While my first reaction to most new Apple hardware is:I can't wait to get the casing off that baby., I was until recently fully certified to do so.
There are plenty of people in this world who don't have the common sense to know that if they pull the thing apart and damage it they're not covered. My favourite to date was a guy who brought in a PB180 (long time ago) with it's power adaptor claiming repair under warranty. He had cut the transformer off the end of the cable and attached a standard 3-pin plug because "the big block was too difficult to plug in" and run 240V straight into his brand new powerbook.
Never underestimate the ability of people to overestimate their abilities
Umm... I suspect that if an item is sold as a "sealed unit" item that you would find that warranty is voided if you open the case. It is not uncommon for certain items to be designated CRU (customer replaceable units) - for example in your laser printer, the toner cartridge is a CRU but the fuser assembly probably isn't. Pulling out the fuser and taking it to HP and saying you want it fixed under warranty is probably not going to get you very far.
Laptops are designed to very fine tolerances, even experienced computer technicians can have difficulty working with them. I used to be a laptop specialist in a Apple Gold Service Centre in Melbourne (Australia), and would frequently see units come in the had casing damage from being forced, or units that had been reassembled incorrectly. There is a world of difference between working on a desktop unti and a laptop. Desktop computers are designed to be pulled apart and upgraded by the end user, laptops typically aren't, and in some rare cases require special tools to open them or reseal them.
I would check you local statutory regulations regarding "sealed unit" items and warranty before you start pulling it apart and expecting to have warranty coverage.
While working as an Apple repairer, I once had a Mac SE in for repairs that had a serious heat issue - it would work fine for about 10-15 minutes then cut out. When we opened it up we found about 1.5 inches of fine red sediment had collected in the bottom of the unit, encasing the logic board and causing it to overheat.
When I checked the paperwork which had come with the machine, it became clear that the computer had come from a cattle breeding station in the country.
I was the first computer I had ever seen that was literally drowning in bull dust. I stripped the machine down, cleaned it thoroughly inside and out, and it worked a treat.
Kodak Gold CDs - which are the discs which quote 100 year life span, use an inert gold refective substrate, and the dye technology used for the write layer is quite similar to the dyes used for their film stocks. Typically these disc will have a slower maximum burn speed as they need slightly more heat/energy to set to dye state to a 1 or 0.
Possibly one of my most cherished memories of my first gaming convention was being put into a team of 14 year old boys to play in a "Macho Women with Guns" scenario...
I was in my early 20's, and had shown up that day in a a tank top and biker jacket... at one point in the story, the word condom was mentioned. I got one out of the jacket pocket, blew it up like a balloon and tossed it at the teenage boys.
For the most part they nearly fell off their chairs, I'm not sure which frightened them most - the fact that there was a real 'live' condom being thrown at them, or that the throwing was being done by a woman.
Re:Alternatives to Expensive books...
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D&D Is 30
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The core rules are available online (http://3point5srd.com/) as part of WotC commitment to the Open Gaming Foundation.
Called the Standard Reference Document (SRD), it contains 98% of the text of the commercial rules books. They have kept as 'closed content' the experience & leveling up rules and certain monsters $ spells.
Re:Military Potential of D&D
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D&D Is 30
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As far as I can tell, they play "Vampire: the Masquerade" (White Wolf - the World of Darkness) on Aircraft Carriers and Battleships - by comparison, I'd rather they were playing DnD...
Re:Borrowed very, very heavily
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Dwarves don't suffer a movement penalty wearing heavy armour under DnD 3.5E - it's a racial bonus...
Geek-GMs-R-Us
Flanking and Attacks of Opportunity
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D&D Is 30
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And for the record - flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me.
Try playing using minis and a battlemat - once you do, AOO and flanking suddenly starts to make sense, as does overrun, bulls-rush, charging and any area of affect spell.
Our regular campaign group includes 3 rules lawyers, an aerospace engineer and a HR rep. Using m,ini's has significantly reduced the number of rules debates we have and has speed up combat by nearly 50%.
Drusilla: she's dual boot, so a tiny bit schizophrenic, Sometimes she seems to just go off and do her own thing - though that could be caused by another user, and getting a bit quirky now that's she's about 3 years old...
True Story: The first time I ever logged into a Solaris box it set off a security alert.
The department I was in at University had contracted the engineering department to provide a CAD course for us, using their new suite of Solaris workstations. A friend enrolled in the engineering dept had heard about this and tried to send me an email to greet me when I logged in the first time. However, when they set up the accounts for us they didn't activate mail for some reason, so when I logged in, somehow (I cannot figure this out even today) it triggered an attempt to breach the network security.
As my first networked computer experience it left a lot to be desired. My first WINTEL experience was trying to write essays in WordStar in '87, is it any wonder I'm a Mac enthusiast...
We bought an iTrip and spend so much time channel surfing to get a strong signal that I am now looking into getting the stereo in the car upgraded to get an audio in port.
The available frequencies are typically used for community/tourist radio in Australia.
Couple that with Apple simultaneously experiencing the debarcle which was Mac OS 7.5 - the least stable and most bug ridden version of the Mac OS ever AND the hardware flaws in the Performa 52XX/62XX and PowerBook 190/5300.
7.5 smacked of being rushed to release to beat the launch of Win'95, it had numerous updates and patches released, most of them had to be applied cumulatively in the correct order. After the trim stability of 7.1 it put a lot of people off Macs, despite the raft of new features it promised.
The Performa's had a number of issues, from faulty cache cards causing hardware bombs, the 52XX family had faulty monitor cables (an impurity batch fault with the actual cable), the PC cards complicated the issue, as did the requirement for new style matched RAM.
The Powerbooks had screen and casing issues, and I recall something about a power board in the 5300 - but it's quite awhile ago now and I can't remember the details.
Working as a service technician in Australia, I must have personally reshelled several hundred PowerBooks from that era - could do one in about 20 minutes. The best speed I ever got for the WallStreet inverter cable fault was about 15 minutes because of all the dicking around with the shielding.
Personally, I believe it was a combination of these botched product rollouts and the proliferation of models from this era that caused Apple to lose so much market share - much more than the launch of W95 - a stable product base at that time would have done wonders for Apple's bottom line.
The Newton still has users today.
You've obviously never had to pry a cold dead Newton from the fingers of a distraught Newton user to send it off for repairs. The Newton doesn't have users, it has addicts.
I have a 40 Gb iPod, my husband has a 30Gb iPod - reason, he demands instant gratification, so he got his first, because I had to wait - I got the bigger one cheaper...:)
Slashdot Mirror
While my first reaction to most new Apple hardware is :I can't wait to get the casing off that baby., I was until recently fully certified to do so.
There are plenty of people in this world who don't have the common sense to know that if they pull the thing apart and damage it they're not covered. My favourite to date was a guy who brought in a PB180 (long time ago) with it's power adaptor claiming repair under warranty. He had cut the transformer off the end of the cable and attached a standard 3-pin plug because "the big block was too difficult to plug in" and run 240V straight into his brand new powerbook.
Never underestimate the ability of people to overestimate their abilities
Umm... I suspect that if an item is sold as a "sealed unit" item that you would find that warranty is voided if you open the case. It is not uncommon for certain items to be designated CRU (customer replaceable units) - for example in your laser printer, the toner cartridge is a CRU but the fuser assembly probably isn't. Pulling out the fuser and taking it to HP and saying you want it fixed under warranty is probably not going to get you very far.
Laptops are designed to very fine tolerances, even experienced computer technicians can have difficulty working with them. I used to be a laptop specialist in a Apple Gold Service Centre in Melbourne (Australia), and would frequently see units come in the had casing damage from being forced, or units that had been reassembled incorrectly. There is a world of difference between working on a desktop unti and a laptop. Desktop computers are designed to be pulled apart and upgraded by the end user, laptops typically aren't, and in some rare cases require special tools to open them or reseal them.
I would check you local statutory regulations regarding "sealed unit" items and warranty before you start pulling it apart and expecting to have warranty coverage.
The compression isn't too bad either, they have zoom from 50% to 200% on all the digtal copiers...
Disclosure: a Xeroid since 2002
While working as an Apple repairer, I once had a Mac SE in for repairs that had a serious heat issue - it would work fine for about 10-15 minutes then cut out. When we opened it up we found about 1.5 inches of fine red sediment had collected in the bottom of the unit, encasing the logic board and causing it to overheat.
When I checked the paperwork which had come with the machine, it became clear that the computer had come from a cattle breeding station in the country.
I was the first computer I had ever seen that was literally drowning in bull dust. I stripped the machine down, cleaned it thoroughly inside and out, and it worked a treat.
Doesn't Microsoft own Symantac? And I mean own in an real $$$ business sense, not a L33T OwN3d your A$$ kinda way.
Kodak Gold CDs - which are the discs which quote 100 year life span, use an inert gold refective substrate, and the dye technology used for the write layer is quite similar to the dyes used for their film stocks. Typically these disc will have a slower maximum burn speed as they need slightly more heat/energy to set to dye state to a 1 or 0.
But Nyarlethotep Invests - ask him how...
Possibly one of my most cherished memories of my first gaming convention was being put into a team of 14 year old boys to play in a "Macho Women with Guns" scenario...
I was in my early 20's, and had shown up that day in a a tank top and biker jacket... at one point in the story, the word condom was mentioned. I got one out of the jacket pocket, blew it up like a balloon and tossed it at the teenage boys.
For the most part they nearly fell off their chairs, I'm not sure which frightened them most - the fact that there was a real 'live' condom being thrown at them, or that the throwing was being done by a woman.
The core rules are available online (http://3point5srd.com/) as part of WotC commitment to the Open Gaming Foundation.
Called the Standard Reference Document (SRD), it contains 98% of the text of the commercial rules books. They have kept as 'closed content' the experience & leveling up rules and certain monsters $ spells.
As far as I can tell, they play "Vampire: the Masquerade" (White Wolf - the World of Darkness) on Aircraft Carriers and Battleships - by comparison, I'd rather they were playing DnD...
Dwarves don't suffer a movement penalty wearing heavy armour under DnD 3.5E - it's a racial bonus...
Geek-GMs-R-Us
And for the record - flanking & attacks of opportunity in 3/3.5 Edition still irritate me.
Try playing using minis and a battlemat - once you do, AOO and flanking suddenly starts to make sense, as does overrun, bulls-rush, charging and any area of affect spell.
Our regular campaign group includes 3 rules lawyers, an aerospace engineer and a HR rep. Using m,ini's has significantly reduced the number of rules debates we have and has speed up combat by nearly 50%.
I wrote a weather generator in excel for the World of Greyhawke, which took into account the altitude, longitude and terrain.
Drusilla: she's dual boot, so a tiny bit schizophrenic, Sometimes she seems to just go off and do her own thing - though that could be caused by another user, and getting a bit quirky now that's she's about 3 years old...
True Story: The first time I ever logged into a Solaris box it set off a security alert.
The department I was in at University had contracted the engineering department to provide a CAD course for us, using their new suite of Solaris workstations. A friend enrolled in the engineering dept had heard about this and tried to send me an email to greet me when I logged in the first time. However, when they set up the accounts for us they didn't activate mail for some reason, so when I logged in, somehow (I cannot figure this out even today) it triggered an attempt to breach the network security.
As my first networked computer experience it left a lot to be desired. My first WINTEL experience was trying to write essays in WordStar in '87, is it any wonder I'm a Mac enthusiast...
We bought an iTrip and spend so much time channel surfing to get a strong signal that I am now looking into getting the stereo in the car upgraded to get an audio in port.
The available frequencies are typically used for community/tourist radio in Australia.
Hey!
I resemble that remark!
White Wolf - been there done that (ex-DST) TSR - got the RPGA membership card for a 'real' gaming experience try D20 Macho Women with Guns! cheers
I work at a company where we have the following "Waynes" on staff:
It's always fun introducing them to new staff members who think we are joking
that's patently absurd...
[killing time until the lameness filter lets me post...]
"And a lot of the stereotypical female geeks look like males."
Excuse me, what?
We're not Dwarves you know.
Perhaps you need to make an appointment to see a optometrist if you can't tell the difference between most men and women.
Exceptionally few of the geek-chicks I know look androgenous, I can only think of one, and she does it on purpose.
just one, but it lasts longer... :P
Couple that with Apple simultaneously experiencing the debarcle which was Mac OS 7.5 - the least stable and most bug ridden version of the Mac OS ever AND the hardware flaws in the Performa 52XX/62XX and PowerBook 190/5300.
7.5 smacked of being rushed to release to beat the launch of Win'95, it had numerous updates and patches released, most of them had to be applied cumulatively in the correct order. After the trim stability of 7.1 it put a lot of people off Macs, despite the raft of new features it promised.
The Performa's had a number of issues, from faulty cache cards causing hardware bombs, the 52XX family had faulty monitor cables (an impurity batch fault with the actual cable), the PC cards complicated the issue, as did the requirement for new style matched RAM.
The Powerbooks had screen and casing issues, and I recall something about a power board in the 5300 - but it's quite awhile ago now and I can't remember the details.
Working as a service technician in Australia, I must have personally reshelled several hundred PowerBooks from that era - could do one in about 20 minutes. The best speed I ever got for the WallStreet inverter cable fault was about 15 minutes because of all the dicking around with the shielding.
Personally, I believe it was a combination of these botched product rollouts and the proliferation of models from this era that caused Apple to lose so much market share - much more than the launch of W95 - a stable product base at that time would have done wonders for Apple's bottom line.
The Newton still has users today. You've obviously never had to pry a cold dead Newton from the fingers of a distraught Newton user to send it off for repairs. The Newton doesn't have users, it has addicts.
I have a 40 Gb iPod, my husband has a 30Gb iPod - reason, he demands instant gratification, so he got his first, because I had to wait - I got the bigger one cheaper... :)