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Hey, check it out. On the front page of the latest Insight UK catalogue,
it says that for £200 I can get a 10-pack of LTO-3 tapes plus a FREE 8MB
USB Flash Drive.
Wow. 8MB. Now I'm wondering if that's a typo, or if they really are
giving away tiny flash drives...
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Elsewhere in the catalogue, I found this:
HP ProLiant DL160 G5p
1x 2.0 GHz Quad-Core Xeon E5405
4GB RAM (16GB max)
4 SATA bays (not hot-swap)
1x 160GB SATA drive
£805
Now I don't know about you, but 8 Xeon cores in a rack-mount server for
£800 doesn't sound too shabby to me... The next thing on the page is
about twice that price! (Although it does have hot-swap bays and a few
percent higher clock speed.)
Some of the HP stuff is expandable up to stupid figures like 144GB RAM.
I have no idea who the hell needs 144GB of RAM, but I'm not one of them
(yet). Most of the desktop systems have 1GB of RAM, which seems a little
tight for running Vista. (A few of the pricey ones have 2GB, but nothing
higher except in "workstations" and "servers".)
Interestingly, almost nothing listed has multiple processors. I guess
that's more a reflection of which products they choose to list in the
catelogue; it's not a complete listing, only a sampling.
Also interesting is that the HP stuff tends to give you by far the most
bang for your buck. Fujistu has a £300 system with a dual-core Pentium
at 1.86 GHz, and then HP does a dual-core Xeon 1.8 GHz for £290. So much
for HP only making over-prived "premium" stuff...
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Invisible wrote:
> HP ProLiant DL160 G5p
> 1x 2.0 GHz Quad-Core Xeon E5405
> 4GB RAM (16GB max)
> 4 SATA bays (not hot-swap)
> 1x 160GB SATA drive
> £805
>
> Now I don't know about you, but 8 Xeon cores in a rack-mount server for
> £800 doesn't sound too shabby to me...
Congratulations. You can't count.
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Invisible wrote:
> Hey, check it out. On the front page of the latest Insight UK catalogue,
> it says that for £200 I can get a 10-pack of LTO-3 tapes plus a FREE 8MB
> USB Flash Drive.
>
> Wow. 8MB. Now I'm wondering if that's a typo, or if they really are
> giving away tiny flash drives...
Ah. On page 200 the offer is repeated, except that this time they claim
it's an 8GB stick.
So yeah, it's a typo.
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Oh my God... £400 for a dot matrix printer?! With USB support??
My mind is blown.
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Invisible wrote:
> Oh my God... £400 for a dot matrix printer?! With USB support??
>
> My mind is blown.
...which is *almost* topped by this:
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition: £175.99
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition: £120.99
In this case, I suspect it's simply supply and demand. Fewer people buy
Basic, so it's more expensive.
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Invisible wrote:
> ...which is *almost* topped by this:
>
> Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition: £175.99
> Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition: £120.99
>
> In this case, I suspect it's simply supply and demand. Fewer people buy
> Basic, so it's more expensive.
Similar weirdness with various M$ products. (E.g., SQL Server for 1 user
is £3,000, but for 5 users it's £600. Server 2008 is cheaper *with*
Hyper-V than without it. And so on.)
Man, it's weird out there...
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Invisible wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>
>> HP ProLiant DL160 G5p
>> 1x 2.0 GHz Quad-Core Xeon E5405
>> 4GB RAM (16GB max)
>> 4 SATA bays (not hot-swap)
>> 1x 160GB SATA drive
>> £805
>>
>> Now I don't know about you, but 8 Xeon cores in a rack-mount server
>> for £800 doesn't sound too shabby to me...
>
> Congratulations. You can't count.
Talking to oneself is generally the first sign of insanity.
--
~Mike
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>> Congratulations. You can't count.
>
> Talking to oneself is generally the first sign of insanity.
...or just having really, really few other people to talk to?
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Invisible schrieb:
>>> Congratulations. You can't count.
>>
>> Talking to oneself is generally the first sign of insanity.
>
> ...or just having really, really few other people to talk to?
I wonder whether there's any difference.
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>>> Talking to oneself is generally the first sign of insanity.
>>
>> ...or just having really, really few other people to talk to?
>
> I wonder whether there's any difference.
You're not mixing up cause and effect now, are you? :-P
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Invisible wrote:
> (Although it does have hot-swap bays and a few
> percent higher clock speed.)
I would like to remind all advertisers that "hot-swap" does not mean "you
don't have to unrack the server to change the drive." Thank you.
> I have no idea who the hell needs 144GB of RAM, but I'm not one of them
People holding the entire database in RAM.
> Also interesting is that the HP stuff tends to give you by far the most
> bang for your buck.
On the occasions that it works, yes. Until it falls apart.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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"Get ready for Windows 7. Pre-order your copy NOW!"
WTF? Last time I heard, Windows 7 is still theoretical. It won't be
released for a decade.
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>> (Although it does have hot-swap bays and a few percent higher clock
>> speed.)
>
> I would like to remind all advertisers that "hot-swap" does not mean
> "you don't have to unrack the server to change the drive." Thank you.
Both servers have drive bays at the front that you can easily pull the
drives out of. But only one is marked as "hot-swap". I'm presuming that
means one has to be turned off before you pull drives. (Although
*obviously* if I were going to actually reach into my pocket, I'd check
first...)
>> I have no idea who the hell needs 144GB of RAM, but I'm not one of them
>
> People holding the entire database in RAM.
Why in the name of God would you do that? And who has a database that
big anyway??
>> Also interesting is that the HP stuff tends to give you by far the
>> most bang for your buck.
>
> On the occasions that it works, yes. Until it falls apart.
I don't follow.
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Invisible wrote:
> "Get ready for Windows 7. Pre-order your copy NOW!"
>
> WTF? Last time I heard, Windows 7 is still theoretical. It won't be
> released for a decade.
You really need to read something other than porn and Haskell blogs online.
For that matter, why would you even post something like this without at
least looking it up with a simple google hit?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Invisible wrote:
> But only one is marked as "hot-swap". I'm presuming that
> means one has to be turned off before you pull drives.
Two points:
One, it's probably labeled however the drive manufacturer labeled it. It's
not like HP makes disk drives.
Two, even if you can pull the drive in and out without turning off the
power, if the electronics don't let you reinitialize the bus, you're still
screwed. Guess what's true about SATA?
>> People holding the entire database in RAM.
> Why in the name of God would you do that?
Speed.
> And who has a database that big anyway??
Wall Street. AT&T. British telecom. Heck, twitter's db is probably an order
of magnitude bigger than that.
Hell, AT&T has seven large databases, the biggest of which is something like
330 terabytes.
>>> Also interesting is that the HP stuff tends to give you by far the
>>> most bang for your buck.
>>
>> On the occasions that it works, yes. Until it falls apart.
>
> I don't follow.
HP *computers* are generally pretty crappy. HP test equipment is good, but
the computers themselves are just assembled from whatever cheap parts they
can buy.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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>> "Get ready for Windows 7. Pre-order your copy NOW!"
>>
>> WTF? Last time I heard, Windows 7 is still theoretical. It won't be
>> released for a decade.
>
> You really need to read something other than porn and Haskell blogs online.
Who the hell *reads* porn?
(For that matter, who reads Haskell blogs apart from me? Yes, I knew
somebody would throw this one in...)
> For that matter, why would you even post something like this without at
> least looking it up with a simple google hit?
Given that it took MS something like 8 years to produce Vista, and
almost nobody has upgraded to *that* yet, I'd be rather surprised if
Windows 7 turns up any time soon, that's all.
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>> But only one is marked as "hot-swap". I'm presuming that means one has
>> to be turned off before you pull drives.
>
> Two points:
>
> One, it's probably labeled however the drive manufacturer labeled it.
> It's not like HP makes disk drives.
Really? So what's the deal with the full-page "HP original HDs" listing
then?
> Two, even if you can pull the drive in and out without turning off the
> power, if the electronics don't let you reinitialize the bus, you're
> still screwed. Guess what's true about SATA?
And let us not forget the software of course... But yeah, there's a
whole heap of components that need to support this. I presume that
people who design and build servers know a tad more about this than I do.
>>> People holding the entire database in RAM.
>> Why in the name of God would you do that?
>
> Speed.
Pretty damned expensive though, don't you think? You'd have to be, like,
*really* desperate for speed to go to such lengths.
>> And who has a database that big anyway??
>
> Wall Street. AT&T. British telecom. Heck, twitter's db is probably an
> order of magnitude bigger than that.
I doubt they're going to buy an off-the-shelf HP out of a catelogue.
Presumably they have an entire datacenter full of custom hardware to run
that stuff.
Still doesn't explain what your "average" customer is going to want this
for.
> HP *computers* are generally pretty crappy. HP test equipment is good,
> but the computers themselves are just assembled from whatever cheap
> parts they can buy.
Oh. Really? I haven't had any problems - but then, I haven't used them
much, so...
All our printers are HP, and they seem to work quite well. (Unless some
skinflint decides to put a SOHO printer in a busy office... no surprises
that that doesn't work.)
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Invisible wrote:
> Really? So what's the deal with the full-page "HP original HDs" listing
> then?
Dunno. Maybe they make some of the parts. There's only like two factories in
the world that make ram chips, for example.
> And let us not forget the software of course...
That too.
> Pretty damned expensive though, don't you think? You'd have to be, like,
> *really* desperate for speed to go to such lengths.
Not especially expensive, no. Just from a quick calculation, it's about
$2000 for that much fast RAM here. If that lets you make financial trades
that save you $100K/year, why wouldn't you?
> I doubt they're going to buy an off-the-shelf HP out of a catelogue.
> Presumably they have an entire datacenter full of custom hardware to run
> that stuff.
Sure.
> Still doesn't explain what your "average" customer is going to want this
> for.
For anything between a 5GB database and a 300terabyte database. :-)
> All our printers are HP, and they seem to work quite well.
The printers are good, yes.
Actually, like all such companies, the quality fluctuates with the amount of
bad press they get.
> (Unless some
> skinflint decides to put a SOHO printer in a busy office... no surprises
> that that doesn't work.)
Exactly. By the time you move up to the HP machines that are reliable enough
to run a business on, you're spending more than the competition.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Invisible wrote:
> I'd be rather surprised if
> Windows 7 turns up any time soon, that's all.
Wow. Keep digging.
Try this: go to google and type in "Windows 7 download".
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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On 09/14/09 10:40, Darren New wrote:
> HP *computers* are generally pretty crappy. HP test equipment is good,
> but the computers themselves are just assembled from whatever cheap
> parts they can buy.
What test equipment? You're not confusing them with Agilent, are you?
--
I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.
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Invisible wrote:
> Given that it took MS something like 8 years to produce Vista, and
> almost nobody has upgraded to *that* yet, I'd be rather surprised if
> Windows 7 turns up any time soon, that's all.
No, they're releasing Win 7 quickly to fix the horrible, horrible
abortion that was Vista.
FWIW, I like Vista.
Speaking of....
I have essentially bricked a Vista machine. I installed drivers for a
Keningston wireless keyboard and mouse. Now it won't recognise that, or
even a basic mouse or keyboard.
Aside from wiping the hard drive and reinstalling, is there anything I
can do to recover?
--
~Mike
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Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 09/14/09 10:40, Darren New wrote:
>> HP *computers* are generally pretty crappy. HP test equipment is good,
>> but the computers themselves are just assembled from whatever cheap
>> parts they can buy.
>
> What test equipment? You're not confusing them with Agilent, are you?
They probably sold that division since last I looked. HP test equipment used
to be up there with tektronics.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Aside from wiping the hard drive and reinstalling, is there anything I
> can do to recover?
Three things to try:
1) Plug in a USB and/or PS-2 keyboard. Also, make sure "legacy USB" is
turned on in the BIOS - that apparently means "recognise USB keyboards and
map them to something the boot sequence understands without drivers".
2) Boot the install CD and see if the command line will let you turn off the
service that's blocking you or whatever it is.
3) Restore from backups. You *do* have backups, don't you, silly boy? :-)
I usually take an image backup before I do anything that might keep me from
booting the machine. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>> Aside from wiping the hard drive and reinstalling, is there anything I
>> can do to recover?
>
> Three things to try:
> 1) Plug in a USB and/or PS-2 keyboard. Also, make sure "legacy USB" is
> turned on in the BIOS - that apparently means "recognise USB keyboards
> and map them to something the boot sequence understands without drivers".
Tried that ... Keyboard is recognized until Windows boots...
Someone suggested a PS/2 keyboard. I'll give that a shot, next.
> 2) Boot the install CD and see if the command line will let you turn off
> the service that's blocking you or whatever it is.
Yeah, I need to see if that will work.
> 3) Restore from backups. You *do* have backups, don't you, silly boy? :-)
Not for this machine, no. Just installed software. No real data, but it
would be a minor inconvenience to have to reinstall windows.
> I usually take an image backup before I do anything that might keep me
> from booting the machine. :-)
Yeah, who would have thought some utility for a keyboard/mouse would
kill a machine ;)
What would be nice is if I could go back to a restore point w/o loading
the offending driver.
--
~Mike
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On 09/14/09 12:29, Darren New wrote:
>> What test equipment? You're not confusing them with Agilent, are you?
>
> They probably sold that division since last I looked. HP test equipment
> used to be up there with tektronics.
It's been a long time - about a decade, I think. HP split into HP &
Agilent. All the test/lab equipment went to Agilent. HP kept the
computer stuff.
Essentially, isn't that how HP got started? With test/lab equipment and
not computers? I know in the early years of Agilent, they'd go around
telling everyone that they took the true HP with them.
--
I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition: £175.99
> Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition: £120.99
> In this case, I suspect it's simply supply and demand. Fewer people buy
> Basic, so it's more expensive.
Wouldn't it be the other way around? If there's no demand, the price gets
lowered.
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> For that matter, why would you even post something like this without at
> least looking it up with a simple google hit?
Are you really surprised by that at this point?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
>
> Are you really surprised by that at this point?
>
It is what the mascot is famous for, after all..
--
~Mike
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Am Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:41:10 +0100 schrieb Invisible:
>
> Some of the HP stuff is expandable up to stupid figures like 144GB RAM.
> I have no idea who the hell needs 144GB of RAM,
I'm one of those. And soon I will get such a machine for work. (If anyone
wonders: I'm working in theoretical physics (soft matter) and need those
RAM to store basically 3d density profiles - and calculate them, which is
why it wouldn't be feasible to store them on a harddisk).
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Neeum Zawan wrote:
> Essentially, isn't that how HP got started?
Yes. Then they bought Compaq. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Not for this machine, no. Just installed software. No real data, but it
> would be a minor inconvenience to have to reinstall windows.
Well, that's a good time to screw things up. :-)
> Yeah, who would have thought some utility for a keyboard/mouse would
> kill a machine ;)
It didn't. It just killed all your interfaces to it.
You could also try to RDP into it and uninstall the driver.
> What would be nice is if I could go back to a restore point w/o loading
> the offending driver.
If you *have* a restore point, you can do that from the boot CD on Vista.
Give that a try first, even.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> Are you really surprised by that at this point?
No. I'm just hoping it sinks in at some point. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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On 09/14/09 16:14, Darren New wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>> Essentially, isn't that how HP got started?
>
> Yes. Then they bought Compaq. :-)
But that was after the split...
--
I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.
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>> One, it's probably labeled however the drive manufacturer labeled it.
>> It's not like HP makes disk drives.
>
> Really? So what's the deal with the full-page "HP original HDs" listing
> then?
It probably means it's the ones that HP have bought and had labelled as
being "HP" (and perhaps agreed some slighty different specs). Like a "Dell
original battery" is most certainly not made by Dell.
Wikipedia tells me this:
"The technological resources and know-how required for modern drive
development and production mean that as of 2009, virtually all of the
world's HDDs are manufactured by just five large companies: Seagate, Western
Digital, Hitachi (which owns the former disk manufacturing division of IBM),
Samsung, and Toshiba."
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>> Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition: £175.99
>> Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition: £120.99
>
>> In this case, I suspect it's simply supply and demand. Fewer people buy
>> Basic, so it's more expensive.
>
> Wouldn't it be the other way around? If there's no demand, the price gets
> lowered.
Mmm, that's an interesting point.
Does the price go down because there's less demand? Or does the price go
up because it costs more to manufacture and stock an item that not many
people buy?
If we were talking about, say, a car, the price would probably go up if
the car was unpopular, because it costs a hell of a lot to design and
build those things. But software? Hmm...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> You could also try to RDP into it and uninstall the driver.
This would be my suggestion, yes. [Assuming it's enabled, of course...]
If it isn't, System Internals have a tool to remotely execute programs.
But I don't suppose you happen to know the absolute path to the
uninstaller. ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>>> One, it's probably labeled however the drive manufacturer labeled it.
>>> It's not like HP makes disk drives.
>>
>> Really? So what's the deal with the full-page "HP original HDs"
>> listing then?
>
> It probably means it's the ones that HP have bought and had labelled as
> being "HP" (and perhaps agreed some slighty different specs). Like a
> "Dell original battery" is most certainly not made by Dell.
Probably means you have to buy it from HP to not void your warranty. ;-)
> Wikipedia tells me this:
>
> "The technological resources and know-how required for modern drive
> development and production mean that as of 2009, virtually all of the
> world's HDDs are manufactured by just five large companies: Seagate,
> Western Digital, Hitachi (which owns the former disk manufacturing
> division of IBM), Samsung, and Toshiba."
Do you remember off-hand who owns Maxtor now?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>
>> You could also try to RDP into it and uninstall the driver.
>
> This would be my suggestion, yes. [Assuming it's enabled, of course...]
Alternately, figure out what you need to change in the system or what the
name of the executable is, remote mount the registry and/or disk drive, and
manually rename and/or delete the files it uses to start up.
There are lots of solutions better than starting from scratch, if you have
data you want to keep.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New wrote:
> They probably sold that division since last I looked. HP test equipment
> used to be up there with tektronics.
Tektronics now owned by Xerox it appears...
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