I didn't need an expensive laptop. I wanted low-end. Unfortuantely, their low-end machines come with little to no warranty. Granted, because I paid for it with my Visa, the warranty is doubled (whoo two months). But it was a matter of "pay a couple hundred dollars to extend the warranty for a year" or... not.
I thought this point would be obvious but.... no-one was forcing you to buy a Gateway.
Unless it was *massively* cheaper than everyone else's (from what you said I get the impression it wasn't), I wouldn't touch anything with a warranty that short with a bargepole.
Sorry, but a 30 day warranty on new equipment is ridiculous, and suggests that it's garbage.
And I certainly wouldn't pay for an overpriced guarantee on top of that; better to buy a decent laptop in the first place.
Most problems could be taken care of as most of a laptop is modular and replaceable. Never in my wildest dreams did I fathom that the actual power connector would break.
Even if the replacements were modular, they're generally horribly overpriced, and unlikely to be available second-hand (via dead laptops) for relatively new models; if they were, I'd avoid that model like the plague!
Of course, for half-decent models that are a few years old, it's a different story; that's not the position we're discussing, however.
At the risk of repeating myself though; is a laptop whose manufacturer is only prepared to guarantee it for 30 days *ever* going to be worth the price they can produce it for?
As I said, I'm lucky in that the EU pretty much forces warranties of (what I'd consider) a reasonable length (the UK already did this to some extent). But if this wasn't the case, I'd still be unwilling to buy something that came with a warranty less than one year; six months at a push (considering the bathtub failure curve, that's not as bad as it sounds).
Repairs are expensive, so if you get a 1-year warranty, it's cheaper to make sure the machines work properly than to sell crap and repair it. And that's more convenient for me as well; I'm paying more for a guarantee of quality as much as a guarantee of repair.
Gateway only gave me a 30 day warranty and it's an $800 laptop!
You actually spent *$800* on a laptop that only comes with a 30 day warranty?
Sorry to say this, but unless I'm missing something (I'm assuming it wasn't refurb or second-hand), and unless it was unbelievably good value (in which case, now you know why it was unbelievable), then I'm not sure you deserve any sympathy on this.
Who on EARTH would spend that much on something that only came with a 30-day guarantee?
And for what it's worth, anyone inside the EU considering bitching about US prices being far cheaper; now you know why. EU law pretty much guarantees you 1 year's minimum warranty of anything of note- US law doesn't.
Matter of choice which system you prefer, of course, but I still can't get over anyone buying a laptop with a 30-day warranty...
> Easy there Geordi. Maybe I'm just not a "hard core" gamer anymore, but
> it sounds to me like someone needs to step outside for a reality check.
Ever see the episode where we get to see through Geordi's visor? Extremely unnatural colour rendition *and* horrible smearing. I'm not sure I'd trust him to judge this kind of thing.
And have you ever tried "stepping outside" on a starship? I don't recommend it.
>> It starts off like a traditional review, but their discussion of color
>> accuracy is the best I've ever seen
> You mean they use pr0n images for testing?
Joking aside, pr0n is one of the things that *really* shows up poor LCDs. I have a 5-year old Compaq laptop, and whilst the colour saturation and viewing angle is pretty poor by today's standards, it's fine for almost everything I want it to do.
Throw some pr0n at it, however, and it looks *horrid*. What does pr0n feature lots of? Skin. Skin tones on this thing look really unnatural, and on top of that, the gentle gradiations really show up quantisation of the image.
So, yeah. Pornography *is* actually a good test of a monitor.
I guess they make more money if they force people who want DVI to buy a more expensive monitor, DVI gives them a reason to set higher prices.
BINGO.
Suppose it costs a lot of money to develop a monitor, and a company is relying on profits from expensive (high profit-margin) models to make that back.
Of course, most people can't afford that, and are choosing between low-end monitors. The company could make their low end LCDs more competitive by including the new technology (assuming the production cost is not high); but that would result in cannibalisation of sales of their expensive monitors.
But... if they do something like not including DVI input, the low-end users aren't too bothered, and professional users still buy the expensive models. Result; company makes its development money back, and those that genuinely wouldn't have bought the expensive monitor anyway get better performance than they would have otherwise.
Actually that is what happened to Williams. They were only making a small profit from their pinball division, but their slot machine division was a license to print money.
So they closed the pinball side because it wasn't profitable enough in comparison.
It's a fair move if (for example) the pinball division's sales were having an adverse effect on the slot machine division's. Or if, say, continued profits made by the pinball division would have involved high risk, or required investment that could have been better used elsewhere.
Or it could all be bullshit image-mongering by those at the top, who don't feel that "moderately profitable" reflects well on them. I suspect this may be the case quite often.
It's often been a criticism of western- and particularly American businesses that "merely" making a respectable profit is seen as failure. Macho bullshit from the same business cultures that don't give a damn about anything beyond the next quarter's profits.
All right I see a market that's ripe for the picking, anybody else want to post the captial to get my new company off the ground?
If it were that simple, the market wouldn't be so empty. That's not to say there isn't an opportunity that others have missed (or perhaps they followed the mantra that any business that "merely" turns a decent profit isn't profitable enough *cough*).
But frankly, I'd want to investigate the market further before I threw money at it.
Geeks are the WORST at this. Geeks have some of the largest egos I have ever seen, geeks can be very judgementall a-holes. Don't gripe when people do to you what you do to everyone else on a daily basis, just for different reasons.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up insightful for this paragraph alone.
Taking an arrogant pride in being different just because you *can't* fit in is as bad as any form of conformity. Often it just takes a different form of conformity; I could mention particular patterns of modding stuff down because it conflicts with the groupthink of certain Slashdotters, but it would just distract from the main issue and get me marked as a troll.
Perhaps there should be a system for all of these sites to verify each other's data. For example, if more than one site benchmarks the same hardware they could combine their scores for a more accurate average?
Average it out? Still sounds open to abuse to me.
More interestingly, this sounds oddly reminiscent of the Computer Science (as opposed to IT) involved in creating distributed systems; if n of m sites give crooked scores, how can we be sure of getting accurate scores? What is the largest value of n where we can still be sure of getting accurate scores? Can we use the data from more than one review to accurately determine which sites are crooked?
Of course, reviews and scores don't really work with discrete values; which then makes it feel like some statistics (and a degree of uncertainty) might be involved in the solution as well.
But statistics is nowhere near as interesting as theoretical computer science, and I'm crap at both, so that scuppers that idea...
Most of you will die of old age before america returns to the moon.
No, because China will go to the moon at some stage in the not so distant future. That is why America *will* be back on the moon at some stage (unless the country goes down the tubes and they really *can't* afford to do it).
...what's stopping another country setting up equipment to pick up the Voyager signals...
And then keeping the information private until NASA give them lots of money?:-)
Though they'd be wise to keep their mouths shut until it was all over, as NASA would almost certainly be able to deactivate the probes if they were determined to.
Now that I think about it, what's to stop *anyone* with a decent amount of equipment (or access to such) from hijacking a space probe's computer and making it go awry? Did they plan for this in the design? Even if encryption was used, how hard would it be to crack?
WEP was almost a weak afterthought for wireless technology. This is just a demonstration of why WEP users should switch to WPA.
Except that WPA is a gun-jumping SUBSET of the DRAFT of the forthcoming 802.11i standard, and isn't guaranteed to be compatible with it (rather like "pre-G" and "pre-N" products).
So; yeah, it's better than WEP; but is it a good idea to focus on something which might need upgrading in the near future anyway? (You MIGHT be able to upgrade firmware. You MIGHT not....)
If I considered someone's business security important enough that WEP wasn't acceptable (and it really isn't for all but the smallest businesses), then I'd advise waiting a little longer for genuine 802.11i-compatible products to arrive. Wireless *isn't* that essential yet...
Just a thought; would it be possible to implement 802.11i "in software" for existing equipment?
>>> Sean Connery came back..and looked a little to old for the part.
>>> (No offense man! You were the best Bond ever!)
> Um, do you seriously think Sean Connery is a/. reader?
> Or that he cares what you think of him? ha hahaha
Well, yesh and yesh, but I post under an aliash, you inshenshitive clod.
>>(I have filed patents, and have had prior-art cited against me that
>> could only have been found by a Google search).
> Wow. You are officially Part of the Problem.
Not necessarily. If it wasn't something blatantly obvious, it's quite possible it could have been missed.
OTOH, it could be argued that anyone knowledgeable enough to figure out that it could only have been spotted via Google, would have been smart enough to Google it for themselves before applying, and was thus chancing their luck anyway.
I though the Mellotron was the one with tow sounds - one of which doesn't sound like a string section and the other doesn't sound like a female choir.
That's a bit of an exaggeration; but it's definitely true that it sounds like a mellotron whenever you hear it.
And that's a good thing; the Melloton actually sounds *more* atmospheric than the thing it is playing back, and it doesn't sound at all like a digital sampler.
Radiohead used it to great effect on "OK Computer"; listen to "Exit Music from a Film" when the "choir" comes in. That's a mellotron; it sounds *way* better than a real choir would have.
Now, why would someone go through all this for the $10 rebate on a stack of $25 CD-Rs?
Maybe he's the type of guy that doesn't like companies that *rely* on the "hassle factor" to screw people out of small sums of money (which --> big profit).
Maybe it's principle. Maybe he just doesn't like losing. But if more than a miniscule proportion of people did that, it would soon not be worth the retailer's time to pull the scam.
So, it makes sense from a larger scale point of view. Whatever his conscious motivation, this *is* ultimately logical.
Does the VAT have to be listed on products aimed primarily at businesses?
In the UK, it is normal to list prices aimed at that market as "excluding VAT" (although it is usually clearly listed as such).
Actually, that reminds me; when I bought my first (Wintel) PC in 1998, the ex-VAT price was the one advertised primarily. Nowadays, this is less common. Says something about the changing market for PCs?
Is that when series 2 starts we find out Eccleston never really was the doctor when McGann shows up.
After all we've not seen McGann generate into Eccleston...
Eccleston's "Doctor" turns out to be an imposter, and is killed off in a horrible degrading manner by McGann's Doctor.
This would assume Eccleston is contractually obliged to do this (think he still has a Christmas special to do), and the BBC could say "F*** you!" in the opposite manner to what Colin Baker did when he got sacked but was told he could come back to do the regeneration scene (he didn't).
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't need an expensive laptop. I wanted low-end. Unfortuantely, their low-end machines come with little to no warranty. Granted, because I paid for it with my Visa, the warranty is doubled (whoo two months). But it was a matter of "pay a couple hundred dollars to extend the warranty for a year" or ... not.
I thought this point would be obvious but.... no-one was forcing you to buy a Gateway.
Unless it was *massively* cheaper than everyone else's (from what you said I get the impression it wasn't), I wouldn't touch anything with a warranty that short with a bargepole.
Sorry, but a 30 day warranty on new equipment is ridiculous, and suggests that it's garbage.
And I certainly wouldn't pay for an overpriced guarantee on top of that; better to buy a decent laptop in the first place.
Most problems could be taken care of as most of a laptop is modular and replaceable. Never in my wildest dreams did I fathom that the actual power connector would break.
Even if the replacements were modular, they're generally horribly overpriced, and unlikely to be available second-hand (via dead laptops) for relatively new models; if they were, I'd avoid that model like the plague!
Of course, for half-decent models that are a few years old, it's a different story; that's not the position we're discussing, however.
At the risk of repeating myself though; is a laptop whose manufacturer is only prepared to guarantee it for 30 days *ever* going to be worth the price they can produce it for?
As I said, I'm lucky in that the EU pretty much forces warranties of (what I'd consider) a reasonable length (the UK already did this to some extent). But if this wasn't the case, I'd still be unwilling to buy something that came with a warranty less than one year; six months at a push (considering the bathtub failure curve, that's not as bad as it sounds).
Repairs are expensive, so if you get a 1-year warranty, it's cheaper to make sure the machines work properly than to sell crap and repair it. And that's more convenient for me as well; I'm paying more for a guarantee of quality as much as a guarantee of repair.
30 days... sorry, nope.
Gateway only gave me a 30 day warranty and it's an $800 laptop!
You actually spent *$800* on a laptop that only comes with a 30 day warranty?
Sorry to say this, but unless I'm missing something (I'm assuming it wasn't refurb or second-hand), and unless it was unbelievably good value (in which case, now you know why it was unbelievable), then I'm not sure you deserve any sympathy on this.
Who on EARTH would spend that much on something that only came with a 30-day guarantee?
And for what it's worth, anyone inside the EU considering bitching about US prices being far cheaper; now you know why. EU law pretty much guarantees you 1 year's minimum warranty of anything of note- US law doesn't.
Matter of choice which system you prefer, of course, but I still can't get over anyone buying a laptop with a 30-day warranty...
> Easy there Geordi. Maybe I'm just not a "hard core" gamer anymore, but
> it sounds to me like someone needs to step outside for a reality check.
Ever see the episode where we get to see through Geordi's visor? Extremely unnatural colour rendition *and* horrible smearing. I'm not sure I'd trust him to judge this kind of thing.
And have you ever tried "stepping outside" on a starship? I don't recommend it.
>> It starts off like a traditional review, but their discussion of color
>> accuracy is the best I've ever seen
> You mean they use pr0n images for testing?
Joking aside, pr0n is one of the things that *really* shows up poor LCDs. I have a 5-year old Compaq laptop, and whilst the colour saturation and viewing angle is pretty poor by today's standards, it's fine for almost everything I want it to do.
Throw some pr0n at it, however, and it looks *horrid*. What does pr0n feature lots of? Skin. Skin tones on this thing look really unnatural, and on top of that, the gentle gradiations really show up quantisation of the image.
So, yeah. Pornography *is* actually a good test of a monitor.
I guess they make more money if they force people who want DVI to buy a more expensive monitor, DVI gives them a reason to set higher prices.
BINGO.
Suppose it costs a lot of money to develop a monitor, and a company is relying on profits from expensive (high profit-margin) models to make that back.
Of course, most people can't afford that, and are choosing between low-end monitors. The company could make their low end LCDs more competitive by including the new technology (assuming the production cost is not high); but that would result in cannibalisation of sales of their expensive monitors.
But... if they do something like not including DVI input, the low-end users aren't too bothered, and professional users still buy the expensive models. Result; company makes its development money back, and those that genuinely wouldn't have bought the expensive monitor anyway get better performance than they would have otherwise.
Actually that is what happened to Williams. They were only making a small profit from their pinball division, but their slot machine division was a license to print money. So they closed the pinball side because it wasn't profitable enough in comparison.
It's a fair move if (for example) the pinball division's sales were having an adverse effect on the slot machine division's. Or if, say, continued profits made by the pinball division would have involved high risk, or required investment that could have been better used elsewhere.
Or it could all be bullshit image-mongering by those at the top, who don't feel that "moderately profitable" reflects well on them. I suspect this may be the case quite often.
It's often been a criticism of western- and particularly American businesses that "merely" making a respectable profit is seen as failure. Macho bullshit from the same business cultures that don't give a damn about anything beyond the next quarter's profits.
All right I see a market that's ripe for the picking, anybody else want to post the captial to get my new company off the ground?
If it were that simple, the market wouldn't be so empty. That's not to say there isn't an opportunity that others have missed (or perhaps they followed the mantra that any business that "merely" turns a decent profit isn't profitable enough *cough*).
But frankly, I'd want to investigate the market further before I threw money at it.
I'm deaf, dumb and blind, you insensitive clod!
Oh, hang on....
Geeks are the WORST at this. Geeks have some of the largest egos I have ever seen, geeks can be very judgementall a-holes. Don't gripe when people do to you what you do to everyone else on a daily basis, just for different reasons.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up insightful for this paragraph alone.
Taking an arrogant pride in being different just because you *can't* fit in is as bad as any form of conformity. Often it just takes a different form of conformity; I could mention particular patterns of modding stuff down because it conflicts with the groupthink of certain Slashdotters, but it would just distract from the main issue and get me marked as a troll.
Perhaps there should be a system for all of these sites to verify each other's data. For example, if more than one site benchmarks the same hardware they could combine their scores for a more accurate average?
Average it out? Still sounds open to abuse to me.
More interestingly, this sounds oddly reminiscent of the Computer Science (as opposed to IT) involved in creating distributed systems; if n of m sites give crooked scores, how can we be sure of getting accurate scores? What is the largest value of n where we can still be sure of getting accurate scores? Can we use the data from more than one review to accurately determine which sites are crooked?
Of course, reviews and scores don't really work with discrete values; which then makes it feel like some statistics (and a degree of uncertainty) might be involved in the solution as well.
But statistics is nowhere near as interesting as theoretical computer science, and I'm crap at both, so that scuppers that idea...
When I was young, I had a severe DNS poisoning at school, and the teacher allowed me to go home.
Reminds me of those weird dreams you get where you leave one room through the door and end up in exactly the same room. Think about it.
Most of you will die of old age before america returns to the moon.
No, because China will go to the moon at some stage in the not so distant future. That is why America *will* be back on the moon at some stage (unless the country goes down the tubes and they really *can't* afford to do it).
...what's stopping another country setting up equipment to pick up the Voyager signals...
:-)
And then keeping the information private until NASA give them lots of money?
Though they'd be wise to keep their mouths shut until it was all over, as NASA would almost certainly be able to deactivate the probes if they were determined to.
Now that I think about it, what's to stop *anyone* with a decent amount of equipment (or access to such) from hijacking a space probe's computer and making it go awry? Did they plan for this in the design? Even if encryption was used, how hard would it be to crack?
At my house the neighbours don't have wifi so we leave WEP off.
:)
They don't need WiFi; they're using *your* access point
WEP was almost a weak afterthought for wireless technology. This is just a demonstration of why WEP users should switch to WPA.
Except that WPA is a gun-jumping SUBSET of the DRAFT of the forthcoming 802.11i standard, and isn't guaranteed to be compatible with it (rather like "pre-G" and "pre-N" products).
So; yeah, it's better than WEP; but is it a good idea to focus on something which might need upgrading in the near future anyway? (You MIGHT be able to upgrade firmware. You MIGHT not....)
If I considered someone's business security important enough that WEP wasn't acceptable (and it really isn't for all but the smallest businesses), then I'd advise waiting a little longer for genuine 802.11i-compatible products to arrive. Wireless *isn't* that essential yet...
Just a thought; would it be possible to implement 802.11i "in software" for existing equipment?
>>> Sean Connery came back..and looked a little to old for the part. /. reader?
>>> (No offense man! You were the best Bond ever!)
> Um, do you seriously think Sean Connery is a
> Or that he cares what you think of him? ha hahaha
Well, yesh and yesh, but I post under an aliash, you inshenshitive clod.
>>(I have filed patents, and have had prior-art cited against me that
>> could only have been found by a Google search).
> Wow. You are officially Part of the Problem.
Not necessarily. If it wasn't something blatantly obvious, it's quite possible it could have been missed.
OTOH, it could be argued that anyone knowledgeable enough to figure out that it could only have been spotted via Google, would have been smart enough to Google it for themselves before applying, and was thus chancing their luck anyway.
I though the Mellotron was the one with tow sounds - one of which doesn't sound like a string section and the other doesn't sound like a female choir.
That's a bit of an exaggeration; but it's definitely true that it sounds like a mellotron whenever you hear it.
And that's a good thing; the Melloton actually sounds *more* atmospheric than the thing it is playing back, and it doesn't sound at all like a digital sampler.
Radiohead used it to great effect on "OK Computer"; listen to "Exit Music from a Film" when the "choir" comes in. That's a mellotron; it sounds *way* better than a real choir would have.
Now I know why I've never had much luck with Gigabyte boards, they arn't tested to Australian climates
Actually, I think you'll find your problem is that Gigabyte motherboards aren't designed to work upside-down.
Now, why would someone go through all this for the $10 rebate on a stack of $25 CD-Rs?
Maybe he's the type of guy that doesn't like companies that *rely* on the "hassle factor" to screw people out of small sums of money (which --> big profit).
Maybe it's principle. Maybe he just doesn't like losing. But if more than a miniscule proportion of people did that, it would soon not be worth the retailer's time to pull the scam.
So, it makes sense from a larger scale point of view. Whatever his conscious motivation, this *is* ultimately logical.
Does the VAT have to be listed on products aimed primarily at businesses?
In the UK, it is normal to list prices aimed at that market as "excluding VAT" (although it is usually clearly listed as such).
Actually, that reminds me; when I bought my first (Wintel) PC in 1998, the ex-VAT price was the one advertised primarily. Nowadays, this is less common. Says something about the changing market for PCs?
Tux with tits!
If you look closely at Tux, you'll see he already *has* a pair of tits, albeit in a rather high-up position.
Or maybe they're just man^w penguin boobs.
In essence, you play the part of someone doing something important and no one gives you flak ... same sort of idea.
Wasn't that the basis of the film "Catch Me If You Can"?
"Troll" indeed. Some people have no sense of humour.
I'm still trying to figure out if the clueless moderator thought it was a pro- or anti-Linux troll.
Actually, I use Linux (as we speak); if it was a piss-take of anything, it was silly "revolutionary" types. Sheesh.
Is that when series 2 starts we find out Eccleston never really was the doctor when McGann shows up. After all we've not seen McGann generate into Eccleston...
Eccleston's "Doctor" turns out to be an imposter, and is killed off in a horrible degrading manner by McGann's Doctor.
This would assume Eccleston is contractually obliged to do this (think he still has a Christmas special to do), and the BBC could say "F*** you!" in the opposite manner to what Colin Baker did when he got sacked but was told he could come back to do the regeneration scene (he didn't).