Mike Raiford wrote:
> Sure, flash drives work easily enough, but any other piece of hardware
> usually requires you follow a specific sequence before you even plug the
> device in. Otherwise, Windows (not sure how this works on other
> platforms) will do magically bad things, such as install a persistent
> incorrect driver that takes several steps and a few sacrificed chickens
> to remove.

Yes, that IS a Windows-feature. And yes, the hw-support is still much
better in Windows (more drivers), even though it has its problems.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Invisible wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/

>>
>> You can get a Dell with stuff like that for $3000. It's not *that* 
>> expensive. You can get a 4T hard drive case for like $250 or something 
>> (without the 4T of drives, of course).
> 
> Oh, "only" $3,000. Bargin. ;-)

Well, the $3000 covers dual power supplies, hardware raid, dual giabit 
ethernet, rack-mount, a year of Linux support from Novel, dual SATA 500G 
hard drives, 16G of RAM, four dual-core 2.<mumble> CPUs...

Yeah, not too bad.

It's not your desktop machine, no, but $3000 isn't a whole lot for a 
company. You can apparently lease them from Dell for <$50/month. Which 
is like one good person's salary for an hour, counting taxes and 
expenses and such the employer has to pay.

You can't look at stuff you run a business on and say "Wow, that's 
expensive for a desktop", any more than you can look at a bus and say 
"Wow, that costs way too much for something to commute to work in."

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Yes, that IS a Windows-feature. 

Yeah. It sucks to give MS a driver for your hardware to be distributed 
on the OS install disks, only to find out it doesn't actually work. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:32:02 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>> You can get a Dell with stuff like that for $3000. It's not *that*
>> expensive. You can get a 4T hard drive case for like $250 or something
>> (without the 4T of drives, of course).
> 
> Oh, "only" $3,000. Bargin. ;-)

I remember spending $12,000 on two 486 systems.  Compaq Prosignia servers.

I still have them in the basement, in fact.  No, they weren't bought by a 
business - I spent my own money on them (in fairness, an advance on a 
book I wrote back in the early 90's, plus a little of my own money).

Jim

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In article <47a8a92a$1@news.povray.org>, voi### [at] devnull says...
> Mike Raiford wrote:
> 
> > Sure, flash drives work easily enough, but any other piece of hardware
 
> > usually requires you follow a specific sequence before you even plug th
e 
> > device in. Otherwise, Windows (not sure how this works on other 
> > platforms) will do magically bad things, such as install a persistent
 
> > incorrect driver that takes several steps and a few sacrificed chickens
 
> > to remove.
> 
> Clearly I don't have enough USB gear - I haven't had that problem. 
> (Although something similar happened with a SCSI tape drive. But then, 
> it's a SCSI tape drive...)
> 
> Not that anybody cares, but I have an outboard USB sound card, USB MIDI
 
> interface, USB printer and a USB mouse. The mouse keeps not working... 
> everything else works flawlessly.
> 
Its mostly low end, 'cheapy', stuff in my experience. Like the 
inexpensive camera which a) didn't support **any** method to read its 
memory as a HD, under *any* OS, and b) would suffer a massive memory 
wipe if you *didn't* first install the drivers for it. Frankly, I wasn't 
real impressed with the HDSD reader I got free with the 4GB card... 
Stupid thing *acts* like its running through like USB v0.01 alpha or 
something.. It doesn't read anything, including non-SD at a normal speed 
and when trying to transfer large files (you know, anything bigger than 
about 100MB...) it actually crashes. Most stuff works fine. Most stuff 
designed by companies that have a clue work more or less OK without 
extra drivers, but the drivers are needed for more than just reading the 
internal memory. Then there are things like the v262 Motorola phone, 
which their driver/transfer software didn't support out of the box, 
needed two major patches to work, can't be accessed as a HD at all, and 
tended to frell the XP machine you installed the driver on for *all* 
phones, if something went wrong with XP SP2 and the driver, who didn't 
like each other much.

Yeah, most stuff works OK, once you do the disc switch shuffle, but some 
stuff.... Nothing short of an act of the FSM will get working acceptably 
(or maybe a sacrificed chicken).

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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>> Oh, "only" $3,000. Bargin. ;-)
> 
> Well, the $3000 covers dual power supplies, hardware raid, dual giabit 
> ethernet, rack-mount, a year of Linux support from Novel, dual SATA 500G 
> hard drives, 16G of RAM, four dual-core 2.<mumble> CPUs...
> 
> Yeah, not too bad.

That's actually quite good.


it doesn't have half that stuff.

OTOH, Phil was complaining that you can't buy desktop machines that slot 
together like lego. And I countered that you *can* buy such equipment, 
it's just far too expensive to use as a desktop. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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And lo on Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:57:38 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

>>> Oh, "only" $3,000. Bargin. ;-)
>>  Well, the $3000 covers dual power supplies, hardware raid, dual giabit  
>> ethernet, rack-mount, a year of Linux support from Novel, dual SATA  
>> 500G hard drives, 16G of RAM, four dual-core 2.<mumble> CPUs...
>>  Yeah, not too bad.
>
> That's actually quite good.
>

> it doesn't have half that stuff.
>
> OTOH, Phil was complaining that you can't buy desktop machines that slot  
> together like lego. And I countered that you *can* buy such equipment,  
> it's just far too expensive to use as a desktop. ;-)

Succinctly put thank you. The whole thing is why hasn't the slot-together  
style reached down into the standard market, and if it did how would that  
affect 'normal' users' computer buying patterns. Instead of buying an  
entire new computer would they instead opt to upgrade the old one because  
it's a piece of cake to do.

I mean seriously I've listened to friends talking about upgrading their  
entire computer to get more speed out of a game or something when all they  
need to do is switch the video card (or *to* a video card rather then the  
MB GPU). To them the computer is a lump like a television, opening the  
case doesn't occur to them and I don't think they'd be enthused by what  
they'd find if they did.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Phil Cook wrote:

> Succinctly put thank you. The whole thing is why hasn't the 
> slot-together style reached down into the standard market, and if it did 
> how would that affect 'normal' users' computer buying patterns. Instead 
> of buying an entire new computer would they instead opt to upgrade the 
> old one because it's a piece of cake to do.

Currently manufacturers assume that the only reason you could want to be 
able to replace parts "easily" is because you need to do it fast, and if 
you need to do it fast it must be because you have a "high availability" 
setup. And if that's the case, the cost of downtime dwarfs any hardware 
price you can come up with. These types of people will pay through the 
nose to avoid downtime - and so that's what gets charged.

In fairness, it's much harder to design hardware this way. Current 
hardware is "easy enough" that most people can manage it, and there's no 
real large pressure for that to change.

> I mean seriously I've listened to friends talking about upgrading their 
> entire computer to get more speed out of a game or something when all 
> they need to do is switch the video card (or *to* a video card rather 
> then the MB GPU). To them the computer is a lump like a television, 
> opening the case doesn't occur to them and I don't think they'd be 
> enthused by what they'd find if they did.

Heh. I bet the hardware guys would want to prevent that. ;-)



In fairness, if you want to replace the CPU, you will probably end up 
having to replace virtually the entire PC anyway.

(You'll almost certainly need a new motherboard and new RAM. And 
replacing a motherboard is currently *hard*. So many things to 
disconnect and reconnect. I especially enjoy playing with the header 
pins for the front plate...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Stephen wrote:

> 
> Caps should be shorted out before working. Use a resistor or a bucket of water
> :)
> Drat I can't remember if I lie or tell the truth :)
> 

Yes. A resistor works. Extra fun shorting it with a screwdriver. Causes 
the whole "holy crap! I just vaporized the end of my screwdriver" 
reaction, though. Actually, don't try that one at home... It stresses 
the capacitor, and could irreparably damage it.

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> Yes. A resistor works. Extra fun shorting it with a screwdriver. Causes 
> the whole "holy crap! I just vaporized the end of my screwdriver" 
> reaction, though. Actually, don't try that one at home... It stresses 
> the capacitor, and could irreparably damage it.

I'm sorry, it stresses *the capacitor*?? o_O

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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