I think you're approaching the problem wrong. It isn't as important how much you pay for storage as it is that you don't overpay for your organization/division. Its ok for you to ask about their calculation and what went into the $30/mo figure.. but, its clear from your post that you don't really understand what that figure is comprised of.
A better approach would be to let the storage dept. know that you're challenged by these figures and you would like a better understanding of how they arrived at them. This discussion may identify services you may be receiving (such as site-to-site replication) that you don't need. They, in turn, may be able to reduce your storage bill by eliminating this overhead from your data.
On the other hand, if you approach them with 'Hey, I read around on the internet and I can get HDD's from Newegg for $1/GB!'... they're going to go on the defensive. First, they're going to be annoyed because you don't know what you're talking about and then they're going to use your ignorance as evidence that they can discount anything you say.
I can assure you... if they've taken the time to distill down a specific number ($30/GB/mo)... then, there's something that went into that calculation. Don't assume they're ignorant of their own technologies and how to deliver them.
I haven't read the entire thread.. but, I haven't seen it suggested yet: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
With VDI, you would use thin clients inside the school (for faculty, students, conference rooms, etc). You could also allow connection to the VDI desktops from outside the building with SSL. I think it is typical for most students to have a PC...so, what they need is access to the school work and the applications they have installed on their desktop at school. They don't necessarily need a new piece of hardware at home to connect.
Of course, if you did decide to provide them withe a machine for home...then it doesn't have to be an expensive laptop. I don't really think that mobility and education are tied so tightly. You could also issue inexpensive thin clients for home use, as well. There are portable thin clients available.. but, I would evaluate whether that is really necessary.
The VDI infrastructure itself will eliminate a lot of hassle with managing desktops. Also, virtualization should be part of your key IT strategy and this will play in nicely with your infrastructure direction.
There are VDI solutions available from a lot of vendors but, the two biggies are Citrix and VMware.
You'd be surprised how many 'advertisers' show up as Malformed HTTP Responses in an IDS. Most of the time it's innocent.. but, sure gets annoying to check into all the time. I imagine it's not uncommon in smaller organizations to just block access to the most offending sites.
Beyond that, the security of web-based email itself can be a major problem. What if your company is a bank? Do you really want to allow people to access Hotmail, Gmail, etc? What if your VP decides to send some key tidbits of information across his HTTP connection on his last day?
Not saying that this is what the OP was stating.. but, there are very valid reasons for blocking Hotmail, imo.
I'd like to know... 'what?'
A lot of people hold this belief that there are many important missing features from XP Home.. but, it's simply not true for most users. Granted, there may be many users on this site that use the advanced features of XP Pro... but, I doubt it's really all that many.
So... which feature(s) do you use that are specifically not available in XP Home?
If Bartle actually had this theoretical New and Better Game, and it was actually New and Better, then maybe he'd have a point.
Therein is the problem. No one can make that 'new and different' game. It costs tens of millions of dollars to produce and you're simply not going to float anything original by publishers in the current market. You would really need the support of players and its just not going to be there if it includes a buzzword like 'Permanent Death'.
This is really the underlying point of Bartle's article, imo. You *can't* make something different today. Players are deciding what will be built based on what they've played. They're unable to see longterm design (I'm speaking to the large group of players.. not as individuals).
If you want more proof of that.. look at the posts to this article. How many arguments against PD are based on actual experience with a MMOG that includes PD? How many are based on existing MMOGs that don't include PD and wouldn't be very good if they included PD?
You'd never be successful winning any of those people because they've decided 'PD is bad'. There's no more discussion. It doesn't matter if PD is a focal point of a new and highly brilliant idea.. it's bad.
I think you have to expand your paradigm a bit. For example.. do you truly object to 'Permanent Death'.. or are you really objecting to 'Replaying the same content again'? What if you started a game that each character was truly unique, there were no 'newbie' areas to begin, and each game was fresh. Would you object if there was PD in that game?
I do believe there are ways to do this. For a couple of years I've had an idea for a game that foregoes levelling and loot mongering. But.. it would have permanent death. Its a rather long story why this would be an important feature.. but, I do believe that PD is offset by the fact that you don't have to 'replay' the same portion of the game over and over.
But.. I recognize that just the mention of 'Permanent Death' would cause tremendous uproar. No further discussion would likely be possible. I agree with him on this point. So.. the game idea is pretty much worthless (not that I have the $100M to get it off the ground, anyway;).
LOL. You must not be from the US. We have opinions on everything.. whether we understand it or not. They're not going to worry about HTML tags.. but, if their browser doesn't render the page correctly...they are not going to give a crap. Furthermore, they aren't going to be interested that the browser is 'right'. They can't see/interact with the page correctly.. so, the browser is broken.
Guess what? As one of a few thousand web developers.. your opinion doesn't matter 'one-hill-of-beans'. As soon as you realize that its the millions of web surfers that have an important opinion on interoperability.. the better off you'll be.
I'll take your word on that. Sounds like a nice error correction system.
However, I was commenting on Cringely's article. He discussed RAID as his error correction method. I don't know of any RAID level with the type of fault tolerance that you mention.. but, I'm no expert. If there is a level of raid that uses RS, please enlighten me.
In either case, the RS seems smarter. I didn't say that Cringely's idea was impossible to correct, just that -- as presented, it was very weak.
This idea is poorly thought out. It has a couple of *major* flaws, imo.
#1) It doesn't recognize the reality of the complexity of backup software. Kinda easy to gloss over 'automated' backups without ever describing it. Pretty hard to imagine some piece of software that can universally back stuff up on everyone's hard drive and at the same time be very easy to use. Imagine mom/dad trying to use software with similar capabilities to Veritas BackupExec isn't easy. And.. imagine the wide variety of live files and databases that it wouid have to handle.
#2) Data integrity. He suggests a 1:1 ratio for backup space. Not hardly. How is he going to have any kind of redundancy with that? Crashes and people unsubscribing will happen all the time. The data would have to have a *lot* of tolerance to that.
A parity solution wouldn't be nearly enough. That assumes that only 1 failure at a time happens (using RAID 5 as my basis here). It would be easy to imagine that one person unsubscribed with part of your data and another had a crash or corruption problem.
So.. complete mirroring would be necessary. Again, its easy to imagine 2 people's system going offline at the same time.. so, you'd probably need more than 2x Mirror. At this point... how much is enough to ensure reliability? 3x 4x 5x ? ? ? How much do you trust your average netizen?
So.. pick your number and then divide your backup space by it. Like 5x? Add 10GB and you have 2GB usable storage. Not very good.
I'll just skip over the 'auto backup' of people's 40GB storage over a 128K up line for now.. already typed too much...
What kind of qualifications does someone need to work at a chip fab? How did you get started? I find it fascinating..but, I have always been curious how people *got their start*.
The thing I've never understood about Tivo/Replay or even the 'roll your own' PVR's is how do they access the premium channels?
I assume they don't. I mean.. nowadays, the digital cable boxes are pretty much required to see 1/2 your channels. What is the point of a PVR that can only see 1/2 (or less) of the channels I subscribe to? And.. if I had to leave it on Channel 3 and navigate everything with the other remote.. then that's just stupid. Much easier to pay TWC $5 / month for their PVR solution.
Am I missing something?
Ok.. then I have a problem for you to solve with statistics. I have 100 marbles in a sealed steel box. Ideally, they're all white. However, my process is only 98.6% in control. (Sometimes it makes black ones)
How many *exactly* and which numbers *exactly* (I'll count them as I pull them out)are black?
The odds would be that 1 or 2 is black. But, you never know... if that SPC % was aggregated over a large group of runs.. this one might have been 50% or 100%. And.. how would you know *exactly* which ones were black.. even if you knew *exactly* how many there were without looking?
(The reason you can't look is related to the HDD example. You can't test every HDD for its lifespan.. or you kill it and have none at the end of the test. So.. some HDDs you can't inspect for lifespan.)
And why wouldn't Western Digital just make contracts with their customers for certain quantities of drives meeting certain specifications at certain prices, all of which could vary from customer to customer, be it Dell, Apple, or whomever?
The reason for this has to do with "Just In Time Manufacturing" (no inventory) & low margins. Its not permissible to have inventory because of JITM. Its not feasible to have multiple assembly lines for the same process (excepting if you need the production capacity because of order volume) because of low margins. And, its not reasonable to keep 'resetting' your main production line for a different customer's procedures (imagine you're in the middle of a several day process of changing over when you get a call from your biggest customer saying he needs 16 hrs of parts TOMORROW... it happens all the time...keep those lines ready).
Its just far simpler to find a common QA level that everyone can agree to. If you have a customer that demands a certain high level of quality on a product line.. then that's what you produce (if his volume is high enough to warrant) for all. You can certainly have varied product lines (which probably span multiple assembly lines). Those varied product lines almost certainly do have varying degrees of QA/testing.
What I'm asserting is that you don't make 2 products that are exactly alike in every respect except the level of quality that you use for your customers (for big markets like HDDs... if you work out of your garage.. its no biggie). If you have an 'assembly line' that is 'better'.. then you make a new 'product line' and charge more than you charge for the other one. (I'm also saying that Dell/Apple use the same line of HDD's...now that Apple has dropped SCSI as standard.)
My company sells thousands of pieces of hardware and every one is tested.
Ahh... but, tested for what? Tested for 'lifespan'? I doubt it. Testing 1000 widgets for variables x,y,z is common. Testing 1000 widgets for 1000 variables (or 1million variables) is a whole different story.
To put this into non-manufacturing terms (I was formerly a machinist): If you develop a web page, you might test that page on commonly available browsers on commonly available configurations. You would likely even test 100% of the pages on your site.
What you would not do is test *every* browser ever created with each browser on *every* possible platform that it could run (including any and all possible configuration changes). It's insane to even consider.
Manufacturing is not completely unlike this process. Another thing to remember, if you tested 100% of hard drives for their lifespan (and could pick out the ones that didn't last as long)... guess what? All your hard drives are dead. You killed them with your testing procedure. Not a good rate of return on that batch;).
They do 100% QA on some of their products. Is that concept too difficult for you?
Yes, I do have a difficult time with that concept. The belief that companies are doing 100% QA for 100% of possible defects is usually only held by naive consumers, sales people, and VP's. It just doesn't actually happen.
Now there is such a thing as sorting 100% when a process is out of control (SPC term) for a particular attribute or small set of attributes.
That is a completely different subject and doesn't address the original post that you made about Apple HDD's being sorted for something like 'lifespan'. HDD lifespan is not something that can be sorted on and is the result of a near limitless amount of variables.
If they have a reason, like customer requirements, and a product with some inherent variability, they can grade their production.
In order for a customer to require 100% quality assurance they would essentially have to say : "I have an infinite budget. My customers have infinite budgets. Time is of no consequence to me. Time is of no consequence to my customers. Make my parts perfectly, please."
Actually, if you do know of a company with that sort of a mission statement...please let me know. I'll build/subcontract/deliver/program/retail/sell whatever they need. Just give me the address;).
Statistics only tell you that there will be X amount of failures among Y amount of drives. You can't reach into that group of drives and pick out the failures (or the ones with less lifespan)...which is what 'sorting' implies.
You could try to sort a low quality run to be shipped off to Dell.. but, think about that for a minute. If you're WD.. would you sooner have Dell upset or Apple? Odds are, if anyone gets the choice drives.. its Dell.
Mostly its just connecting the dots with JITM (just in time manufacturing), low margins, volume, assembly/manufacture procedures, and inventory management.
Are you trying to assert that these 3 companies do 100% QA? (That's what you seemingly implied by your other post about how you believed that HDD's are sorted.)
If so, I'd like to move to your dimension. In my realm, these companies still get returns...so, their QA procedure is less than 100%.
If you're commenting on how these companies have different product lines to represent different markets.. then I don't see the relation to your other post that was discussing HDD quality. To clarify, Apple doesn't purchase a different 'line' of HDD's then Dell. Your earlier post alluded to some difference in the QA process on the same line.
Heh.. sounds like someone who has never worked in manufacturing. Oh, how simple QA would be if you could easily sort components like you suggest.
If I ever work in manufacturing again, I want to work at your fantasy factory. Sounds like a nice place with lots of black/white.
The only thing I don't understand, at Fantasy Factory; to sort like you're suggesting they must be doing 100% inspection. Why don't they just throw away the bad hdd's and avoid the $$ loss when they get returned? (Unless Fantasy Factory has sooo high of margins on their parts that they even make money on the HDDs that get returned?)
Although I think that your reliability data is anecdotal/worthless and your implication that you couldn't get a similar (or better) capability PC for the same cost as a MacG5 (heh.. actually makes me laugh thinking about it)...
You do make a very important point that most people miss:
O.K., how about OS X makes me much more productive than does Wintel
That's exactly what people should focus on. OS X makes you more productive/happy. For me, I like Windows for useability. Who's wrong? No one.
Its when people keep applying their paradigms to other people that all the trouble starts. All these speed comparisons between PC's and Macs and reliability suggestions.. are just pointless. They're just justifications for your choice and a weak attempt at trying to convert someone else.
No justification is necessary. Don't bother trying to convert me.
I have owned 10 wintel PC's in the last 8 years (I usually sell systems when I upgrade.. but, still have a few of them). Never had a hard drive failure.
I work for two places and have probably seen 50+ wintel PC (desktops) move through in the last couple years (including the new ones we purchased this year). Never had a hard drive failure.
At one place we have 6 Mac's (2 brand new). We've had 1 hard drive failure.
What does it mean?
Not a damn thing. Its totally anecdotal and worthless 'evidence' of anything.
p.s. One of the easiest sells in marketing.. is that if something costs more.. it must be 'better'. Ask a salesman sometime... particularly computer or used car...LOL
Actually, MS has had a bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo out for MANY months. What you're linking to is a new lineup of MS devices that also includes new BT keyboard/mouse.
Apple is very late to this party.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're approaching the problem wrong. It isn't as important how much you pay for storage as it is that you don't overpay for your organization/division. Its ok for you to ask about their calculation and what went into the $30/mo figure.. but, its clear from your post that you don't really understand what that figure is comprised of.
A better approach would be to let the storage dept. know that you're challenged by these figures and you would like a better understanding of how they arrived at them. This discussion may identify services you may be receiving (such as site-to-site replication) that you don't need. They, in turn, may be able to reduce your storage bill by eliminating this overhead from your data.
On the other hand, if you approach them with 'Hey, I read around on the internet and I can get HDD's from Newegg for $1/GB!'... they're going to go on the defensive. First, they're going to be annoyed because you don't know what you're talking about and then they're going to use your ignorance as evidence that they can discount anything you say.
I can assure you... if they've taken the time to distill down a specific number ($30/GB/mo)... then, there's something that went into that calculation. Don't assume they're ignorant of their own technologies and how to deliver them.
I haven't read the entire thread.. but, I haven't seen it suggested yet: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
.then it doesn't have to be an expensive laptop. I don't really think that mobility and education are tied so tightly. You could also issue inexpensive thin clients for home use, as well. There are portable thin clients available.. but, I would evaluate whether that is really necessary.
With VDI, you would use thin clients inside the school (for faculty, students, conference rooms, etc). You could also allow connection to the VDI desktops from outside the building with SSL. I think it is typical for most students to have a PC...so, what they need is access to the school work and the applications they have installed on their desktop at school. They don't necessarily need a new piece of hardware at home to connect.
Of course, if you did decide to provide them withe a machine for home..
The VDI infrastructure itself will eliminate a lot of hassle with managing desktops. Also, virtualization should be part of your key IT strategy and this will play in nicely with your infrastructure direction.
There are VDI solutions available from a lot of vendors but, the two biggies are Citrix and VMware.
I mean come on - this is right up there with oval office blowjobs, someone was gonna talk!
Are you kidding me? Seriously... right up there?
You're saying that committing a felony crime (soliciting a minor for sex) is on par with two consenting adults having an extra-marital affair?
Wow.
I think you're looking at the wrong screen. Fox News is on the one with the knob. You know, over by the couch.
You'd be surprised how many 'advertisers' show up as Malformed HTTP Responses in an IDS. Most of the time it's innocent.. but, sure gets annoying to check into all the time. I imagine it's not uncommon in smaller organizations to just block access to the most offending sites. Beyond that, the security of web-based email itself can be a major problem. What if your company is a bank? Do you really want to allow people to access Hotmail, Gmail, etc? What if your VP decides to send some key tidbits of information across his HTTP connection on his last day? Not saying that this is what the OP was stating.. but, there are very valid reasons for blocking Hotmail, imo.
I'd like to know... 'what?' A lot of people hold this belief that there are many important missing features from XP Home.. but, it's simply not true for most users. Granted, there may be many users on this site that use the advanced features of XP Pro... but, I doubt it's really all that many. So... which feature(s) do you use that are specifically not available in XP Home?
If Bartle actually had this theoretical New and Better Game, and it was actually New and Better, then maybe he'd have a point.
Therein is the problem. No one can make that 'new and different' game. It costs tens of millions of dollars to produce and you're simply not going to float anything original by publishers in the current market. You would really need the support of players and its just not going to be there if it includes a buzzword like 'Permanent Death'.
This is really the underlying point of Bartle's article, imo. You *can't* make something different today. Players are deciding what will be built based on what they've played. They're unable to see longterm design (I'm speaking to the large group of players.. not as individuals).
If you want more proof of that.. look at the posts to this article. How many arguments against PD are based on actual experience with a MMOG that includes PD? How many are based on existing MMOGs that don't include PD and wouldn't be very good if they included PD?
You'd never be successful winning any of those people because they've decided 'PD is bad'. There's no more discussion. It doesn't matter if PD is a focal point of a new and highly brilliant idea.. it's bad.
I think you have to expand your paradigm a bit. For example.. do you truly object to 'Permanent Death'.. or are you really objecting to 'Replaying the same content again'? What if you started a game that each character was truly unique, there were no 'newbie' areas to begin, and each game was fresh. Would you object if there was PD in that game?
;).
I do believe there are ways to do this. For a couple of years I've had an idea for a game that foregoes levelling and loot mongering. But.. it would have permanent death. Its a rather long story why this would be an important feature.. but, I do believe that PD is offset by the fact that you don't have to 'replay' the same portion of the game over and over.
But.. I recognize that just the mention of 'Permanent Death' would cause tremendous uproar. No further discussion would likely be possible. I agree with him on this point. So.. the game idea is pretty much worthless (not that I have the $100M to get it off the ground, anyway
LOL. You must not be from the US. We have opinions on everything.. whether we understand it or not. They're not going to worry about HTML tags.. but, if their browser doesn't render the page correctly...they are not going to give a crap. Furthermore, they aren't going to be interested that the browser is 'right'. They can't see/interact with the page correctly.. so, the browser is broken.
Guess what? As one of a few thousand web developers.. your opinion doesn't matter 'one-hill-of-beans'. As soon as you realize that its the millions of web surfers that have an important opinion on interoperability.. the better off you'll be.
I'll take your word on that. Sounds like a nice error correction system.
However, I was commenting on Cringely's article. He discussed RAID as his error correction method. I don't know of any RAID level with the type of fault tolerance that you mention.. but, I'm no expert. If there is a level of raid that uses RS, please enlighten me.
In either case, the RS seems smarter. I didn't say that Cringely's idea was impossible to correct, just that -- as presented, it was very weak.
This idea is poorly thought out. It has a couple of *major* flaws, imo.
#1) It doesn't recognize the reality of the complexity of backup software. Kinda easy to gloss over 'automated' backups without ever describing it. Pretty hard to imagine some piece of software that can universally back stuff up on everyone's hard drive and at the same time be very easy to use. Imagine mom/dad trying to use software with similar capabilities to Veritas BackupExec isn't easy. And.. imagine the wide variety of live files and databases that it wouid have to handle.
#2) Data integrity. He suggests a 1:1 ratio for backup space. Not hardly. How is he going to have any kind of redundancy with that? Crashes and people unsubscribing will happen all the time. The data would have to have a *lot* of tolerance to that.
A parity solution wouldn't be nearly enough. That assumes that only 1 failure at a time happens (using RAID 5 as my basis here). It would be easy to imagine that one person unsubscribed with part of your data and another had a crash or corruption problem.
So.. complete mirroring would be necessary. Again, its easy to imagine 2 people's system going offline at the same time.. so, you'd probably need more than 2x Mirror. At this point... how much is enough to ensure reliability? 3x 4x 5x ? ? ? How much do you trust your average netizen?
So.. pick your number and then divide your backup space by it. Like 5x? Add 10GB and you have 2GB usable storage. Not very good.
I'll just skip over the 'auto backup' of people's 40GB storage over a 128K up line for now.. already typed too much...
Nobody cool is going to use MS's service.
What a sad sad existence you must have. For your sake, I hope you can always afford those things you need to make yourself 'cool'.
What kind of qualifications does someone need to work at a chip fab? How did you get started? I find it fascinating..but, I have always been curious how people *got their start*.
The thing I've never understood about Tivo/Replay or even the 'roll your own' PVR's is how do they access the premium channels? I assume they don't. I mean.. nowadays, the digital cable boxes are pretty much required to see 1/2 your channels. What is the point of a PVR that can only see 1/2 (or less) of the channels I subscribe to? And.. if I had to leave it on Channel 3 and navigate everything with the other remote.. then that's just stupid. Much easier to pay TWC $5 / month for their PVR solution. Am I missing something?
Maybe I should have said 'return on investment' .. heh. In any case, you understood my meaning ;).
Statistics can tell you more than % failures.
Ok.. then I have a problem for you to solve with statistics. I have 100 marbles in a sealed steel box. Ideally, they're all white. However, my process is only 98.6% in control. (Sometimes it makes black ones)
How many *exactly* and which numbers *exactly* (I'll count them as I pull them out)are black?
The odds would be that 1 or 2 is black. But, you never know... if that SPC % was aggregated over a large group of runs.. this one might have been 50% or 100%. And.. how would you know *exactly* which ones were black.. even if you knew *exactly* how many there were without looking?
(The reason you can't look is related to the HDD example. You can't test every HDD for its lifespan.. or you kill it and have none at the end of the test. So.. some HDDs you can't inspect for lifespan.)
And why wouldn't Western Digital just make contracts with their customers for certain quantities of drives meeting certain specifications at certain prices, all of which could vary from customer to customer, be it Dell, Apple, or whomever?
The reason for this has to do with "Just In Time Manufacturing" (no inventory) & low margins. Its not permissible to have inventory because of JITM. Its not feasible to have multiple assembly lines for the same process (excepting if you need the production capacity because of order volume) because of low margins. And, its not reasonable to keep 'resetting' your main production line for a different customer's procedures (imagine you're in the middle of a several day process of changing over when you get a call from your biggest customer saying he needs 16 hrs of parts TOMORROW... it happens all the time...keep those lines ready).
Its just far simpler to find a common QA level that everyone can agree to. If you have a customer that demands a certain high level of quality on a product line.. then that's what you produce (if his volume is high enough to warrant) for all. You can certainly have varied product lines (which probably span multiple assembly lines). Those varied product lines almost certainly do have varying degrees of QA/testing.
What I'm asserting is that you don't make 2 products that are exactly alike in every respect except the level of quality that you use for your customers (for big markets like HDDs... if you work out of your garage.. its no biggie). If you have an 'assembly line' that is 'better'.. then you make a new 'product line' and charge more than you charge for the other one. (I'm also saying that Dell/Apple use the same line of HDD's...now that Apple has dropped SCSI as standard.)
My company sells thousands of pieces of hardware and every one is tested.
;).
Ahh... but, tested for what? Tested for 'lifespan'? I doubt it. Testing 1000 widgets for variables x,y,z is common. Testing 1000 widgets for 1000 variables (or 1million variables) is a whole different story.
To put this into non-manufacturing terms (I was formerly a machinist): If you develop a web page, you might test that page on commonly available browsers on commonly available configurations. You would likely even test 100% of the pages on your site.
What you would not do is test *every* browser ever created with each browser on *every* possible platform that it could run (including any and all possible configuration changes). It's insane to even consider.
Manufacturing is not completely unlike this process. Another thing to remember, if you tested 100% of hard drives for their lifespan (and could pick out the ones that didn't last as long)... guess what? All your hard drives are dead. You killed them with your testing procedure. Not a good rate of return on that batch
They do 100% QA on some of their products. Is that concept too difficult for you?
;).
Yes, I do have a difficult time with that concept. The belief that companies are doing 100% QA for 100% of possible defects is usually only held by naive consumers, sales people, and VP's. It just doesn't actually happen.
Now there is such a thing as sorting 100% when a process is out of control (SPC term) for a particular attribute or small set of attributes.
That is a completely different subject and doesn't address the original post that you made about Apple HDD's being sorted for something like 'lifespan'. HDD lifespan is not something that can be sorted on and is the result of a near limitless amount of variables.
If they have a reason, like customer requirements, and a product with some inherent variability, they can grade their production.
In order for a customer to require 100% quality assurance they would essentially have to say : "I have an infinite budget. My customers have infinite budgets. Time is of no consequence to me. Time is of no consequence to my customers. Make my parts perfectly, please."
Actually, if you do know of a company with that sort of a mission statement...please let me know. I'll build/subcontract/deliver/program/retail/sell whatever they need. Just give me the address
Statistics only tell you that there will be X amount of failures among Y amount of drives. You can't reach into that group of drives and pick out the failures (or the ones with less lifespan)...which is what 'sorting' implies. You could try to sort a low quality run to be shipped off to Dell.. but, think about that for a minute. If you're WD.. would you sooner have Dell upset or Apple? Odds are, if anyone gets the choice drives.. its Dell. Mostly its just connecting the dots with JITM (just in time manufacturing), low margins, volume, assembly/manufacture procedures, and inventory management.
Are you trying to assert that these 3 companies do 100% QA? (That's what you seemingly implied by your other post about how you believed that HDD's are sorted.) If so, I'd like to move to your dimension. In my realm, these companies still get returns...so, their QA procedure is less than 100%. If you're commenting on how these companies have different product lines to represent different markets.. then I don't see the relation to your other post that was discussing HDD quality. To clarify, Apple doesn't purchase a different 'line' of HDD's then Dell. Your earlier post alluded to some difference in the QA process on the same line.
Heh.. sounds like someone who has never worked in manufacturing. Oh, how simple QA would be if you could easily sort components like you suggest.
If I ever work in manufacturing again, I want to work at your fantasy factory. Sounds like a nice place with lots of black/white.
The only thing I don't understand, at Fantasy Factory; to sort like you're suggesting they must be doing 100% inspection. Why don't they just throw away the bad hdd's and avoid the $$ loss when they get returned? (Unless Fantasy Factory has sooo high of margins on their parts that they even make money on the HDDs that get returned?)
Although I think that your reliability data is anecdotal/worthless and your implication that you couldn't get a similar (or better) capability PC for the same cost as a MacG5 (heh.. actually makes me laugh thinking about it)...
You do make a very important point that most people miss:
O.K., how about OS X makes me much more productive than does Wintel
That's exactly what people should focus on. OS X makes you more productive/happy. For me, I like Windows for useability. Who's wrong? No one.
Its when people keep applying their paradigms to other people that all the trouble starts. All these speed comparisons between PC's and Macs and reliability suggestions.. are just pointless. They're just justifications for your choice and a weak attempt at trying to convert someone else.
No justification is necessary. Don't bother trying to convert me.
Like anecdotal evidence?
... particularly computer or used car...LOL
I have owned 10 wintel PC's in the last 8 years (I usually sell systems when I upgrade.. but, still have a few of them). Never had a hard drive failure.
I work for two places and have probably seen 50+ wintel PC (desktops) move through in the last couple years (including the new ones we purchased this year). Never had a hard drive failure.
At one place we have 6 Mac's (2 brand new). We've had 1 hard drive failure.
What does it mean?
Not a damn thing. Its totally anecdotal and worthless 'evidence' of anything.
p.s. One of the easiest sells in marketing.. is that if something costs more.. it must be 'better'. Ask a salesman sometime
Actually, MS has had a bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo out for MANY months. What you're linking to is a new lineup of MS devices that also includes new BT keyboard/mouse. Apple is very late to this party.