Remember, HDMI is just a superset of DVI, which works generally works fine for a myriad of desktop computers.
My own Samsung A550 from a few years back does just fine with sync, and works very well with video games. Even with layers of potential latency bolted on (playing Super Mario Bros. on an emulator on a Wii outputting component video which is then turned back into digital video at the television and then scaled), it behaves just as well as I remember it with an NES hooked to a CRT.
For that matter, both of the DVI-connected monitors on my desk also show zero noticeable latency.
As to cables, the cheaper the better, in my experience (at normal lengths): I've had expensive HDMI cables with ferrite beads on them, and had no end of problems with them. I eventually emoved the ferrites (with a sharp knife and a hammer), and they've been working perfectly for years... The cheap freebie cables that come in the box with gear or from bottom of the barrel Ebay sales seem to all work fine.
I have seen some TVs lately that had real, unforgivable latency problems, and they all happened to have been made by Sharp. These needed audio delays added in the AVR to make a movie play correctly, and were essentially unusable as a computer monitor or for video games.
Whatever the case, blaming HDMI (which really cursed piece of DRM-encumbered shit) for the wiring or latency issues is a non-starter. You're pointing your finger in the wrong direction.
But yea basically they left the parts out o the newer iCrap and then charge you for more for capabilities the older stuff had.
Rather they charge more for less capabilities: The old device supported real, uncompressed video. The new adapter has MPEG artifacts and added latency.
Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute: "inherent dangers".
The question is: Does a laptop test its own battery when plugged in forever?
If not, how is it tested?
(Pulling the plug and waiting for the box to turn off != reliable, especially if the particular evil you're trying to fend off is that of SSDs sometimes going batshit crazy when their power unexpectedly goes away..)
My UPS also has its own battery test routine (as do various items of not-PC-related gear that I maintain and that have their own battery banks), because being plugged in forever is the definition of "normal" for such a device. But it is not normal for a laptop.
To use the word again, my UPS provides (AFAICT) inherently more reliable power than a laptop with a battery of indeterminable health.
I'm assuming that sending the drives reset and initialize commands will allow them to continue to work properly, as opposed to unexpectedly yanking the power from them.
Right, sure: All of this battery information can certainly be gleaned under any operating system, given appropriate software.
But the question is (restated): If the machine never runs on battery, does the machine know the health status of that battery? Does it really have any idea what those figures really are? Can it possibly know, without ever having run on (or otherwise discharged) the battery what the operational status of that battery really is?
The implication is that if it cannot, then it's really not inherently more reliable than a much simpler machine with no battery at all.
Please remember that the context here is that of a reliable machine that generally has external power and exists in a fixed location, but which may (as any other thing also may) lose that external power at some point.
That a laptop in normal use that spends some of its time running plugged in, some of it just charging, some of it sitting in a bag doing nothing, and some of it running only from battery -- and report statistics based on that normal treatment -- only indicates that a laptop battery works predictably in normal use.
This isn't normal use, though. And I, myself, have never tried this particular abnormal use of getting a new laptop, plugging it in, and leaving it that way for a Long, Long Time.
I've got a pile of old Laserdisc players here. Most kind-of work, but not really good enough for resale in the limited market that they've got, and none can be profitably tuned up to work well (at least, not with any profit for -me-). I keep prying them open hoping to find a HeNe gas tube laser, but haven't found one yet. They generally get trashed, whole.
Small motors and stuff are fun, but they're also cheap as surplus items. They hardly seem worth the effort to scavenge when there's catalogs of them available for next-to-nothing.
Throwing out working televisions and monitors? Yes.:( It makes me sad. I tossed a lovely 20" flat Trinitron from ViewSonic a couple of years ago with stunning color rendition and support for ridiculous resolutions. It was expensive (made at the very tail end of the CRT era, and rather high-end at that time), but LCDs these days are generally also very good (and very cheap).
But how do I destroy a big NST? I've got a few of them which are just heavy dumb bricks full of copper and iron, and I've been told that they'll even withstand a shorted secondary just fine by design. Every now and then I consider putting two of them in series, but I can't think of a single useful thing I'd do with that much voltage (and "just to see what happens" isn't good enough -- I don't like destruction of otherwise-useful things for its own sake, especially if those things provide a useful amount of danger when they're still working).
it's hard to convince consumers through a few sentences on the side of an SSD box that power protection circuitry is important to have
I disagree.
To pick an example: Gigabyte advertises on the box that they use high-quality Japanese capacitors for their motherboards. And since every. single. motherboard failure I've seen in a decade has been due to bad caps, these words mean a lot to me.
"Built-in power backup to help keep your data safe!" sounds like a good enough slogan to lure me in.
But what do I know? I'm just a consumer who wants to find products that seem likely to last, even if they're a bit more expensive.
Do laptops ever monitor health of the battery if external power is never removed? I'm aware that laptops can tell when the battery is eventually trashed in nornal use (Dells, in particular, seem to be pretty bitchy about it with continuously-blinking lights, and report their findings to the OS if it bothers to ask).
But being plugged in forever is not "normal use" for a laptop.
I like your idea (and no, I'm not the AC you're replying to), but I have this vision of a small laptop that has been running with external power for years and years. And for all of those years and years, it's been reporting (via ACPI or whatever hooks) that the battery is in fine, working order.
Suddenly the power dips for a moment, and the machine crashes with neither warning nor expectation because the li-ion/li-po cells are simply very old and nothing bothered to check (let alone report) if they still work beforehand.
Instead of a supercap I'd rather there be a couple of replaceable Lithium coin cells inside of an SSD, to just finish finish writes after the power unexpectedly dips for some reason. They're cheap commodities, they seem to have predictable failure rates, and I don't remember the last time I changed one in any computer (though it used to be a fairly frequent repair).
By using them only once in a blue moon and occasionally monitoring the voltage and setting a SMART error if they're getting worn out, I'd estimate that they'd last at least as long as SSDs seem to . . .
But in the meantime, why not just use a reset button? It kicks over the whole machine without depowering accessories like drives, which would satisfy your needs and the concerns posed by TFA.
Yes, the physical existence of such a button is sadly lacking these days, though third-party motherboards and and the boxes built with them still have the appropriate connector. The motherboard in the computer I write this on even has small reset and power switches right on the board.
Perhaps this SSD issue will invoke a resurgence in reset buttons, or at least a change in power-button behavior.
There's no good reason why it can't function as a power button, an ACPI sleep button, and a reset button, with firmware changes and appropriate blinken-lights: Push once for sleep/graceful shutdown (or do-nothing), hold until power light goes out/flashes/whatever for reset, hold even longer for instant power off.
Or, a software approach: "omg! someone touched the button! quick, tell the disks/SSDs to flush their buffers just in case!"
Or, a user approach (which may or may not work for your scenario). Google "Magic SysRq Key": You can sync and unmount disks and reboot/kill zombies without ever pulling the power out from underneath the hardware, as long as the kernel is still somewhat listening.
Just because I -can- rattle the windows at the other end of the house and dismount knick-nacks from their shelves doesn't mean that I'm doing this occupationally.
Kids and household noise are annoying. A reasonable level of music, played through loudspeakers, masks them very well AND lets me hear other noises that I need to hear, including changes to the environment. I can hear someone open the door to my office not so much because the door itself is noisy, but because the sound of the room changes.
Ears+brains are good at this stuff. You can do it, too, if you pay attention.
A well-fit pair of in-ear or noise-cancelling headphones, while potentially stunning things to listen to, are very bothersome because they are too isolated: One of the major functions of one my senses is gone while I'm using them. This makes me jumpy in ways that are even more distracting than the household noise was.
They're also tethered, and I'm already physically awkward enough without wires stuck to my head. (And Bluetooth sounds like shit, so that's out straight away.)
While open-air headphones also exist and will let me hear some of my surroundings, the SPL needed at my ears to mask a given noise is exactly the same as with conventional speakers, so there's no health benefit.
I have several pairs of decent headphones with various isolation qualities. I do use them sometimes, but not for masking noise.
If all I wanted was quiet, I'd just use earplugs. And if I wanted to preserve my hearing forever above all else, I'd use them all the time except when in a cave-house, carved from stone, wherein I'd drink only the most highly-purified water and only eat food that I'd grown or raised myself. I would do this all quietly, by myself, so I will not get a disease from another human and and always maintain my own safety and longevity ahead of anything else.
Except then I'll still die eventually, anyway, once the parts wear out. So, to at least some extent: Fuck it. Turn the stereo on and get done what needs doing.
All cable services in the UK are supplied underground and tend to be terminated at the closest point in the property to the road / path outside. Unless you pay more / chat up the installation engineer that's going to be a ground floor front room.
And, but, so? There is this thing that exists, but it is an inconvenient place. Why not move it somewhere more convenient?
What prevents an individual from simply relocating that thing? Are tools to work with coaxial cable only sold to licensed "installation engineers" in the UK?
If it were me* and I had this problem, I'd simply go to Home Depot, buy the stuff to make it work, fix it. If I didn't know how to fix it, I'd Google it. If it seemed beyond me, I'd bribe someone clever to handle it (with cash or beer or whatever else is appropriate).
In no event would I say to myself: "Self, this thing that exists is inconvenient. Can I just use IPTV instead?"
*: Actually, if it were me I'd get the spool of coax from the basement and the tools from the toolbox and just do it, but others' mileage probably varies.
So its not just me, people just aren't buying movies anymore at anywhere near the rate they used to.
Or maybe it is just you, and everyone else is getting them differently. I can order just about any DVD or Blu-Ray, ever (in print or not) from Amazon or Ebay or a myriad of other sources, and have it in a few days: I don't have to limit myself to the selection at the store or piss around with asking someone behind a counter to order it on my behalf.
Big name new-releases are sold next to the eggs and milk at the grocery store by my house, with a Red Box out in front that will rent the same titles (eventually) for $1.20. The Dollar General store nearby has movies near the checkout line; I've picked up a few gems there for cheap.
Netflix still has an incredible library of movies-on-disc, and it's pretty inexpensive to use even though it costs a lot more than it used to.
And nevermind paid streaming, paid-for digital downloads (I understand that some people actually -like- "buying" movies on iTunes, or with a PS3 or Xbox), or torrents.
We used to have 6 or 8 rental places in town (mostly indies or small chains), and we're down to 2 (both Family Video). These seem to be holding on just fine (the sign often says "now hiring," at least, which means that the place is a shithole to work in, or they actually need more help because they're, you know, busy).
But whatever the case, my own movie-buying and -renting has gone up over the past decade, both in terms of quantity and dollars spent. I just don't get the movies from the same places that I used to.
Things are different these days. I call it "progress."
And Facebook is the primary channel today of spreading malware. Social engineering combined with trojans are quite effective.
...except against competent system administrators.
Yeah, I've got a Facebook account. So what? I'd be more than happy to tell you all about the last time that I was social-engineered into doing something with a computer, but it simply hasn't ever happened.
(That said: It sounds like it was a win-win deal. Counter-geek gets a sales commission and something to do with his free time at the shop, and you get the repair you were after.)
For home defense I personally have a cheap Norinco side by side 12 gauge, and I keep it at next to the front door, it's easy for my wife to use. I have a Remington 870 pump under the bed. I'm not personally worried about penetration, so they're loaded with 00 buck.
The best gun-hiding technique I've heard of involves closets. Most homes are full of them, and there's usually one near the front door. Hang it in the closet, above the door. Nobody looks there when in smash-and-grab mode, and it's still quickly accessible.
I wanted to get some 0 or 00 for the.410, but nobody around here stocks it -- all they had was various small-game shot, and some crazy disc-shaped loads meant for a Taurus Judge that would never fire correctly (or safely) from a long barrel with a choke.
One dealer did follow my request to get some real.410 ammo, which is how I wound up with #4. It's not as big as what I was asking for, but the price was good and he did actually remember me when I came to pick it up, so I got a couple of boxes of it.
It's an old (~1960) Stevens 311 that we inherited, and I can't find a single thing wrong with it.:)
Mostly because even bad guys don't want to die. Telling someone you've got a way to defend yourself is a great way to stop them from attacking you. Even if they do have a gun, most likely they don't want to get into a shootout.
I still disagree: If they didn't want a shootout during their robbery, they shouldn't have brought a gun. If they make it past the dog (who looks and sounds vicious, but really isn't) and my vocal command to leave, there's a good chance that they've got a target painted on them, as well as myself.
Them being armed (or not) does not influence my decision as to whether or not to open fire, and I expect nothing less from them.
What will influence my decision: The number of intruders. If I'm very outnumbered, I'm probably most inclined to round up the family, throw the cell phones to the intruders, and tell them we're leaving. (I do have good property insurance, but it does not include resurrection or funeral expenses.)
Maybe a wall is a bad example of why you might want penetration. A better one is if they've ducked behind a couch or a counter. Some place where you pretty much know exactly where they are at and they seem to think that concealment is cover. And like I said before, if you're shooting a round that can't penetrate, that little bit of concealment is cover. A beanbag shot isn't going to go through a couch.
A couch isn't much more than fabric, foam, and polyfill, usually, for normal trajectories. The couple of layers fabric don't mean much, and I'd imagine that the foam and polyfill is pretty good at slowing things down (I use them to convert acoustic energy into heat energy with speaker building, which is the same thing), but neither will tend to fragment the round except by overheating.
When my couch is all used up, I'll see if I can find a nearby buddy with a some shootable land who will let me punch holes in it (before it gets burned and scrapped). It'll be interesting, and worthy of filming.
I enjoy shooting, but my lazy habits always lead me to one discipline: sniping. For that I have a Savage.308 with a US Optics SN-3. Got that guy all bubba'd out with heavy fluted barrel and every wiz bang feature you can add to the scope. It's almost like cheating. I'm not that great of a shot but I'll hit a one foot target 8/10 times at 800 yards. It's single shot, so it keeps me from blowing through too much ammo. It's almost like playing chess. Now this is making me want to go shoot too.
If there's anything this.410 has taught me, it's that I need more guns: There are only so many variations because there are so many uses and none of them do everything well.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you just need a different TV.
Remember, HDMI is just a superset of DVI, which works generally works fine for a myriad of desktop computers.
My own Samsung A550 from a few years back does just fine with sync, and works very well with video games. Even with layers of potential latency bolted on (playing Super Mario Bros. on an emulator on a Wii outputting component video which is then turned back into digital video at the television and then scaled), it behaves just as well as I remember it with an NES hooked to a CRT.
For that matter, both of the DVI-connected monitors on my desk also show zero noticeable latency.
As to cables, the cheaper the better, in my experience (at normal lengths): I've had expensive HDMI cables with ferrite beads on them, and had no end of problems with them. I eventually emoved the ferrites (with a sharp knife and a hammer), and they've been working perfectly for years... The cheap freebie cables that come in the box with gear or from bottom of the barrel Ebay sales seem to all work fine.
I have seen some TVs lately that had real, unforgivable latency problems, and they all happened to have been made by Sharp. These needed audio delays added in the AVR to make a movie play correctly, and were essentially unusable as a computer monitor or for video games.
Whatever the case, blaming HDMI (which really cursed piece of DRM-encumbered shit) for the wiring or latency issues is a non-starter. You're pointing your finger in the wrong direction.
Rather they charge more for less capabilities: The old device supported real, uncompressed video. The new adapter has MPEG artifacts and added latency.
The question is: Does a laptop test its own battery when plugged in forever?
If not, how is it tested?
(Pulling the plug and waiting for the box to turn off != reliable, especially if the particular evil you're trying to fend off is that of SSDs sometimes going batshit crazy when their power unexpectedly goes away..)
My UPS also has its own battery test routine (as do various items of not-PC-related gear that I maintain and that have their own battery banks), because being plugged in forever is the definition of "normal" for such a device. But it is not normal for a laptop.
To use the word again, my UPS provides (AFAICT) inherently more reliable power than a laptop with a battery of indeterminable health.
You can have them. Come get them. They're in Ohio.
So would I.
That's my question.
I'm assuming that sending the drives reset and initialize commands will allow them to continue to work properly, as opposed to unexpectedly yanking the power from them.
Right, sure: All of this battery information can certainly be gleaned under any operating system, given appropriate software.
But the question is (restated): If the machine never runs on battery, does the machine know the health status of that battery? Does it really have any idea what those figures really are? Can it possibly know, without ever having run on (or otherwise discharged) the battery what the operational status of that battery really is?
The implication is that if it cannot, then it's really not inherently more reliable than a much simpler machine with no battery at all.
Please remember that the context here is that of a reliable machine that generally has external power and exists in a fixed location, but which may (as any other thing also may) lose that external power at some point.
That a laptop in normal use that spends some of its time running plugged in, some of it just charging, some of it sitting in a bag doing nothing, and some of it running only from battery -- and report statistics based on that normal treatment -- only indicates that a laptop battery works predictably in normal use.
This isn't normal use, though. And I, myself, have never tried this particular abnormal use of getting a new laptop, plugging it in, and leaving it that way for a Long, Long Time.
Hence, the question.
I've got a pile of old Laserdisc players here. Most kind-of work, but not really good enough for resale in the limited market that they've got, and none can be profitably tuned up to work well (at least, not with any profit for -me-). I keep prying them open hoping to find a HeNe gas tube laser, but haven't found one yet. They generally get trashed, whole.
Small motors and stuff are fun, but they're also cheap as surplus items. They hardly seem worth the effort to scavenge when there's catalogs of them available for next-to-nothing.
Throwing out working televisions and monitors? Yes. :( It makes me sad. I tossed a lovely 20" flat Trinitron from ViewSonic a couple of years ago with stunning color rendition and support for ridiculous resolutions. It was expensive (made at the very tail end of the CRT era, and rather high-end at that time), but LCDs these days are generally also very good (and very cheap).
But how do I destroy a big NST? I've got a few of them which are just heavy dumb bricks full of copper and iron, and I've been told that they'll even withstand a shorted secondary just fine by design. Every now and then I consider putting two of them in series, but I can't think of a single useful thing I'd do with that much voltage (and "just to see what happens" isn't good enough -- I don't like destruction of otherwise-useful things for its own sake, especially if those things provide a useful amount of danger when they're still working).
I disagree.
To pick an example: Gigabyte advertises on the box that they use high-quality Japanese capacitors for their motherboards. And since every. single. motherboard failure I've seen in a decade has been due to bad caps, these words mean a lot to me.
"Built-in power backup to help keep your data safe!" sounds like a good enough slogan to lure me in.
But what do I know? I'm just a consumer who wants to find products that seem likely to last, even if they're a bit more expensive.
Do laptops ever monitor health of the battery if external power is never removed? I'm aware that laptops can tell when the battery is eventually trashed in nornal use (Dells, in particular, seem to be pretty bitchy about it with continuously-blinking lights, and report their findings to the OS if it bothers to ask).
But being plugged in forever is not "normal use" for a laptop.
I like your idea (and no, I'm not the AC you're replying to), but I have this vision of a small laptop that has been running with external power for years and years. And for all of those years and years, it's been reporting (via ACPI or whatever hooks) that the battery is in fine, working order.
Suddenly the power dips for a moment, and the machine crashes with neither warning nor expectation because the li-ion/li-po cells are simply very old and nothing bothered to check (let alone report) if they still work beforehand.
Instead of a supercap I'd rather there be a couple of replaceable Lithium coin cells inside of an SSD, to just finish finish writes after the power unexpectedly dips for some reason. They're cheap commodities, they seem to have predictable failure rates, and I don't remember the last time I changed one in any computer (though it used to be a fairly frequent repair).
By using them only once in a blue moon and occasionally monitoring the voltage and setting a SMART error if they're getting worn out, I'd estimate that they'd last at least as long as SSDs seem to . . .
But in the meantime, why not just use a reset button? It kicks over the whole machine without depowering accessories like drives, which would satisfy your needs and the concerns posed by TFA.
Yes, the physical existence of such a button is sadly lacking these days, though third-party motherboards and and the boxes built with them still have the appropriate connector. The motherboard in the computer I write this on even has small reset and power switches right on the board.
Perhaps this SSD issue will invoke a resurgence in reset buttons, or at least a change in power-button behavior.
There's no good reason why it can't function as a power button, an ACPI sleep button, and a reset button, with firmware changes and appropriate blinken-lights: Push once for sleep/graceful shutdown (or do-nothing), hold until power light goes out/flashes/whatever for reset, hold even longer for instant power off.
Or, a software approach: "omg! someone touched the button! quick, tell the disks/SSDs to flush their buffers just in case!"
Or, a user approach (which may or may not work for your scenario). Google "Magic SysRq Key": You can sync and unmount disks and reboot/kill zombies without ever pulling the power out from underneath the hardware, as long as the kernel is still somewhat listening.
Or, some combination of any of these. . . .
Just because I -can- rattle the windows at the other end of the house and dismount knick-nacks from their shelves doesn't mean that I'm doing this occupationally.
Kids and household noise are annoying. A reasonable level of music, played through loudspeakers, masks them very well AND lets me hear other noises that I need to hear, including changes to the environment. I can hear someone open the door to my office not so much because the door itself is noisy, but because the sound of the room changes.
Ears+brains are good at this stuff. You can do it, too, if you pay attention.
A well-fit pair of in-ear or noise-cancelling headphones, while potentially stunning things to listen to, are very bothersome because they are too isolated: One of the major functions of one my senses is gone while I'm using them. This makes me jumpy in ways that are even more distracting than the household noise was.
They're also tethered, and I'm already physically awkward enough without wires stuck to my head. (And Bluetooth sounds like shit, so that's out straight away.)
While open-air headphones also exist and will let me hear some of my surroundings, the SPL needed at my ears to mask a given noise is exactly the same as with conventional speakers, so there's no health benefit.
I have several pairs of decent headphones with various isolation qualities. I do use them sometimes, but not for masking noise.
If all I wanted was quiet, I'd just use earplugs. And if I wanted to preserve my hearing forever above all else, I'd use them all the time except when in a cave-house, carved from stone, wherein I'd drink only the most highly-purified water and only eat food that I'd grown or raised myself. I would do this all quietly, by myself, so I will not get a disease from another human and and always maintain my own safety and longevity ahead of anything else.
Except then I'll still die eventually, anyway, once the parts wear out. So, to at least some extent: Fuck it. Turn the stereo on and get done what needs doing.
And, but, so? There is this thing that exists, but it is an inconvenient place. Why not move it somewhere more convenient?
What prevents an individual from simply relocating that thing? Are tools to work with coaxial cable only sold to licensed "installation engineers" in the UK?
If it were me* and I had this problem, I'd simply go to Home Depot, buy the stuff to make it work, fix it. If I didn't know how to fix it, I'd Google it. If it seemed beyond me, I'd bribe someone clever to handle it (with cash or beer or whatever else is appropriate).
In no event would I say to myself: "Self, this thing that exists is inconvenient. Can I just use IPTV instead?"
*: Actually, if it were me I'd get the spool of coax from the basement and the tools from the toolbox and just do it, but others' mileage probably varies.
Or maybe it is just you, and everyone else is getting them differently. I can order just about any DVD or Blu-Ray, ever (in print or not) from Amazon or Ebay or a myriad of other sources, and have it in a few days: I don't have to limit myself to the selection at the store or piss around with asking someone behind a counter to order it on my behalf.
Big name new-releases are sold next to the eggs and milk at the grocery store by my house, with a Red Box out in front that will rent the same titles (eventually) for $1.20. The Dollar General store nearby has movies near the checkout line; I've picked up a few gems there for cheap.
Netflix still has an incredible library of movies-on-disc, and it's pretty inexpensive to use even though it costs a lot more than it used to.
And nevermind paid streaming, paid-for digital downloads (I understand that some people actually -like- "buying" movies on iTunes, or with a PS3 or Xbox), or torrents.
We used to have 6 or 8 rental places in town (mostly indies or small chains), and we're down to 2 (both Family Video). These seem to be holding on just fine (the sign often says "now hiring," at least, which means that the place is a shithole to work in, or they actually need more help because they're, you know, busy).
But whatever the case, my own movie-buying and -renting has gone up over the past decade, both in terms of quantity and dollars spent. I just don't get the movies from the same places that I used to.
Things are different these days. I call it "progress."
I have kids. I also have multiple stereo systems capable of ridiculous levels of sound.
Same technique that is/was practiced in noisy server farms: Turn the music up, and the noise gets quieter.
If the kids really need attention, they can send me a text; just as they'd do if I were at the office instead of working from home.
*shrug*
Since the introduction of the Federal Reserve Bank, has this ever happened on US soil?
But why would I accept BitCoin for my services, when in buying the things I really need (gasoline, rent, utilities, food), only USD is accepted?
Yeah, I've got a Facebook account. So what? I'd be more than happy to tell you all about the last time that I was social-engineered into doing something with a computer, but it simply hasn't ever happened.
Being deaf is not an excuse.
Is it $8 more, or is it 32% more?
To restate your rhetorical question:
Is it really advisable to tell folks to spend 32% more for features that they may or may not find useful?
(I'll let you answer the question yourself, since you seem to be very good at synopsizing the needs of the general public.)
All those words.
Have you ever sent a phone in under warranty and had a claim denied because it was rooted or was otherwise running different software?
That is the question, but none of that text answers it.
Thanks for nothing!
-flodadolf
Thank you for the valid response. If only others could be bothered...
Not even "sort of."
That's not a warranty claim, but might have been an insurance claim if you'd gone that route.
Warranties cover defects. Insurance covers accidents. [Insert car obvious analogy here.]
(That said: It sounds like it was a win-win deal. Counter-geek gets a sales commission and something to do with his free time at the shop, and you get the repair you were after.)
Everyone talks about "voiding the warranty."
But has anyone ever actually had a warranty claim denied just because the phone is/was rooted and/or running different software?
Indeed, even HTC's own warranty statement doesn't seem to automatically exclude coverage for devices that are simply running different software.
(Also: Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, etc.)
The best gun-hiding technique I've heard of involves closets. Most homes are full of them, and there's usually one near the front door. Hang it in the closet, above the door. Nobody looks there when in smash-and-grab mode, and it's still quickly accessible.
I wanted to get some 0 or 00 for the .410, but nobody around here stocks it -- all they had was various small-game shot, and some crazy disc-shaped loads meant for a Taurus Judge that would never fire correctly (or safely) from a long barrel with a choke.
One dealer did follow my request to get some real .410 ammo, which is how I wound up with #4. It's not as big as what I was asking for, but the price was good and he did actually remember me when I came to pick it up, so I got a couple of boxes of it.
It's an old (~1960) Stevens 311 that we inherited, and I can't find a single thing wrong with it. :)
I still disagree: If they didn't want a shootout during their robbery, they shouldn't have brought a gun. If they make it past the dog (who looks and sounds vicious, but really isn't) and my vocal command to leave, there's a good chance that they've got a target painted on them, as well as myself.
Them being armed (or not) does not influence my decision as to whether or not to open fire, and I expect nothing less from them.
What will influence my decision: The number of intruders. If I'm very outnumbered, I'm probably most inclined to round up the family, throw the cell phones to the intruders, and tell them we're leaving. (I do have good property insurance, but it does not include resurrection or funeral expenses.)
A couch isn't much more than fabric, foam, and polyfill, usually, for normal trajectories. The couple of layers fabric don't mean much, and I'd imagine that the foam and polyfill is pretty good at slowing things down (I use them to convert acoustic energy into heat energy with speaker building, which is the same thing), but neither will tend to fragment the round except by overheating.
When my couch is all used up, I'll see if I can find a nearby buddy with a some shootable land who will let me punch holes in it (before it gets burned and scrapped). It'll be interesting, and worthy of filming.
If there's anything this .410 has taught me, it's that I need more guns: There are only so many variations because there are so many uses and none of them do everything well.