LOL,
I clearly remember the first system I purchased at a big-box store. I had just graduated university and needed a cheap system to do engineering work on. I was on a pretty limited budget so I walked into a big box store, found something that was not pathetic and gave the sales guy a list of upgrades that I wanted. He argued with me for a good 20 minutes that 'nobody needs 512meg of ram'. Finally I walked out and went to the next big box store.
Actually I have been unimpressed with the accuracy of the cell phone based GPS systems. I have a moderately priced stand-alone that can get me within 5 feet of a set of coordinates. Great for geo-caching.
I did several aggressive climbs this summer. My GPS kept the group on target while my cell phone (and integrated GPS) had lost signal about an hour before we arrived at our trail head.
I took a course much like this in 3rd year university (although the course was on Speculative Fiction).
Shelly's Frankenstein, Stanislaw Lem and William Gibson were all covered. Great course but an intense reading schedule for what was taken as a purely interest course.
I actually was on the receiving side of this a couple of years back. I purchased an XBox 360 at Walmart, brought it
home and plugged the darn thing in only to get a 4 red light ring of death.
Contacting Microsoft tech support, they requested the serial number on the back of the box, and informed me that it
had been registered to another user over a year previously. Apparently some $%%hat had returned their old Xbox to the store claiming that it was a return rather than a rip off. After jumping thru the hoops with Walmart, I got a
replacement...but it was pretty annoying...
Actually, the cell phone comment reminds me of once upon a time when an employer decided that they needed an engineer on call 24/7. While most of us just buckled under, one of my co-workers successfully destroyed 2 phones per on call week for about a month or 2 before they relented and stopped bugging us about stuff that couldn't be dealt with until the next day anyways.
Whoops....how could I have left the phone on the drill press while it was in use...my bad:)
Actually, if you loaded the print carriage on a fine enough ball screw, you could probably get the resolution that you needed even with realatively cheap step motors. The real trick is the print head and the materials. We did a lot of work building a CNC 3 axis milling table a few years back and it was amazing the accuracy that we were able to achieve (+-.002"). The technology for the gantry that carries the print head is here, its a matter of materials and delivery.
Interestingly enough, and I have not seen anyone post on this issue yet....Autodesk has a subscription package fee applied to your license as well. Once you have purchased the software from them, you are given the option to purchase a subscription (just over a thousand bucks a year) that entitles you to service packs and upgrades for the next 12 months. If you don't purchase said subscription your upgrades cost you a significant portion of the full package price.
Really, they are not loosing anything in second hand sales, as pretty much you are required to get a subscription to keep your software current.
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LOL, I clearly remember the first system I purchased at a big-box store. I had just graduated university and needed a cheap system to do engineering work on. I was on a pretty limited budget so I walked into a big box store, found something that was not pathetic and gave the sales guy a list of upgrades that I wanted. He argued with me for a good 20 minutes that 'nobody needs 512meg of ram'. Finally I walked out and went to the next big box store.
Hey...I suspect the level of conversation around here might improve if peoples brains were involved in the typing process :)
Actually I have been unimpressed with the accuracy of the cell phone based GPS systems. I have a moderately priced stand-alone that can get me within 5 feet of a set of coordinates. Great for geo-caching. I did several aggressive climbs this summer. My GPS kept the group on target while my cell phone (and integrated GPS) had lost signal about an hour before we arrived at our trail head.
I took a course much like this in 3rd year university (although the course was on Speculative Fiction). Shelly's Frankenstein, Stanislaw Lem and William Gibson were all covered. Great course but an intense reading schedule for what was taken as a purely interest course.
I actually was on the receiving side of this a couple of years back. I purchased an XBox 360 at Walmart, brought it home and plugged the darn thing in only to get a 4 red light ring of death. Contacting Microsoft tech support, they requested the serial number on the back of the box, and informed me that it had been registered to another user over a year previously. Apparently some $%%hat had returned their old Xbox to the store claiming that it was a return rather than a rip off. After jumping thru the hoops with Walmart, I got a replacement...but it was pretty annoying...
Actually, the cell phone comment reminds me of once upon a time when an employer decided that they needed an engineer on call 24/7. While most of us just buckled under, one of my co-workers successfully destroyed 2 phones per on call week for about a month or 2 before they relented and stopped bugging us about stuff that couldn't be dealt with until the next day anyways. Whoops....how could I have left the phone on the drill press while it was in use...my bad :)
Actually, if you loaded the print carriage on a fine enough ball screw, you could probably get the resolution that you needed even with realatively cheap step motors. The real trick is the print head and the materials. We did a lot of work building a CNC 3 axis milling table a few years back and it was amazing the accuracy that we were able to achieve (+-.002"). The technology for the gantry that carries the print head is here, its a matter of materials and delivery.
Interestingly enough, and I have not seen anyone post on this issue yet....Autodesk has a subscription package fee applied to your license as well. Once you have purchased the software from them, you are given the option to purchase a subscription (just over a thousand bucks a year) that entitles you to service packs and upgrades for the next 12 months. If you don't purchase said subscription your upgrades cost you a significant portion of the full package price. Really, they are not loosing anything in second hand sales, as pretty much you are required to get a subscription to keep your software current.
I have a tin foil hat...