Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 8 months ago
    Is this where Lois Lerners drives were stored?
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    • Posted by $ Susanne 9 years, 8 months ago
      I think I saw her blackberry in that pile... OK, now it's a *very* Blackberry....

      Thing is, those MM cords are interchangeable, and I wonder if it was the power supply that overamped the cord, or if it was the cord itself. Were it the cord, I'd check all the MM cords running things like monitors, towers, TV's, etc. in my office, see what else has an LS-15 cord supplying power...

      I know (from experience) their laptop power supplies run hot - to the point it would warp the case on the box said MM cord supplies. Far cry from the days when HP meant quality - I suspect they secretly changed their name from Hewlett-Packard to Home-Pyrotechnics...
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      • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 8 months ago
        Remember Packard Bell?

        Or as I used to refer to them Packaged Hell



        HP's quality for consumer products is not what it once was. Competition in the consumer segment is very fierce and price points of the competition are extremely important.

        Their commercial grade products do not to have slipped as much. Possibly because the commercial segment looks at qualities beyond just the lowest price.
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  • Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 8 months ago
    Workplace hazard!! Working at the IRS can be hazardous to--nah, that won't fly. But again, Lois and her 6 compatriots got away with it, so where's OSHA on this major problem?
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  • Posted by coaldigger 9 years, 8 months ago
    HP does not seem to be the company they used to be. I was an advocate but have become disenchanted. Power cord technology is pretty low grade, don't you think?
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    • Posted by nicktheitguy 9 years, 8 months ago
      At my last company, I worked hard to keep the company standardized on Compaq (the servers were second to none...but you paid a little more). When HP bought Compaq, they kept a lot of the Compaq quality...for a long time. Then they started going downhill. I used to recommend HP to friends and family...I don't anymore. Google for 'DV Death Laptop'...the DV series of laptops, for at least a year or so, had major issues with the motherboards. I recommend Dell now. You can get a smokin' deal using Dell Outlet. Refurbs for a lot less than the price of new, and same great warranty as new.
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      • Posted by $ Susanne 9 years, 8 months ago
        Our office (at the insistence of my boss) switched from HP to Dell - Way more bang for the buck, and a lot higher quality to boot. Desktop runs flawlessly, and he just ordered laptops as well.

        I still remember back when we ran IBM junk (remember when they were good, too?) holding a record of sorts - within the space of 2 years, went through 9 hard drives, 4 mother boards, and 2 laptops. OK, the laptops were my fault - someone put it under a chair leg (WTF??) and I sat on the chair not knowing it was there... but all but one of the hard drives were on the "newer" laptop... they'd blow their bearings, I'd hear it start to go, and it would give me about 20 minutes to try to back everything up. And no one could explain the mother boards - other than perhaps my "electrifying" personality... :-)

        OK, actually... 3 laptops, tho the latest was recently... Had an old Lenovo (*Le Nogo*!) that wouldn't boot (even off a recovery disk) I had in the sidebox of my response rig... the door flopped open on a curve, and it met pavement at 60+. 8~( Strangely enough - after it's "pavement abrasion skid test" it booted - one time - and we were able to transfer my old info (some dating back 4 users) onto my thumb drive.

        Go figure!
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        • Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 8 months ago
          In some ways I wish it was economically practical to build my own laptop as it is for a desktop. OTOH, that would likely mean a higher price because so much tech is packed into them. When they are well designed and built, laptops are an amazing bargain: small, lightweight, use very little power, built in highly legible screen, terrabytes of storage gigabytes of memory, very fast processors and gpus. They really are amazing technology. The first computer I had contact with took up 5000 sq ft, had 96k of memory, and was fed with stacks of punch cards.
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        • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
          I've always been happiest with the computers I assemble myself.

          Right now I've started on a campaign to piece together the first node of a network render farm. It'll be more expensive this way, but I can better quality control the parts, and give performance emphasis on those components most critical. They'll be running a flavor of Linux for the same reason (not sure which distro yet... though I like Mint, personally).

          Makes me think of the scene from "The Good, Bad, and the Ugly" where Tuco is assembling his own pistol from the best parts of others.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPYL8EGO...
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    • Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 8 months ago
      Generally I have read lots of comments of people who agree with nick about HP. My own recent experience has been ok compared to other brands. I had a top of line gateway laptop 4 yr ago; it overheated occasionally under load and gateway wanted more than its cost to fix it. I had an ASUS laptop 2 yr ago; it overheated when I really stressed it for 15 hours, so generally it was ok. Bought a Dell Precision 17" laptop (when the ASUS overheated) that was great for 2+ years and then the screen died (backlight power supply problem); google provided the repair solution, Dell wanted more than its value to fix; Ebay part was under $100 and I fixed it myself. It worked until I sold it (just not portable enough for my needs.)
      Bought HP Pavilion m6 1010tx about 18 mo ago for $550AU and it has been fine except for heavy gaming sessions have caused it to overheat but without immediate apparent damage. (Such heat probably does shorten the life of circuits so eventually there will likely be a failure.)
      I don't think that any reasonably priced ($700 or less) consumer laptops are designed for heavy use for more than a couple years any more.
      My 1985 Compaq transportable still works (although I can't do much with it.;^) Compaq was a high quality company until bought by HP.
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 9 years, 8 months ago
    I hate to admit it, but HP has gone downhill - and so goes my stock with it. I think Dell is still very reliable, hardware that is. We have five of them ranging from early XP days to less than a year old, and no hardware issues. Wish I could say the same for Microsoft, also there goes my stock value. Microsoft is out of touch, tries to force software ideas on an unwilling public, when they should be listening - we want consistent reliability in an OS - not what they are forcing on us. If they would work the bugs out of a system, but no, they go for glitter. It just gets worse and worse. Then there are the patches and updates - they really have caused issues. I read a year by year list of the major destruction poorly tested updates have done to entire companies, disgraceful.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 8 months ago
      But isn't MSFT nice to include the public in the process of development? It's a feature!

      Still people volunteer to work as unpaid consultants to debug the OS when the major new feature is another interface to learn that removes the features that made the older version useful.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 8 months ago
    Isn't interesting that such a simple thing as a power cord can be the possible harbinger of such destruction. It makes you think about how we take for granted common things we use all the time without a thought about the consequences if they fail. I guess it's the price we pay for having left the caves.
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