My current tabs are gmail,/., Yahoo Calendar (because it looks like I'm orginized,) 5 google searches, and 2 remote desktops. I should be using the remote desktops and not posting this. Oh well, such is life!
Everytime I see a machine come into my store with a Symantec or a McAfee product I recommend a better solution. Running AntiVir or AVG on a machine with either product will almost always produce a large list of positives, even if they are spyware related trojans just waiting to be run to download tons of crap. But then I also recommend and will install Firefox (or another mozilla based browser) on anyones machine. Machines with Firefox tend not to come back broken 2 days later.
This doesn't surprise me in the least with the quality I've experienced with their products. After I recommend another solution, everyone seems to say something about it being recommended at Best Buy/CompUSA. And if the worker there thinks it's good, it must be. Wonder if they get a kick back on Symantec products?
The most common machines we sell are directly through our wholesaler, who WILL honor the warranties even if we aren't around. All our desktops also come with a 3 year warranty, and no one really needs to worry about it. The wholesaler has been around for over 25 years now, and has an excellent tech staff if worse came to worse for us. I like being able to give our customers that added support (they can go to them even if we are around. They might be closer in location or whatever.)
Basically, don't always rule out those ma and pa type stores. Sometimes finding out if their wholesaler also honors their warranty is all it takes. I know we're the expection to the rule, but you never know, and supporting your local economy is always A Good Thing (tm)
Oh, and our prices manage to stay competive even with the big guys. And we include the 3 year no matter what =D
Not going to give my business a plug directly in this text by saying our name, though.
I went through Paypall hell a few years ago. Sold some Powerbooks on EBay I had laying around. I had around 20 of them, mostly from a local business that went under. First they locked my account, saying that notebooks are high risk items, and insisted on seeing receipts for them (mind you, these notebooks aren't even new, and I had them for over a year at this point.) So I finally managed to prove that I did in fact own these notebooks. So after having my account frozen for over 2 weeks, everyones payments flooded in. 3 days later they froze the account (this time for good) and started issueing random refunds, starting at the first customer (so they basically gave everyone that already had a notebook their money back, and the people that I hadn't sent them to yet nothing back.) The reason for the second freeze? An unusual increase in the amount of funds entering the account, which was all caused because they froze the account the first time!
I ended up with no money and no notebooks. I lost a lot of money, and was almost sued by multiple buyers, because Paypal told them to screw off when they asked for their money back. I did the right thing and did send them the notebooks.
Paypal's phone support (hah) is awful. They actually swore at me and hung up on multiple calls.
I am a PC guy more than a Mac guy, that's for sure. I deal mostly with Linux or Windows. I will be buying a Mac Mini. It will be my first Mac ever. I'm absolutely in love with the size of it. And I understand that it's not going to compete with a G5, but for what my needs are it is absolutely perfect. It will be a second machine behind my Athlon 64, but I have a feeling I will be using it more for general web surfing and all those fun things.
Oh, and what's the big thing with the one button mouse!? I'm so used to a 2 button with a scroll wheel, and it takes about 15 seconds to adjust to only one button. Not like control is that far away (and the Apple mice and keyboards are really elegent looking.)
Hopefully soon I'll be posting as a happy Mac and PC user.
I recently just bought a large projection tv for my main set. Yes, it could get burn in, but we flip so much or just watch movies. For the rest of the tvs in the house, I went with small (17-20 inch) LCDs. My favorite is my 17" Samsung. Perfect bedroom size, and it's HD.
The large projection TV seemed like the best bet. It cost a fraction of what a nice LCD would have, is larger, and I can change the bulbs out myself if need be. And HD to boot. I never even really watched TV until buying a 51" tv. Hell, I even had cable installed for the first time ever.
Slashdot is the only page that every gives me trouble with Firefox, which I find amusing considering it seems to be the topic of every other article here.
I also own a PC Repair shop and see the same exact situations. Year old tech, built in Intel/Sis video, and they were sold the machine as "gaming ready" while the poor thing is having problems with running just Windows. Many of these machines only have 128 megs RAM. And it's even more fun explaining to these people what an AGP slot is, and why their computer will never be what they want it to be because of the lack of one inside their box.
My PC repair shop almost does nothing else BUT remove spyware for people. I run a combination of Ad-Aware, Spybot, CWShredder, and Spysweeper at first to try and get the machine half way usable. Then I end up going in with HijackThis, using regedit, and sometimes even ERD Commander. The automated programs maybe remove 60%-70% of the spyware on some of the machines I get in. These machines are also so infected that you can't even log into Windows anymore.
I recommend Firefox to all my customers, and also that they need to change their surfing habits to not install every damn program they see. Usually it's the kids that mess the machine up again bad enough to be brought in.
My home machine is a Athlon 64 3200+ running on an MSI board with the VIA KT800 Chipset. I've had nothing but amazing luck with it, under XP and Fedora. But it seems anytime I deal with the nForce with the 64 chips, I see nothing but stupid problems. Mind you, these are computers brought into my shop, and many times they have low rated motherboards (usually home builds from friends and family who knew enough to make it tick, but not enough to make it tick properly.) On the other hand, they seem okay with the XP/Semperon chips. I just prefer a particular MSI board here that happens to be VIA for them.
I've worked with the nForce chipsets before, but for my AMD needs I still prefer VIA. And on the Intel side, it'll take me a lot to sway away from Intel boards with the Intel chipsets. I'm mostly working with Windows machines on the Intel side, and the Intel chipset has never given me an issue, unlike SIS and even Via.
The average machine going out of my shop is going into a home with no real PC experience. I have to worry more about spyware than maybe some odd chipset incompatibility.
I purchased a AGP 6800 for my gaming box, and haven't been disappointed yet. I haven't tried it under RedHat yet, I'm still trying to decide if I want to upgrade to FC3 or not. As long as it plays UT 2004 with everything cranked under XP and RedHat, I'll be a happy camper.
I'd love to pick up a PCI Express based motherboard, but still nothing out for my 64 yet.
My largest question regarding this would be the quality of the video. I've seen way too many downloaded clips with offset audio or super grainy video. Why would I want to pay money, be it a nominal fee, to wait hours to get crappy video. And the fact that it may or may not be a DVR. As a DVR, it may well be worth the purchase, when you figure in the extra content.
Everyone needs to keep on Nintendo to get rid of all these horrible pirated copies. Then I can take over the local mall's kiosk and start selling my high quality game systems. I will be selling the Minisoft Y-Box, the Suny Playerstation, and the Newtendo GameSquare. All will be priced at a low low LOW $79.99 per system and only $19.99 per game!
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to purchase this rock.
My current tabs are gmail, /., Yahoo Calendar (because it looks like I'm orginized,) 5 google searches, and 2 remote desktops. I should be using the remote desktops and not posting this. Oh well, such is life!
Everytime I see a machine come into my store with a Symantec or a McAfee product I recommend a better solution. Running AntiVir or AVG on a machine with either product will almost always produce a large list of positives, even if they are spyware related trojans just waiting to be run to download tons of crap. But then I also recommend and will install Firefox (or another mozilla based browser) on anyones machine. Machines with Firefox tend not to come back broken 2 days later.
This doesn't surprise me in the least with the quality I've experienced with their products. After I recommend another solution, everyone seems to say something about it being recommended at Best Buy/CompUSA. And if the worker there thinks it's good, it must be. Wonder if they get a kick back on Symantec products?
You're probably not using official Google Ink. It's only available by invite currently, though, and I already used all mine up.
The most common machines we sell are directly through our wholesaler, who WILL honor the warranties even if we aren't around. All our desktops also come with a 3 year warranty, and no one really needs to worry about it. The wholesaler has been around for over 25 years now, and has an excellent tech staff if worse came to worse for us. I like being able to give our customers that added support (they can go to them even if we are around. They might be closer in location or whatever.)
Basically, don't always rule out those ma and pa type stores. Sometimes finding out if their wholesaler also honors their warranty is all it takes. I know we're the expection to the rule, but you never know, and supporting your local economy is always A Good Thing (tm)
Oh, and our prices manage to stay competive even with the big guys. And we include the 3 year no matter what =D
Not going to give my business a plug directly in this text by saying our name, though.
12 year old's lemonade stand is probably better than the starbucks smoothie. And I think the ant content is about the same.
I went through Paypall hell a few years ago. Sold some Powerbooks on EBay I had laying around. I had around 20 of them, mostly from a local business that went under. First they locked my account, saying that notebooks are high risk items, and insisted on seeing receipts for them (mind you, these notebooks aren't even new, and I had them for over a year at this point.) So I finally managed to prove that I did in fact own these notebooks. So after having my account frozen for over 2 weeks, everyones payments flooded in. 3 days later they froze the account (this time for good) and started issueing random refunds, starting at the first customer (so they basically gave everyone that already had a notebook their money back, and the people that I hadn't sent them to yet nothing back.) The reason for the second freeze? An unusual increase in the amount of funds entering the account, which was all caused because they froze the account the first time!
I ended up with no money and no notebooks. I lost a lot of money, and was almost sued by multiple buyers, because Paypal told them to screw off when they asked for their money back. I did the right thing and did send them the notebooks.
Paypal's phone support (hah) is awful. They actually swore at me and hung up on multiple calls.
I am a PC guy more than a Mac guy, that's for sure. I deal mostly with Linux or Windows. I will be buying a Mac Mini. It will be my first Mac ever. I'm absolutely in love with the size of it. And I understand that it's not going to compete with a G5, but for what my needs are it is absolutely perfect. It will be a second machine behind my Athlon 64, but I have a feeling I will be using it more for general web surfing and all those fun things.
Oh, and what's the big thing with the one button mouse!? I'm so used to a 2 button with a scroll wheel, and it takes about 15 seconds to adjust to only one button. Not like control is that far away (and the Apple mice and keyboards are really elegent looking.)
Hopefully soon I'll be posting as a happy Mac and PC user.
I recently just bought a large projection tv for my main set. Yes, it could get burn in, but we flip so much or just watch movies. For the rest of the tvs in the house, I went with small (17-20 inch) LCDs. My favorite is my 17" Samsung. Perfect bedroom size, and it's HD.
The large projection TV seemed like the best bet. It cost a fraction of what a nice LCD would have, is larger, and I can change the bulbs out myself if need be. And HD to boot. I never even really watched TV until buying a 51" tv. Hell, I even had cable installed for the first time ever.
Slashdot is the only page that every gives me trouble with Firefox, which I find amusing considering it seems to be the topic of every other article here.
I also own a PC Repair shop and see the same exact situations. Year old tech, built in Intel/Sis video, and they were sold the machine as "gaming ready" while the poor thing is having problems with running just Windows. Many of these machines only have 128 megs RAM. And it's even more fun explaining to these people what an AGP slot is, and why their computer will never be what they want it to be because of the lack of one inside their box.
My PC repair shop almost does nothing else BUT remove spyware for people. I run a combination of Ad-Aware, Spybot, CWShredder, and Spysweeper at first to try and get the machine half way usable. Then I end up going in with HijackThis, using regedit, and sometimes even ERD Commander. The automated programs maybe remove 60%-70% of the spyware on some of the machines I get in. These machines are also so infected that you can't even log into Windows anymore.
I recommend Firefox to all my customers, and also that they need to change their surfing habits to not install every damn program they see. Usually it's the kids that mess the machine up again bad enough to be brought in.
My home machine is a Athlon 64 3200+ running on an MSI board with the VIA KT800 Chipset. I've had nothing but amazing luck with it, under XP and Fedora. But it seems anytime I deal with the nForce with the 64 chips, I see nothing but stupid problems. Mind you, these are computers brought into my shop, and many times they have low rated motherboards (usually home builds from friends and family who knew enough to make it tick, but not enough to make it tick properly.) On the other hand, they seem okay with the XP/Semperon chips. I just prefer a particular MSI board here that happens to be VIA for them.
I've worked with the nForce chipsets before, but for my AMD needs I still prefer VIA. And on the Intel side, it'll take me a lot to sway away from Intel boards with the Intel chipsets. I'm mostly working with Windows machines on the Intel side, and the Intel chipset has never given me an issue, unlike SIS and even Via.
The average machine going out of my shop is going into a home with no real PC experience. I have to worry more about spyware than maybe some odd chipset incompatibility.
It's only camping after the sniper bullets tears through you for some reason, though.
I purchased a AGP 6800 for my gaming box, and haven't been disappointed yet. I haven't tried it under RedHat yet, I'm still trying to decide if I want to upgrade to FC3 or not. As long as it plays UT 2004 with everything cranked under XP and RedHat, I'll be a happy camper. I'd love to pick up a PCI Express based motherboard, but still nothing out for my 64 yet.
My largest question regarding this would be the quality of the video. I've seen way too many downloaded clips with offset audio or super grainy video. Why would I want to pay money, be it a nominal fee, to wait hours to get crappy video. And the fact that it may or may not be a DVR. As a DVR, it may well be worth the purchase, when you figure in the extra content.
Everyone needs to keep on Nintendo to get rid of all these horrible pirated copies. Then I can take over the local mall's kiosk and start selling my high quality game systems. I will be selling the Minisoft Y-Box, the Suny Playerstation, and the Newtendo GameSquare. All will be priced at a low low LOW $79.99 per system and only $19.99 per game!