this does work very well in most cases I can say they are not flawless.
We just has a Buffalo 2TB Terrastation Pro II that took a dump. Something in the Linux partition got corrupted to the point that the unit would not boot. We had to pull the drives wipe the boot sector and reload the NAS. We did have an identical box with everything backed up so when the original unit was backup we moved everything back to it.
If you don't makes Ethernet cables on a regular basis then there could be problems, but over all they can be fixed quickly.
As for handmade cables being worse than manufactured cables, that's a bunch of bull. In our office we routinely make patch and trunk cables. The patch cables are made on a bench and then tested with our Fluke DTX-1800. I can make 100 ends and only have one or two bad ones, but they are easy to find and fix. Trunk cables are pulled from point to point, made, and then tested. Due to the equipment we install we use plenum rated 5e that's shielded and screened which makes it a bit harder to install connectors. The crimp tools we use are made by Amp and run around $300. The Fluke we use is 10K+. Expensive, but really fast and has a lot of niffty addons for doing other things like fiber and coax.
When I first glanced at the name, I saw Dilbert. Not sure if it's fitting, but the living spaces up there must be the side of cubicles or smaller. :)
Most likely they are Sylvania bulbs. They are the only ones that I know of that turn on at full brightness.
Just recently I had to battle with an AT&T rep to get 18 text messages on my phone and 18 on my wifes phone credited back. They came from an unknown source and they all had two letters in them that was pointless. After talking to the rep for 10 mins or so he finally consented and gave us credit for them. I forgot to mention that I don't have a texting plan so each message received, that I didn't want or ask for, was going to cost me .35 each!
Look at this... The topic was just posted and the site is already Slashdotted... WTG!
I haven't seen a major provider with text included in the plan in the US. The only one I can think of off the top of my head was the older iPhone plan that included 200 texts, but with the new plan they increased the price and removed the 200 texts.
I am very underwhelmed by cuil. Most basic searches say they have a ton of results, but if you start to look there are duplicates from page to page.
Go to your local AT&T store. They will allow you to pay for one up front and they will then order the phone. As soon as it comes in you go pick it up. No waiting in lines or getting up at 5am just to get to a store in the hope they will have enough.
I finally got the spreadfirefox site to come up and clicked on the Download Firefox 3 link which directed me to the Mozilla site. Looking at the download link it's sending me to download FF 2.0.0.14 not 3.0! Below is the link to a screen shot of the D/L link.
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/1466/wrongfirefoxmm4.png