My dad did that with his Atari 810 floppy drive. He put in a three-position switch (always protected, normal sensor, never protected) and an LED to indicate whether the disk was write-protected.
The other problem is that it's not a one-time expense. Every time the safety mechanism gets triggered, parts have to be replaced before the saw is functional again. I could see a problem where, especially in a labor dispute, there are an inordinate number of "accidental safety triggerings" afflicting these units, requiring parts and labor to repair, and downtime in the meantime.
Kinda like the Dodge Magnum. 30 years ago, it would have been called a station wagon. Now station wagons are selling like hotcakes because they're called "crossovers."
Having a single machine to do nothing but DHCP and DNS for only sixty workstations always seemed like a waste - especially when you still had to reboot it once a week to cope with memory leaks that would crash it sometime between day 10 and 30. Now you can run that as a virtual machine on whatever environment you like and the memory leak will be contained.
More importantly, you can run two such instances, so one is always running while you're rebooting the other one.
Agreed about the Si's. We retired three of 4si MX's at between 600,000 and 800,000 pages each--basically because we just wanted something faster with more memory.
I've had great luck with the 4000/4050/4200/4250/4350 series as well. Put in a maintenance kit and clutch roller about every 200,000 pages, and they run forever. Cartridges are more expensive ($185 for a 'genuine' combination toner/drum), but they'll last you 20,000 pages each.
Not too shabby. My Laserjet 2100N draws between 13 and 16 watts in sleep mode--enough that I just turn it off when I'm not using it. At 6 watts, I'd leave it on all the time.
Oh, God, tell me about it. I like how I have to delete Exchange mailboxes twice: once in AD U&C, and once in BE. Otherwise, my backups show up as "FAILED" in big red letters (even though everything else backed up fine), and I have to remove them from the backup job manually.
I've worked for several companies where the standard was to throw away all PC's when they reach the age of four. The idea was simple: in four years, PC's would be so much faster and more powerful, it would be cheaper to replace the old ones rather than repair them.
Times have changed. An average corporate desktop bought in 2002, if they thought of the future at all, will have a Pentium 4 processor between 1.8GHz and 2.53GHz, probably 256MB to 512MB of RAM, at least a 40GB drive, a DVD-ROM or combo drive, and a Windows XP license on the lid. With $150 of parts (RAM and possibly a hard drive), these machines are more than adequate for most corporate tasks. While a few companies still toss machines at that age, regardless of condition, more and more are realizing that it's no longer necessary to toss that 2.53GHz machine, only to replace it with a 2.8GHz machine. These aren't the olden days where you threw away a 486 to upgrade to a Pentium Pro four years later.
Vista will be the same way. While Windows 95 was a worthwhile upgrade from WFW (at least it had an integrated TCP/IP stack, better UI, 32-bit app support from the get-go and better DOS compatibility), companies are realizing that Windows XP, and even Windows 2000, are more than adequate for their needs now. (A well-known Fortune 100 company still uses Windows 2000 on all their machines. The only thing that W2K doesn't have built-in is the WiFi software--and they don't support WiFi anyway.)
On the consumer side, the gravy train still rolls on, where people throw away perfectly good machines to get a $700 Vista PC with prettier menus and no spyware (until they get back on the web, that is.) But I think PC manufacturers (and Microsoft) better expect a large slowdown from their corporate customers for a while, until something rolls along that necessitates upgrades (and a pretty new version of Office isn't it.)
Symantec is where programs go to die. They buy up software and let it stagnate (for instance, under Symantec, several version of ACT! had the same easily fixable bug, even though it was in their knowledge base several times), getting as much money out of the software with as little work as possible. (When's the last time you saw a great new feature in any Symantec product? Our current corporate "Symantec Antivirus" is exactly the same as the old versions of Norton Antivirus, but with a new tray icon. Oooooooh.)
Today, many less-expensive desktop drives are actually 2.5" drives in a 3.5" package, because it is cheaper to just produce one smaller platter and use it for both notebook and desktop drives.
I don't know if you've cracked open a server drive lately, but I've opened up a couple of recent 18.2GB server drives and found 2.5" platters and mechanisms inside.
I would also wonder how quickly one could unplug the ECU and plug in a known good one. In my hometown, about 25% of the car thefts are of cars that are left running to warm up in the mornings. If the thieves have an ECU and a matching key, they could theoretically have their "spare" ECU plugged in in seconds and be off with their matching key.
Why would Microsoft care about the next spike in computer sales? Why do they care whether it's Windows XP or Vista on those computers? They get paid one way or the other. Why bother writing Vista in the first place?
Because the hardware requirements are way out in left field. People will be buying the cheapest machine they can find that will run XP, and that means they will not be Vista-ready (tm). Thus, Microsoft loses a sale on Vista for at least a few years with those people.
On the other hand, if Vista is out, then the hardware will be there (probably for a tiny bit more money), and MS will get more people on the Vista bandwagon, and all the stuff it includes (Paid Windows Care or whatever the hell they're calling Giant Antispyware nowadays) sooner.
If I see something interesting in a pop-up, I'll open a new tab and do a web search, making sure to click on a seller OTHER than the one who produced the pop-up.
Most tests of this kind are reaction-timed simulators. If I'm on a cell phone call, even though I'm on a hands-free, I stay back further from the cars ahead of me and am extra-aware of my surroundings, precisely because I want to give myself more reaction time. I also ignore the person on the phone (or hang up) if I know I'm entering conditions where I need to be more vigilant (a particularly nasty onramp, for instance.)
That's how I handled my old archived data.
Originally, I had my stuff on my Atari 800XL, on 5 1/4" floppies.
When I got my PC, I transferred the files to 1.44MB floppies and threw the Atari disks in the closet.
When I got a QIC-80 drive, I threw away the Atari disks, transferred the 1.44MB floppies to tape and threw the floppies in the closet.
When I got CD-R's, I threw away the 1.44's, transferred the QIC-80's to CD-R, and threw the QIC-80's in the closet.
When I got DVD-R's... well, you get the idea. It takes a little work once I've settled on a newer technology to transfer the data, but it means I always have two backups, without having to resort to finding a machine that will work with a QIC-80 drive. Now that I have a 35/70GB DLT drive, I can fit all of my important stuff on one tape, so a second duplicate tape can also go to my parents' house (450 miles away) in their fireproof safe. The CD-R's went in the trash, and all of my DVD-R backups are on a spindle, in a safe deposit box.
Not only that, but most "fire resistant" safes are rated for keeping documents safe. Since paper can withstand much higher temperatures than magnetic and optical media, most "media-rated" safes actually keep the contents cooler longer.
I'm planning something similar, but with my existing server (Dell Latitude C610 laptop, 1.2GHz, 15 watts idle) and an external Zoom FXO/FXS/Ethernet unit. As a bonus, if the power fails (and the UPS dies), the Zoom automatically connects the FXO and FXS together so the house phones can still make and receive calls.
I have an external USB/Firewire disk. It has three partitions: a 20GB bootable full install of OS X (for doing disk checks, imaging with Disk Utility, testing hardware), a 4.8GB bootable "install partition" (I use Disk Utility to make a direct copy of the OS X Install DVD directly onto this partition; makes installing much quicker) and the rest of the drive a "storage partition" where I keep DMG's of my image for imaging machines, user data backups, installers for common apps, etc.
Try that with the Quickbooks trial that comes with HP desktops. Three reboots after I removed it with the Add/Remove control panel, I got a "personal message" popup from the Quicken CEO on startup. I had to manually remove the crap from the registry.
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True, but if they're on a shared software package like MAS90, they still are all still hosed if the server goes down.
My dad did that with his Atari 810 floppy drive. He put in a three-position switch (always protected, normal sensor, never protected) and an LED to indicate whether the disk was write-protected.
The other problem is that it's not a one-time expense. Every time the safety mechanism gets triggered, parts have to be replaced before the saw is functional again. I could see a problem where, especially in a labor dispute, there are an inordinate number of "accidental safety triggerings" afflicting these units, requiring parts and labor to repair, and downtime in the meantime.
Kinda like the Dodge Magnum. 30 years ago, it would have been called a station wagon. Now station wagons are selling like hotcakes because they're called "crossovers."
More importantly, you can run two such instances, so one is always running while you're rebooting the other one.
That's the one thing I miss from the Novell days. If a user mangled or deleted a file, recovery was quick and easy, and I didn't have to touch a tape.
I've had great luck with the 4000/4050/4200/4250/4350 series as well. Put in a maintenance kit and clutch roller about every 200,000 pages, and they run forever. Cartridges are more expensive ($185 for a 'genuine' combination toner/drum), but they'll last you 20,000 pages each.
Not too shabby. My Laserjet 2100N draws between 13 and 16 watts in sleep mode--enough that I just turn it off when I'm not using it. At 6 watts, I'd leave it on all the time.
Oh, God, tell me about it. I like how I have to delete Exchange mailboxes twice: once in AD U&C, and once in BE. Otherwise, my backups show up as "FAILED" in big red letters (even though everything else backed up fine), and I have to remove them from the backup job manually.
Times have changed. An average corporate desktop bought in 2002, if they thought of the future at all, will have a Pentium 4 processor between 1.8GHz and 2.53GHz, probably 256MB to 512MB of RAM, at least a 40GB drive, a DVD-ROM or combo drive, and a Windows XP license on the lid. With $150 of parts (RAM and possibly a hard drive), these machines are more than adequate for most corporate tasks. While a few companies still toss machines at that age, regardless of condition, more and more are realizing that it's no longer necessary to toss that 2.53GHz machine, only to replace it with a 2.8GHz machine. These aren't the olden days where you threw away a 486 to upgrade to a Pentium Pro four years later.
Vista will be the same way. While Windows 95 was a worthwhile upgrade from WFW (at least it had an integrated TCP/IP stack, better UI, 32-bit app support from the get-go and better DOS compatibility), companies are realizing that Windows XP, and even Windows 2000, are more than adequate for their needs now. (A well-known Fortune 100 company still uses Windows 2000 on all their machines. The only thing that W2K doesn't have built-in is the WiFi software--and they don't support WiFi anyway.)
On the consumer side, the gravy train still rolls on, where people throw away perfectly good machines to get a $700 Vista PC with prettier menus and no spyware (until they get back on the web, that is.) But I think PC manufacturers (and Microsoft) better expect a large slowdown from their corporate customers for a while, until something rolls along that necessitates upgrades (and a pretty new version of Office isn't it.)
Symantec is where programs go to die. They buy up software and let it stagnate (for instance, under Symantec, several version of ACT! had the same easily fixable bug, even though it was in their knowledge base several times), getting as much money out of the software with as little work as possible. (When's the last time you saw a great new feature in any Symantec product? Our current corporate "Symantec Antivirus" is exactly the same as the old versions of Norton Antivirus, but with a new tray icon. Oooooooh.)
I don't know if you've cracked open a server drive lately, but I've opened up a couple of recent 18.2GB server drives and found 2.5" platters and mechanisms inside.
I would also wonder how quickly one could unplug the ECU and plug in a known good one. In my hometown, about 25% of the car thefts are of cars that are left running to warm up in the mornings. If the thieves have an ECU and a matching key, they could theoretically have their "spare" ECU plugged in in seconds and be off with their matching key.
Pull the magnets from a 5 1/4" full height drive with 10 platters. I can pick up an empty file cabinet with mine.
Because the hardware requirements are way out in left field. People will be buying the cheapest machine they can find that will run XP, and that means they will not be Vista-ready (tm). Thus, Microsoft loses a sale on Vista for at least a few years with those people.
On the other hand, if Vista is out, then the hardware will be there (probably for a tiny bit more money), and MS will get more people on the Vista bandwagon, and all the stuff it includes (Paid Windows Care or whatever the hell they're calling Giant Antispyware nowadays) sooner.
Agreed. I have purchased from both Google ads and unobtrusive, non-flashing banner ads.
If I see something interesting in a pop-up, I'll open a new tab and do a web search, making sure to click on a seller OTHER than the one who produced the pop-up.
Most tests of this kind are reaction-timed simulators. If I'm on a cell phone call, even though I'm on a hands-free, I stay back further from the cars ahead of me and am extra-aware of my surroundings, precisely because I want to give myself more reaction time. I also ignore the person on the phone (or hang up) if I know I'm entering conditions where I need to be more vigilant (a particularly nasty onramp, for instance.)
When I got my PC, I transferred the files to 1.44MB floppies and threw the Atari disks in the closet.
When I got a QIC-80 drive, I threw away the Atari disks, transferred the 1.44MB floppies to tape and threw the floppies in the closet.
When I got CD-R's, I threw away the 1.44's, transferred the QIC-80's to CD-R, and threw the QIC-80's in the closet.
When I got DVD-R's... well, you get the idea. It takes a little work once I've settled on a newer technology to transfer the data, but it means I always have two backups, without having to resort to finding a machine that will work with a QIC-80 drive. Now that I have a 35/70GB DLT drive, I can fit all of my important stuff on one tape, so a second duplicate tape can also go to my parents' house (450 miles away) in their fireproof safe. The CD-R's went in the trash, and all of my DVD-R backups are on a spindle, in a safe deposit box.
Not only that, but most "fire resistant" safes are rated for keeping documents safe. Since paper can withstand much higher temperatures than magnetic and optical media, most "media-rated" safes actually keep the contents cooler longer.
I'm planning something similar, but with my existing server (Dell Latitude C610 laptop, 1.2GHz, 15 watts idle) and an external Zoom FXO/FXS/Ethernet unit. As a bonus, if the power fails (and the UPS dies), the Zoom automatically connects the FXO and FXS together so the house phones can still make and receive calls.
I have an external USB/Firewire disk. It has three partitions: a 20GB bootable full install of OS X (for doing disk checks, imaging with Disk Utility, testing hardware), a 4.8GB bootable "install partition" (I use Disk Utility to make a direct copy of the OS X Install DVD directly onto this partition; makes installing much quicker) and the rest of the drive a "storage partition" where I keep DMG's of my image for imaging machines, user data backups, installers for common apps, etc.
True. The draw is the same with power supply plugged into the wall but the laptop not connected.
A fully charged Powerbook G4/867 in sleep mode consumes less than 1 watt measured at the wall.
Try that with the Quickbooks trial that comes with HP desktops. Three reboots after I removed it with the Add/Remove control panel, I got a "personal message" popup from the Quicken CEO on startup. I had to manually remove the crap from the registry.