A decent heat sink and fan are essential, but also make sure you have decent airflow through your case and you aren't just recycling that hot air.
My XP 2000 used to overheat quite a bit with one of the ThermalTake Volcanoes. So I had to leave the case open and blow air in using a fan. Then, I got a new case with intake and exhaust fans all blowing in the right direction and now my proc heats up to 120F at full force instead of the 135-140F previously without the good airflow.
Fortunately, I ordered a TT Volcano 7+ last night (before waking up and reading this post) and it's supposed to support a 2600+. How convenient!
A friend of mine has a pretty decent Compaq. The hard drive went out on it just a couple of months ago, but that was the only problem so far (that wasn't his fault). Of course, I think when he plugged the Cisco 1604 power source into his PS2 port, that may have shortened the life of the hard drive. It did blow the LCD and the motherboard. But he managed to come up with a pretty believable story (I forgot exactly what he said went wrong), but Compaq shipped him a new one.
As for IBM, I don't think I'll ever touch another IBM hardware product again. I've had to replace my HDD twice in the past 6 months and I think a 3rd time is coming up soon. We also had a batch of 4500Rs at an old dot-com that had a slight flaw--some had the potential to spark and catch on fire. That made for many late nights with the IBM rep and I replacing mobos. Let's just say I wasn't too thrilled.
Well, I don't have a little baggy of screws, but I do have a big one.
But, as the other reply says, Dell screws for the laptop cases are special. Almost as special as the chocolate Madonna screws, but let's not go into that.
I have a 4-year-old Dell laptop. My mom has a 6-year-old Dell laptop. I have a 3-year-old tower. My brother has a 4-year-old tower. My dad has a 1-year-old tower. My step-mother has a 1-year-old tower. We have several servers at work that are also Dells. I may have left one or two out. Sure, it's a bit of brand loyalism, but it has paid off. Every one of the aformentioned machines is still rock solid to this day. The only maintenance has been upgrades for more RAM/HDD space and the like. Honestly, my friends and I haven't had any such luck with other brands. When the screws fell out of my laptop (I guess cuz of too much abuse on camping trips), a Dell tech was at my house next day with a little bag of screws. You really can't beat that. I've had nothing but good luck out of Dells. Although I run my own custom-built system, I always recommend other not-so-technically-inclined users to Dell just for the stability and support you get out of them. That makes for fewer tech support calls to my cell phone and that makes me a happy person.
I wonder if the generic systems are going to be just as stable. Are they going to have to rebrand all of their parts (since all the stuff in the past 2-3 years has had Dell printed EVERYWHERE!) Maybe a migration towards not-so-proprietary hardware. In that case...d00d! Yer getting a white-box Dell! (Sorry, had to do it...gotta fit in with the rest of the posts).
And a side note about the Dell dude: Apparently he isn't much different in person. Or so I've been told by friends of mine who have met him (the Dell dude and I are from the same home town).
If it requires an inflight reboot, there's no doubt what OS it's running. Gotta be Win98. I can see the MS tech support call now..
MS Support: "Thank you for calling Microsoft Customer support. How may I help you?" Pilot: "Uhh.. I'm spiraling towards the earth, both my engines are out, and my display says 'General Protection Fault' in white text on a blue background." MS Support: "And what is the system model?" Pilot: "The the F-22 jet.." MS Support: "Oh yes, there are known issues that we will not admit to with that particular system. To temporarily fix the problem, simply reboot. Or, if the 5 minute boot time is too long, may I personally recommend that you eject. However, you will have to purchase another license of Windows 98 for $1000 since jet fighter crashes are not a valid reason to receive a new license." Pilot: "@#$*(! Microsoft!" MS Support: "Thank you and have a nice day!"
I purchased a couple of Abit KG7 boards and XP 1700 and 1900 procs from Monarch around November 2001 and had a hell of a time trying to get them returned when the boards they shipped were bad. It took me two months to get it all straightened out. Their support is slow, and they also don't pay much attention to what the customer has to say. *sigh* But their popularity has grown (their prices are certainly some of the best) and maybe the darker stuff that nobody wants to think about or deal with (RMA!) is much better.
I have a 2 year old Dell Inspiron 3800 with a 450 celeron and 128 mb sdram. The only problem I have had was that some of the screws fell out and the bottom of the casing came loose. This caused the motherboard to drop a little and the keyboard connector came loose. But when I emailed dell about it, I got a response within 48 hours and had someone that showed up at my house in another 48 hours with a small bag of screws. That got it fixed. All of the hardware with my dell has worked fine. I upgraded from a 4gb hard drive to a 20gb just because I needed the space.
As for another Dell success story, my mom has a P2 233 that's 4 or 5 years old still running the original install of Windows 98 and it's still running like day 1. I don't know how, but it's doing great. I guess in the hands of a non-power user, computers seem to last longer.::shrug:: who knows?
If you really gotta have that cool interface and only want to pay half the cost (assuming you already are running Windows), just buy Object Desktop ($50) or Window Blinds ($20) from Stardock.
I was recently employed as a Client Services Representative at a now-dead company. But while I was there, my boss and I undertook a project to create a mission critical system for the company that everybody wanted but nobody would attempt. We started the project out of need due to the fact that everything from order processing to tracking and monitoring etc was left up to the client services department. All the while, the department was not given the budget or the resources to handle all these tasks with just a handful of people and no information to go by. So I started working on a small site just to help myself out but my boss caught on to the idea and wanted me to go all out on it. After a few months of him speccing out the project with all the functionality and features and me making it happen, we were able to anticipate what the other was going to do or ask for next. He knew when I was feeling overworked or needed an extra hour break and we often went off to a local fast food restaurant to grab a Coke and discuss things.
Since this was all being done within the client services department and by a "novice" programmer, political heat was started and some parties wanted the effort moved to the research and development people. My boss and I felt that since we dealt with it every day and were using it, we would know what would work the best and how it would work the best. With all the controversy, a shitstorm was amidst and my boss was there to shield me from 90% of it while I still worked on the project. Occasionally, I would have to go to a meeting with my boss to argue some points about the project with others in the company, but he would do most of the talking with me there to correct anything that was wrong and to offer backup in case someone thought he was lying.
After 6 months of the project's existence, people in the company actually took notice that it was working, and working well. About a month before the company filed for bankruptcy, the project was deemed official and would be used as the main repository of information and began allocating more resources to get the job done. Eventually, the company filed for bankruptcy and then closed and the project died.
Moral of the story:
1. Know your employees
2. Listen to your employees
3. Trust your employees
4. Try to shield your employees from any political interference (it's impossible to block it all)
5. Even though meetings take away coding time, don't be afraid to drag employees to them every once in a while if it is needed
6. Reward your employees (extra day off, extra hour break, raise, whatever)
7. Despite the heat, don't give up
8. Repeat steps 1 through 7 as needed
Oh! Oh! If he's going to threaten all of the people who respond to this post, I wanna get in on it! Having recently lost my job due to the closure of st3.com, I have nothing better to do!
This is an almost exact account of what was going on where I work that day. A coworker in the cube across the hall from me got a call from his wife about what just happened to the first building. He then came to my cube (which also had a couple of people in it) to tell us the news. I instantly turned to Slashdot to read more about it. And then gave the news that a second plane had hit and everyone went silent. After an extended smoke break, I came back to my cube to discover that someone was streaming CNN to the entire internal network. I then went to watch it on my coworker's 21" monitor and nice sound system.
Just thought that was kinda weird how the two accounts happened almost exactly the same..
I work in the Client Services department of a fast-growing media company and am also doing the same type of work. However, I started out doing everything web based so that everyone with a decent, later version browser can use our mission critical system. It includes tracking fulfillment status, client relationship management, monitoring, catalogging, and many other management utilities that go with our business. I have been developing this site for a few months now on an intranet server. However, there is a need to outsource some of these utitilies when we outsource our help desk support or employees need the information on road trips. This called for an intranet development server where the development goes on and an internet production server that has the stable functionality of the system and gets updated after each milestone. Personally, I think it's a fairly nice way of implementing a mission critical system but would also like to see what other/.ers think.
BTW - If your curious, I wrote all the server-side stuff in ASP (we're practically married to Microsoft). However, my boss also wants to have a mirrored copy on a Linux server written in PHP so a case like another Code Red incident won't wipe everything out.
Aren't the CD images that you download from Microsoft's OEM site already ready to install without having to enter a CD key or anything like that? Is that the same for Whistler? I have a friend who has a beta of Whistler and it was already ready to go. Just get a Microsoft OEM friend to download Whistler for you. If you really want an OS that looks like a combination of AOL cutesy pootsie art combined with Windows.. *BLAH!!* *gag* *all sorts of other nasty sounds*
--Malduin
I kinda got a kick out of the ambition statement by Katy in the original article:
``The reason why you see more men doing computer stuff is that girls are more ambitious than that. My parents always say, 'Do something with computers,' because it is stable and stuff, but a lot (of people) don't want to be at a desk from 9 to 5.''
And then they go on about girls spending just as much time on the computer as guys in this statement:
"Girls do keep up with boys when it comes to using computers for leisure activities like surfing the Internet and sending e-mail"
I don't see what's not ambitious about guys and computers. bildstorm's comment was well put. Guys like to tinker. They get ambitious enough to see what makes a computer program work and then that's sparks a semi-competitive interest to want to make a program that does similar work, but make it work better or look better. That's the case with me anyways.
I'd like to see more girl geeks in this world. I'll stay up until sunrise talking with my guy friends about computers but all my girl friends can't hold a conversation past "yeah, i emailed you." I wanna be able to talk to girls about computers. There's a first time for everything, isn't there?
Slashdot Mirror
A decent heat sink and fan are essential, but also make sure you have decent airflow through your case and you aren't just recycling that hot air.
My XP 2000 used to overheat quite a bit with one of the ThermalTake Volcanoes. So I had to leave the case open and blow air in using a fan. Then, I got a new case with intake and exhaust fans all blowing in the right direction and now my proc heats up to 120F at full force instead of the 135-140F previously without the good airflow.
Fortunately, I ordered a TT Volcano 7+ last night (before waking up and reading this post) and it's supposed to support a 2600+. How convenient!
A friend of mine has a pretty decent Compaq. The hard drive went out on it just a couple of months ago, but that was the only problem so far (that wasn't his fault). Of course, I think when he plugged the Cisco 1604 power source into his PS2 port, that may have shortened the life of the hard drive. It did blow the LCD and the motherboard. But he managed to come up with a pretty believable story (I forgot exactly what he said went wrong), but Compaq shipped him a new one.
As for IBM, I don't think I'll ever touch another IBM hardware product again. I've had to replace my HDD twice in the past 6 months and I think a 3rd time is coming up soon. We also had a batch of 4500Rs at an old dot-com that had a slight flaw--some had the potential to spark and catch on fire. That made for many late nights with the IBM rep and I replacing mobos. Let's just say I wasn't too thrilled.
Well, I don't have a little baggy of screws, but I do have a big one.
But, as the other reply says, Dell screws for the laptop cases are special. Almost as special as the chocolate Madonna screws, but let's not go into that.
I have a 4-year-old Dell laptop. My mom has a 6-year-old Dell laptop. I have a 3-year-old tower. My brother has a 4-year-old tower. My dad has a 1-year-old tower. My step-mother has a 1-year-old tower. We have several servers at work that are also Dells. I may have left one or two out. Sure, it's a bit of brand loyalism, but it has paid off. Every one of the aformentioned machines is still rock solid to this day. The only maintenance has been upgrades for more RAM/HDD space and the like. Honestly, my friends and I haven't had any such luck with other brands. When the screws fell out of my laptop (I guess cuz of too much abuse on camping trips), a Dell tech was at my house next day with a little bag of screws. You really can't beat that. I've had nothing but good luck out of Dells. Although I run my own custom-built system, I always recommend other not-so-technically-inclined users to Dell just for the stability and support you get out of them. That makes for fewer tech support calls to my cell phone and that makes me a happy person.
I wonder if the generic systems are going to be just as stable. Are they going to have to rebrand all of their parts (since all the stuff in the past 2-3 years has had Dell printed EVERYWHERE!) Maybe a migration towards not-so-proprietary hardware. In that case...d00d! Yer getting a white-box Dell! (Sorry, had to do it...gotta fit in with the rest of the posts).
And a side note about the Dell dude: Apparently he isn't much different in person. Or so I've been told by friends of mine who have met him (the Dell dude and I are from the same home town).
If it requires an inflight reboot, there's no doubt what OS it's running. Gotta be Win98. I can see the MS tech support call now..
MS Support: "Thank you for calling Microsoft Customer support. How may I help you?"
Pilot: "Uhh.. I'm spiraling towards the earth, both my engines are out, and my display says 'General Protection Fault' in white text on a blue background."
MS Support: "And what is the system model?"
Pilot: "The the F-22 jet.."
MS Support: "Oh yes, there are known issues that we will not admit to with that particular system. To temporarily fix the problem, simply reboot. Or, if the 5 minute boot time is too long, may I personally recommend that you eject. However, you will have to purchase another license of Windows 98 for $1000 since jet fighter crashes are not a valid reason to receive a new license."
Pilot: "@#$*(! Microsoft!"
MS Support: "Thank you and have a nice day!"
I purchased a couple of Abit KG7 boards and XP 1700 and 1900 procs from Monarch around November 2001 and had a hell of a time trying to get them returned when the boards they shipped were bad. It took me two months to get it all straightened out. Their support is slow, and they also don't pay much attention to what the customer has to say. *sigh* But their popularity has grown (their prices are certainly some of the best) and maybe the darker stuff that nobody wants to think about or deal with (RMA!) is much better.
My two cents..
Speaking of.. pricewatch.com is down. Anyone else have this problem? Know why?
I have a 2 year old Dell Inspiron 3800 with a 450 celeron and 128 mb sdram. The only problem I have had was that some of the screws fell out and the bottom of the casing came loose. This caused the motherboard to drop a little and the keyboard connector came loose. But when I emailed dell about it, I got a response within 48 hours and had someone that showed up at my house in another 48 hours with a small bag of screws. That got it fixed. All of the hardware with my dell has worked fine. I upgraded from a 4gb hard drive to a 20gb just because I needed the space.
::shrug:: who knows?
As for another Dell success story, my mom has a P2 233 that's 4 or 5 years old still running the original install of Windows 98 and it's still running like day 1. I don't know how, but it's doing great. I guess in the hands of a non-power user, computers seem to last longer.
If you really gotta have that cool interface and only want to pay half the cost (assuming you already are running Windows), just buy Object Desktop ($50) or Window Blinds ($20) from Stardock.
I was recently employed as a Client Services Representative at a now-dead company. But while I was there, my boss and I undertook a project to create a mission critical system for the company that everybody wanted but nobody would attempt. We started the project out of need due to the fact that everything from order processing to tracking and monitoring etc was left up to the client services department. All the while, the department was not given the budget or the resources to handle all these tasks with just a handful of people and no information to go by. So I started working on a small site just to help myself out but my boss caught on to the idea and wanted me to go all out on it. After a few months of him speccing out the project with all the functionality and features and me making it happen, we were able to anticipate what the other was going to do or ask for next. He knew when I was feeling overworked or needed an extra hour break and we often went off to a local fast food restaurant to grab a Coke and discuss things.
Since this was all being done within the client services department and by a "novice" programmer, political heat was started and some parties wanted the effort moved to the research and development people. My boss and I felt that since we dealt with it every day and were using it, we would know what would work the best and how it would work the best. With all the controversy, a shitstorm was amidst and my boss was there to shield me from 90% of it while I still worked on the project. Occasionally, I would have to go to a meeting with my boss to argue some points about the project with others in the company, but he would do most of the talking with me there to correct anything that was wrong and to offer backup in case someone thought he was lying.
After 6 months of the project's existence, people in the company actually took notice that it was working, and working well. About a month before the company filed for bankruptcy, the project was deemed official and would be used as the main repository of information and began allocating more resources to get the job done. Eventually, the company filed for bankruptcy and then closed and the project died.
Moral of the story:
1. Know your employees
2. Listen to your employees
3. Trust your employees
4. Try to shield your employees from any political interference (it's impossible to block it all)
5. Even though meetings take away coding time, don't be afraid to drag employees to them every once in a while if it is needed
6. Reward your employees (extra day off, extra hour break, raise, whatever)
7. Despite the heat, don't give up
8. Repeat steps 1 through 7 as needed
Oh! Oh! If he's going to threaten all of the people who respond to this post, I wanna get in on it! Having recently lost my job due to the closure of st3.com, I have nothing better to do!
Don't forget. TuxRacer 1.0 is coming out before Christmas. I'm all over wanting to get TuxRacer and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
This is an almost exact account of what was going on where I work that day. A coworker in the cube across the hall from me got a call from his wife about what just happened to the first building. He then came to my cube (which also had a couple of people in it) to tell us the news. I instantly turned to Slashdot to read more about it. And then gave the news that a second plane had hit and everyone went silent. After an extended smoke break, I came back to my cube to discover that someone was streaming CNN to the entire internal network. I then went to watch it on my coworker's 21" monitor and nice sound system.
Just thought that was kinda weird how the two accounts happened almost exactly the same..
I work in the Client Services department of a fast-growing media company and am also doing the same type of work. However, I started out doing everything web based so that everyone with a decent, later version browser can use our mission critical system. It includes tracking fulfillment status, client relationship management, monitoring, catalogging, and many other management utilities that go with our business. I have been developing this site for a few months now on an intranet server. However, there is a need to outsource some of these utitilies when we outsource our help desk support or employees need the information on road trips. This called for an intranet development server where the development goes on and an internet production server that has the stable functionality of the system and gets updated after each milestone. Personally, I think it's a fairly nice way of implementing a mission critical system but would also like to see what other /.ers think.
BTW - If your curious, I wrote all the server-side stuff in ASP (we're practically married to Microsoft). However, my boss also wants to have a mirrored copy on a Linux server written in PHP so a case like another Code Red incident won't wipe everything out.
They say nobody owns the Internet.. I'm not so sure anymore..
Aren't the CD images that you download from Microsoft's OEM site already ready to install without having to enter a CD key or anything like that? Is that the same for Whistler? I have a friend who has a beta of Whistler and it was already ready to go. Just get a Microsoft OEM friend to download Whistler for you. If you really want an OS that looks like a combination of AOL cutesy pootsie art combined with Windows.. *BLAH!!* *gag* *all sorts of other nasty sounds* --Malduin
I kinda got a kick out of the ambition statement by Katy in the original article:
``The reason why you see more men doing computer stuff is that girls are more ambitious than that. My parents always say, 'Do something with computers,' because it is stable and stuff, but a lot (of people) don't want to be at a desk from 9 to 5.''
And then they go on about girls spending just as much time on the computer as guys in this statement:
"Girls do keep up with boys when it comes to using computers for leisure activities like surfing the Internet and sending e-mail"
I don't see what's not ambitious about guys and computers. bildstorm's comment was well put. Guys like to tinker. They get ambitious enough to see what makes a computer program work and then that's sparks a semi-competitive interest to want to make a program that does similar work, but make it work better or look better. That's the case with me anyways.
I'd like to see more girl geeks in this world. I'll stay up until sunrise talking with my guy friends about computers but all my girl friends can't hold a conversation past "yeah, i emailed you." I wanna be able to talk to girls about computers. There's a first time for everything, isn't there?
--Malduin