On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:52:35 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:54:57 -0400, "
wrote:

How do you hook up two monitors?

The Dell Latitude laptop I have has dual monitor support but the
second monitor will be a TV with an S-video port.

Ick.

You can then "extend" your desktop to the TV.

Three in dependant monitors or does one mirror one of the others?


This is the only drawback of a laptop, AFAIC. Of course, I'd have a dozen
monitors if I could. ;-)

On 2012-07-15, Oren wrote:

Thanks for that link. The other day I checked for updates for OO and
was pointed to "Apache" OO. From the link you gave, it makes sense
what happened. OO is now under the Apache Foundation. The predecessor
of LibreOffice is OpenOffice.

Yeah. When Oracle bought Sun, the OSS ppl freaked and forked OO to
LO, in 2010. Sun was always of a generous nature, but Oracle is a
little too shady fer comfort. Oracle finally gave up OO to Apache but
LO isn't taking any chances. I opened a buncha .doc's using LO, the
other day. Not elegant, but perfectly usable.

nb

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:33:01 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:



Laptops have a place, but for home use, I still prefer a big honkin'
desktop with a 21 inch or larger monitor, keyboard that can be moved
around, etc.

When I want portability, my netbook has traveled to much of the US and
Europe with me. Or it can sit on my belly when in front of the TV.

You are not thinking outside of the box, and are suffering from tunnel
vision
.
A properly set-up laptop as the equal to your "big honking box"
but with a smaller footprint
AND a backup battery
I also have no problem hooking up 2 monitors, a keyboard and a backup HD to
my laptop

I've yet to find a laptop keyboard that is a comfortable to use as my
full sized MS keyboard. Even on my wife's 17" laptop. Sure you can
hook up all that stuff to it but then you have to take it off if you
want portability; always a compromise. Oh, I also have good speakers
and a sub woofer too.



Just because it's "portable" does NOT mean that it cannot perform in a
non-portable role as well
I have 2 older laptops acting as server and firewall.

Sure it "performs", but just not as comfortable to use at my desk.



Not only are they on a smaller footprint but they also use less power.

CPU is a couple of feet away and not taking valuable space. Not a
consideration. I do have battery backup for about 30 minutes with a
UPS, but longer does not make any difference once the router goes
down. I never had the desire to sit in the dark and work on a
spreadsheet.

My computer guy also charges less to work on desktops than laptops and
can usually get parts faster an cheaper. If it works for you, fine,
but advantages are minimal at best.

On 2012-07-15, Willie Walmart wrote:
How about a refurbished Dell for $158?

http://preview.tinyurl.com/8827jsp

Fer a P4!?

I got 2 P4s. Got 'em both free. And I'm way out in the boonies. If
I was in a large metro area, could probably find a p4 out by the curb
with a "take it" sign on it. $100 of that is fer Winblows 7. I will
admit it has a decent P4 and 2G RAM and USB 2.0. Musta been one of
the last iterations of that family of Pentiums. I'd pay the $60 if I
could get it w/o Win7.

nb

--
vi --the heart of evil!

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 14:03:06 -0400, wrote:

I
still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.


I forget where exactly, but there is the ability to show all "hidden"
devices in the device manger. I've found multiple instances of
drivers (good, bad & ugly). Delete then all for that device. I
cleaned up a yellow box that way one time, then installed the device
again with the current good driver. YMMV.

wrote in news
I still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.

Have you tried Raxco's PerfectUpdater? I believe they have a trial
version. I suckered into subscribing to it ... It's been almost a year
and all updates were done without problems other than rebooting.
ASUS X53E laptop w/ Win7Pro

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:54:19 -0400, Bill wrote:

Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

I replied earlier that you hadn't specified any system goals or a budget.

One of the best arguments made against you doing this is that you become
the "fix it" man when ANYTHING goes wrong and, as you must surely know,
something surely will, and then you will likely be sorry.

Build for yourself, maybe. For someone else, forgetaboutit! : )

I think you would be being a good friend if you located a system to
consider.

Good luck!
Bill


CPU

Motherboard

Hard Drive (SATA)

DVD (SATA)

Monitor

A friend ask me to build him a new system. (no problem)

Windows 7 €“ clean install...

If you've built a system in the last year or two or had one built for
you I would appreciate your comments.

Just the above parts are what I'm interested in. Been awhile since I
built mine :-\

My work for him is free -- start to finish.


Acer Veriton.

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:01:14 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:50:42 -0400, Bill wrote:

Usage (and budget) will dictate the best choices.

Just a simple system. The fellow is not a gamer or video editor and
the like. Basic E-mail and Web browsing.
A $99 P4 or $119 i5 off Lease ThinkCenter is about the best bargain
you will get - 3 years old, industrial strength, high compatability
and reliability Tier 1 machine. Can't ask for more for non video
iintensive (not a gamer) machine.

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:33:01 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:


"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:46:35 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:




Tell him to buy himself a laptop
At the prices of laptops today, the savings for a desktop are not
worth
the effort.
Plus the laptop provides a built-in backup power supply, aka battery.


Laptops have a place, but for home use, I still prefer a big honkin'
desktop with a 21 inch or larger monitor, keyboard that can be moved
around, etc.

When I want portability, my netbook has traveled to much of the US and
Europe with me. Or it can sit on my belly when in front of the TV.

You are not thinking outside of the box, and are suffering from tunnel
vision
.
A properly set-up laptop as the equal to your "big honking box"
but with a smaller footprint
AND a backup battery
I also have no problem hooking up 2 monitors, a keyboard and a backup HD to
my laptop

Just because it's "portable" does NOT mean that it cannot perform in a
non-portable role as well
I have 2 older laptops acting as server and firewall.

Not only are they on a smaller footprint but they also use less power.

And when something goes wrong you PAY or throw it out. No "generic"
replacement parts. And it is WHEN, not IF.

On Jul 14, 8:38*pm, Oren wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:00:42 -0700 (PDT), "

wrote:
When you can buy a whole system for $400,
and given the problems that can arise,
the idea of building a system for someone else
out of parts doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.
Also factor in that the $400 system comes
with a legal version of Windows 7, a warranty
and someone to go to for support. You can also
typically get MSFT office for another $100,
3 years of antivirus for $40, etc.

Just saying, sounds like aggravation and a good
way to ruin a friendship.

We disagree. *Bought my bride a "system" for some bucks under or
around $400. *The system is full of OEM trash-ware, much of the
software is useless or not used. I don't need stuff, except the OS.

I don't know what all the "bloatware" that you find
so objectionable is. I'm sure some of that comes
with SOME systems, but it's never been a problem
for me. I believe that was more of a problem
years ago when systems would come loaded with
offers from AOL, Mindspring, and other ISP's, etc.

I recently bought two HP systems about a year
apart and they have an HP support assistant on them,
and free limited use versions of MSFT Office,
but other than that, there isn't anything else. The
support assistant keeps track of any updated drivers
or bios that HP might have and it will install them if
needed and you OK it. It doesn't bother me and
I don't bother it. The MSFT office starter software
was a plus and I use it. Even if it has other software
on it, if your friend doesn't use it, I don't see the
big issue.


Built mine (for 20 years) *from scratch without ALL the bloat ware..

It would seem in a few minutes you could also just
remove the bloatware that you don't want.




As to warranty, any system can fail in a matter of days. Burn in is
around 3 days. After that it will run for years.

Yes, the failure rate is higher in the beginning, but
clearly they can still fail at 6 or 9 months too. With a
system from HP or Dell then it's their problem. And
building the thing for a friend, those failures in the
early days would seem to be YOUR problem to
then deal with.



Windows 7 has *free* *AV and Open Office is free (open source) and
just as good (better) as MS Office, plus compatible. No cost, ever.

PS. My friend will not be lost. He asked, because he trust me.

I didn't mean to upset anyone. *I appreciate this group for the
intelligence and vast knowledge of common sense.

I didn't mean to imply that your friend doesn't trust you
or that you aren't competent. The common sense
aspect you speak of is why I suggested that for me,
building a system for someone else or even myself
for general purpos use doesn't make sense because
you're not saving much, if anything. It's been that way
for a decade or more now.





In a few hours I can build a system for him *as I WOULD want for
myself or meet his expectations. *I'm not looking for what *an OEM
"thinks" he needs.

I think for myself. Hardware advice?

You said elsewhere that he's just using the thing for
email and web browsing, nothing special. Hundreds
of millions of folks are doing exactly that with all kinds
of off the shelf systems so I don't see why his
expectations would not be met with a $400 system
from say HP. And you can customize those to a
reasonable extent, change the CPU, memory,
hard drive size, etc.

Being in the position of building a system for someone
else today, from as you say a common sense standpoint,
is not where I'd want to be because I can see a lot
of downside and not much upside. But clearly you
can and should do as you please.

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:12:22 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:29:51 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:38:49 -0700, Oren wrote:


We disagree. Bought my bride a "system" for some bucks under or
around $400. The system is full of OEM trash-ware, much of the
software is useless or not used. I don't need stuff, except the OS.


I've not built my own, but we have a guy we use for our computers for
work and he has built mine for a number of years now. Yes, the big
difference is all the crap that comes with the typical store bought
system. Only thing worse is the Gook Squad that fine tunes them to
the point they hardly run at all.

The main advantage of buying a name brand PC is you can usually get a
driver disk that has drivers that will work together.
Otherwise you are on a scavenger hunt looking for all the drivers you
need and about half the time there will be one that won't play nice
with another one.
I am always one generation off he bleeding edge and I buy off lease
commercial machines pretty cheap.

I always load them from a formatted disk.
I worked 5 years for a computer manufacturer - and the combinations
that did NOT work were much more numerous than those that did.

The research that goes into assembling a properly configured computer
can be quite extensive. I have just about finished instaling 50
off-lease Lenovo Think Stations to replace old terminals and PCs at a
small industrial concern where I spend 2 afternoons a week - excellent
fit for the job at extremely good pricing - and as noted, no searching
for "orphan" drivers.

With QC in the tank like it is with so many Chinese manufacturere,
assembling a system from parts can be a lot of "fun". When it doesn't
work, which part is causing the problem? Is it defective or just
incompatible? Without having at least 3 of everything on hand you
cannot troubleshoot by substitution with any confidence.

On Jul 15, 4:10*pm, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:33:01 -0500, "Atila Iskander"





wrote:

"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:46:35 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:

Tell him to buy himself a laptop
* *At the prices of laptops today, the savings for a desktop are not
worth
the effort.
Plus the laptop provides a built-in backup power supply, aka battery.

Laptops have a place, but for home use, I still prefer a big honkin'
desktop with a 21 inch or larger monitor, keyboard that can be moved
around, etc.

When I want portability, my netbook has traveled to much of the US and
Europe with me. * Or it can sit on my belly when in front of the TV.

You are not thinking outside of the box, and are suffering from tunnel
vision
.
A properly set-up laptop as the equal to your "big honking box"
* *but with a smaller footprint
* *AND a backup battery
I also have no problem hooking up 2 monitors, a keyboard and a backup HD to
my laptop

Just because it's "portable" does NOT mean that it cannot perform in a
non-portable role as well
I have 2 older laptops acting as server and firewall.

Not only are they on a smaller footprint but they also use less power.

And when something goes wrong you PAY or throw it out. No "generic"
replacement parts. *And it is WHEN, not IF.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yes, I agree. Laptops are great if you make use of the fact
that they are portable. If you don't value that ability, then
a box system has advantages. Clearly there are tradeoffs
in a number of areas that have to be made to get everything
to fit into a small form factor. For the same $$, you generally
wind up with a smaller screen, less CPU power, no
system expansion capabilities, etc. The same is true of
the Apple and similar computers where everything is in
the display. If a component fails in a mini-tower sitting
on the floor, I can fix it. If that same component fails in
a laptop or the Apples, good luck figuring out how to
get at it, fix it or where to get the part.

On 15 Jul 2012 18:55:52 GMT, Han wrote:

wrote in news
I still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.

Have you tried Raxco's PerfectUpdater? I believe they have a trial
version. I suckered into subscribing to it ... It's been almost a year
and all updates were done without problems other than rebooting.
ASUS X53E laptop w/ Win7Pro

Interesting. Lenovo's ThinkVantage updater is OK but it doesn't want to deal
with my WiFi drivers. There are newer drivers available but the installation
process looks to be a mess. I'd really like to be able to log into a WPA-2
network (like my phone - I'd rather not go naked).

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 14:13:03 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:33:01 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:



Laptops have a place, but for home use, I still prefer a big honkin'
desktop with a 21 inch or larger monitor, keyboard that can be moved
around, etc.

When I want portability, my netbook has traveled to much of the US and
Europe with me. Or it can sit on my belly when in front of the TV.

You are not thinking outside of the box, and are suffering from tunnel
vision
.
A properly set-up laptop as the equal to your "big honking box"
but with a smaller footprint
AND a backup battery
I also have no problem hooking up 2 monitors, a keyboard and a backup HD to
my laptop

I've yet to find a laptop keyboard that is a comfortable to use as my
full sized MS keyboard. Even on my wife's 17" laptop. Sure you can
hook up all that stuff to it but then you have to take it off if you
want portability; always a compromise. Oh, I also have good speakers
and a sub woofer too.

I have docking stations and port replicators for that. Monitor, keyboard,
mouse, and assorted disk drives stay with the docking station. When I go
mobile, all that stuff stays behind. I also bring my software, at the same
level, with email and NG bookmarks with me. It's much better than having a
desktop.


Just because it's "portable" does NOT mean that it cannot perform in a
non-portable role as well
I have 2 older laptops acting as server and firewall.

Sure it "performs", but just not as comfortable to use at my desk.

I don't see how there is a difference. I have my laptop and dock on a small
shelf next to my main monitor so both are at the same level. It works fine.

Not only are they on a smaller footprint but they also use less power.

CPU is a couple of feet away and not taking valuable space. Not a
consideration. I do have battery backup for about 30 minutes with a
UPS, but longer does not make any difference once the router goes
down. I never had the desire to sit in the dark and work on a
spreadsheet.

My computer guy also charges less to work on desktops than laptops and
can usually get parts faster an cheaper. If it works for you, fine,
but advantages are minimal at best.

How often does your hardware fail? Other than catastrophic failures (monitor)
and disk drives, I don't recall the last time I had a hardware failure. Laptop
"monitors" aren't reasonably replaceable but disk drives are trivial.

Ed Pawlowski wrote in
:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:33:01 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:



Laptops have a place, but for home use, I still prefer a big honkin'
desktop with a 21 inch or larger monitor, keyboard that can be moved
around, etc.

When I want portability, my netbook has traveled to much of the US
and Europe with me. Or it can sit on my belly when in front of the
TV.

You are not thinking outside of the box, and are suffering from tunnel
vision
.
A properly set-up laptop as the equal to your "big honking box"
but with a smaller footprint
AND a backup battery
I also have no problem hooking up 2 monitors, a keyboard and a backup
HD to my laptop

I've yet to find a laptop keyboard that is a comfortable to use as my
full sized MS keyboard. Even on my wife's 17" laptop. Sure you can
hook up all that stuff to it but then you have to take it off if you
want portability; always a compromise. Oh, I also have good speakers
and a sub woofer too.



Just because it's "portable" does NOT mean that it cannot perform in a
non-portable role as well
I have 2 older laptops acting as server and firewall.

Sure it "performs", but just not as comfortable to use at my desk.



Not only are they on a smaller footprint but they also use less power.

CPU is a couple of feet away and not taking valuable space. Not a
consideration. I do have battery backup for about 30 minutes with a
UPS, but longer does not make any difference once the router goes
down. I never had the desire to sit in the dark and work on a
spreadsheet.

My computer guy also charges less to work on desktops than laptops and
can usually get parts faster an cheaper. If it works for you, fine,
but advantages are minimal at best.






you get more processing power from a desktop,they last longer,and don't
need pricey new batteries every so often.
Laptops are more prone to damage from traveling,so they don't last as long.
Plus,you can configure a desktop or tower PC to be a DVR and record several
TV channels at the same time. you can do audio processing,converting CDs to
other files,or vinyl records to digital files.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 17:33:12 -0500, Jim Yanik wrote:

Ed Pawlowski wrote in
:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:33:01 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:



Laptops have a place, but for home use, I still prefer a big honkin'
desktop with a 21 inch or larger monitor, keyboard that can be moved
around, etc.

When I want portability, my netbook has traveled to much of the US
and Europe with me. Or it can sit on my belly when in front of the
TV.

You are not thinking outside of the box, and are suffering from tunnel
vision
.
A properly set-up laptop as the equal to your "big honking box"
but with a smaller footprint
AND a backup battery
I also have no problem hooking up 2 monitors, a keyboard and a backup
HD to my laptop

I've yet to find a laptop keyboard that is a comfortable to use as my
full sized MS keyboard. Even on my wife's 17" laptop. Sure you can
hook up all that stuff to it but then you have to take it off if you
want portability; always a compromise. Oh, I also have good speakers
and a sub woofer too.



Just because it's "portable" does NOT mean that it cannot perform in a
non-portable role as well
I have 2 older laptops acting as server and firewall.

Sure it "performs", but just not as comfortable to use at my desk.



Not only are they on a smaller footprint but they also use less power.

CPU is a couple of feet away and not taking valuable space. Not a
consideration. I do have battery backup for about 30 minutes with a
UPS, but longer does not make any difference once the router goes
down. I never had the desire to sit in the dark and work on a
spreadsheet.

My computer guy also charges less to work on desktops than laptops and
can usually get parts faster an cheaper. If it works for you, fine,
but advantages are minimal at best.






you get more processing power from a desktop,they last longer,and don't
need pricey new batteries every so often.

Batteries need to be replaced, perhaps, once during the life of the laptop.
After market batteries aren't terribly expensive. I've had this laptop five
years and replaced the battery six months back - $40. I certainly don't
expect to have this laptop in another five years.

Laptops are more prone to damage from traveling,so they don't last as long.

Desktops don't travel. So?

Plus,you can configure a desktop or tower PC to be a DVR and record several
TV channels at the same time.

Not if you have digital cable. Besides, that's what the DVR is for.

you can do audio processing,converting CDs to
other files,or vinyl records to digital files.

....and that can't be done on a laptop? Shhh! Don't tell mine.

On 7/14/2012 7:15 PM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 07/14/12 05:53 pm, Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

My work for him is free -- start to finish.

For years I've bought nothing but Asus motherboards, AMD CPUs and
Seagate hard drives (except that I bought Hitachi drives for notebooks)
-- almost all my dead drives are Western Digital. Most recently I've
been buying G.Skill RAM but previously bought mostly Kingston. The DVD
drives I've bought recently have been whatever was on sale at the time.

My most recent purchases have been from NewEgg.com, but TigerDirect.com
has occasionally had better prices.

Perce

Western Digital has a perceived lower failure rate than Seagate the last
few years from the websites I buy from.

On 7/15/2012 6:48 PM, Duesenberg wrote:
On 7/14/2012 7:15 PM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 07/14/12 05:53 pm, Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

My work for him is free -- start to finish.

For years I've bought nothing but Asus motherboards, AMD CPUs and
Seagate hard drives (except that I bought Hitachi drives for notebooks)
-- almost all my dead drives are Western Digital. Most recently I've
been buying G.Skill RAM but previously bought mostly Kingston. The DVD
drives I've bought recently have been whatever was on sale at the time.

My most recent purchases have been from NewEgg.com, but TigerDirect.com
has occasionally had better prices.

Perce

Western Digital has a perceived lower failure rate than Seagate the last
few years from the websites I buy from.


The only time I've ever had a modern hard drive fail was due to
overheating caused by extreme numbers of dust bunnies plugging up the
air vents in a case. O_o

TDD

On 7/15/2012 1:03 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:30:53 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:32:01 -0400, "dadiOH"
wrote:

If a component needs software it comes with what you need.

If the system is Win 7 compatible the install will find all the
drivers on the install disk. They can later be updated at the
manufacture's web site when they become available for the device.

I haven't had a driver problem for years.

The problem you have with drivers is when you are not sure what
hardware you actually have. I have a whole cabinet full of boards
cards and drives. When I am putting a machine together from my parts
cache I often find a card that drivers are a mystery item. The old
"free" driver sites have become malware factories, always trying to
get you to load crap you don't want. Manufacturers are dropping
support on products very early in the life cycle.

The chinks (Lenova) have really screwed up the IBM PC site.

I just "upgraded to a more familiar version" (W7 to XP Pro) on my,
new to me, X61 tablet and getting all the drivers was a nightmare. I
still have one yellow box on my device manager that I can't resolve.


I often read the chip numbers on the board then search for the
manufacturer and have found drivers that way. I would recommend
software like Speccy witch will give you info down to a chip's
part number and serial number. ^_^

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

TDD

On 7/14/2012 11:48 PM, Atila Iskander wrote:

"Oren" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:00:42 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

When you can buy a whole system for $400,
and given the problems that can arise,
the idea of building a system for someone else
out of parts doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.
Also factor in that the $400 system comes
with a legal version of Windows 7, a warranty
and someone to go to for support. You can also
typically get MSFT office for another $100,
3 years of antivirus for $40, etc.

Just saying, sounds like aggravation and a good
way to ruin a friendship.

We disagree. Bought my bride a "system" for some bucks under or
around $400. The system is full of OEM trash-ware, much of the
software is useless or not used. I don't need stuff, except the OS.

Built mine (for 20 years) from scratch without ALL the bloat ware..

As to warranty, any system can fail in a matter of days. Burn in is
around 3 days. After that it will run for years.

Windows 7 has *free* AV and Open Office is free (open source) and
just as good (better) as MS Office, plus compatible. No cost, ever.

PS. My friend will not be lost. He asked, because he trust me.

I didn't mean to upset anyone. I appreciate this group for the
intelligence and vast knowledge of common sense.

In a few hours I can build a system for him as I WOULD want for
myself or meet his expectations. I'm not looking for what an OEM
"thinks" he needs.

I think for myself. Hardware advice?

Bloatware can be removed



"http://pcdecrapifier.com/" is a good starting point. ^_^

TDD

I recently bought two HP systems about a year
apart and they have an HP support assistant on them,
and free limited use versions of MSFT Office,
but other than that, there isn't anything else. The
support assistant keeps track of any updated drivers
or bios that HP might have and it will install them if
needed and you OK it. It doesn't bother me and
I don't bother it. The MSFT office starter software
was a plus and I use it. Even if it has other software
on it, if your friend doesn't use it, I don't see the
big issue.


I can build a system for him as I WOULD want for


I do 95% stuff on iPad. Laying on couch. Thank god.
I had a acer vista laptop I gave away. I hated vista. Occasional boot
problem.
I bought a hp laptop. Hp assistant has done some good things, but it's a
pain. Especially when you say no, and it does it anyway. Between Microsoft
and hp support, I go crazy. It screwed up the computer after one update,
but recovered somehow.

My last desktop from tiger. Amd quad core, no problems. Probably $250. No
software included except drivers. I loaded XP, also had Symantec end point.
It's great, except like my laptop, just set back for a while while
everything settles down, scanning, loading, connecting,

Greg

On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2 keyboards
and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was
low because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD

On 7/15/2012 9:32 AM, RBM wrote:
On 7/14/2012 5:53 PM, Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

CPU

Motherboard

Hard Drive (SATA)

DVD (SATA)

Monitor

A friend ask me to build him a new system. (no problem)

Windows 7 – clean install...

If you've built a system in the last year or two or had one built for
you I would appreciate your comments.

Just the above parts are what I'm interested in. Been awhile since I
built mine :-\

My work for him is free -- start to finish.

+When I started building my own computers, I would typically go to
Newegg and check ratings and reviews for each of the components, then go
with that advice.
All of my original builds, I used the best Asus motherboards available
at the time. P4PE, P4C800E-D, P5AD2E. These are Intel socket boards, and
I used the best bank for the buck processor. I used Seagate hard drives.
Those machines worked flawlessly, but ultimately all of the boards
crapped out except the original P4PE. At the end of the day I'm not that
happy with Asus
After some time of not building anything, I needed to build another
batch, these are within the last two years. This time I went with
Gigabyte motherboards and I5 intel processors. I also switched to WD
hard drives, just for a change, the Seagates were always good to me. All
my machines are running continuously, some are gaming setups, and there
hasn't been the slightest hiccup from any of them.

Do you keep the dust bunnies, elephants and rhinoceroses out of your
machines? ^_^

TDD

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:22:01 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 18:41:31 -0400, "
wrote:

Plus,you can configure a desktop or tower PC to be a DVR and record several
TV channels at the same time.

Not if you have digital cable. Besides, that's what the DVR is for.

You can buy a digital TV card for a PCI machine.

Does it do the DRM stuff?

On 2012-07-16, The Daring Dufas wrote:

low because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

Yep. My first job provided PC, an old XT clone running MS-DOS 2.0. w/
20Mb HDD and token-ring card to connect to company's mainframe HP-UX
database network. It was the most outdated pass-me-down box in the
company, but I was stoked and ended up becoming the Harvard Graphics
pareto chart guru of the dept.

nb

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:11:34 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

I often read the chip numbers on the board then search for the
manufacturer and have found drivers that way. I would recommend
software like Speccy witch will give you info down to a chip's
part number and serial number. ^_^

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

TDD

One time in Win95 a driver was difficult to find. I found it in
Chinese (hardware info)... ran like a champ.

"The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed
software and hardware, network inventory, missing Microsoft hotfixes,
anti-virus status, security benchmarks, and displays the results in
your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private
on your PC and is not sent to any web server. "

Free from:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Gives more info than I care to study :-\

The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2 keyboards
and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was low
because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD

My first 15 inch monitor was $400. First 17 inch was $400. Still have it,
Gold Star.
it was around 1993 when I broke down and bought my first personal computer.

I saw monitors way back working at DEC in 1969. They were just starting to
get into desktop monitors, vs the big rack mounted devices, using light
pens.

At another workplace $2000 monitors were common in the 90's I worked on the
worlds highest resolution monitor, something like $15k. Sony bought the
company started by IBM, to stop making the product. I remember buying a
high speed hd, $2000 for something 1-2 gb. Thing ran too hot to touch.
Hitachi.

I'm glad I don't have to play much with hardware anymore, but the software
will kill you.

Greg

wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 02:40:38 +0000 (UTC), gregz
wrote:

The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.V

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2 keyboards
and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was low
because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD

My first 15 inch monitor was $400. First 17 inch was $400. Still have it,
Gold Star.
it was around 1993 when I broke down and bought my first personal computer.

I saw monitors way back working at DEC in 1969. They were just starting to
get into desktop monitors, vs the big rack mounted devices, using light
pens.

At another workplace $2000 monitors were common in the 90's I worked on the
worlds highest resolution monitor, something like $15k. Sony bought the
company started by IBM, to stop making the product. I remember buying a
high speed hd, $2000 for something 1-2 gb. Thing ran too hot to touch.
Hitachi.

I'm glad I don't have to play much with hardware anymore, but the software
will kill you.

Greg


My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)

Several years later I did the $300 WDWX1 controller/ST238 upgrade to a
hard drive but that also required a new system board.
My old one suddenly just "went bad" and I had to replace it on the M/A
... funny how that works huh?
I had a problem earlier with one of those diskette drives and needed a
new one too. They only had the 360K. ;-)

I'm thinking a large disk in mid 70's was about 20 kb or perhaps mb. ?
In 1969 loading a program by paper tape into a $10k pdp 8/I first required
you to manually machine code the program on switches so computer would know
how to read the paper tape. Back when an oscilloscope was what you used to
fix computers.

I must confess, I have found good deals at complete computers or laptops at
Office Depot.

Greg

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:33:01 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:


"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:46:35 -0500, "Atila Iskander"
wrote:




Tell him to buy himself a laptop
At the prices of laptops today, the savings for a desktop are not
worth
the effort.
Plus the laptop provides a built-in backup power supply, aka battery.


Laptops have a place, but for home use, I still prefer a big honkin'
desktop with a 21 inch or larger monitor, keyboard that can be moved
around, etc.

When I want portability, my netbook has traveled to much of the US and
Europe with me. Or it can sit on my belly when in front of the TV.

You are not thinking outside of the box, and are suffering from tunnel
vision
.
A properly set-up laptop as the equal to your "big honking box"
but with a smaller footprint
AND a backup battery
I also have no problem hooking up 2 monitors, a keyboard and a backup HD
to
my laptop

Just because it's "portable" does NOT mean that it cannot perform in a
non-portable role as well
I have 2 older laptops acting as server and firewall.

Not only are they on a smaller footprint but they also use less power.

And when something goes wrong you PAY or throw it out. No "generic"
replacement parts. And it is WHEN, not IF.

snort
By the time something goes wrong, the computer is long past it's useful life
span.
I have currently 2 laptops that are over 5 years old. And they have been
running 24/7 except for the times that I took them while travelling.
They are currently running as servers
All I did to them was max out the memory
And since I installed Linux on them, I have only booted them once a year to
make sure that there was no memory creep.
The Windows I run on top of the Linux, gets re-booted once a month.

I wouldn't waste my time, money and desk space for a box PC if my life
depended on it
It's just not cost effective.

On 7/15/2012 8:26 PM, Oren wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:11:34 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

I often read the chip numbers on the board then search for the
manufacturer and have found drivers that way. I would recommend
software like Speccy witch will give you info down to a chip's
part number and serial number. ^_^

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

TDD

One time in Win95 a driver was difficult to find. I found it in
Chinese (hardware info)... ran like a champ.

"The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed
software and hardware, network inventory, missing Microsoft hotfixes,
anti-virus status, security benchmarks, and displays the results in
your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private
on your PC and is not sent to any web server. "

Free from:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Gives more info than I care to study :-\


I like Belarc Adviser too. ^_^

TDD

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:09:38 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 02:40:38 +0000 (UTC), gregz
wrote:

The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2 keyboards
and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was low
because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD

My first 15 inch monitor was $400. First 17 inch was $400. Still have it,
Gold Star.
it was around 1993 when I broke down and bought my first personal computer.

I saw monitors way back working at DEC in 1969. They were just starting to
get into desktop monitors, vs the big rack mounted devices, using light
pens.

At another workplace $2000 monitors were common in the 90's I worked on the
worlds highest resolution monitor, something like $15k. Sony bought the
company started by IBM, to stop making the product. I remember buying a
high speed hd, $2000 for something 1-2 gb. Thing ran too hot to touch.
Hitachi.

I'm glad I don't have to play much with hardware anymore, but the software
will kill you.

Greg


My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)

Ditto, though I had a single-sided diskette drive and 48K memory (the minimum
available on the employee models). It didn't stay that way long, though.
Within a year it had two double-sided drives and 704K memory. ;-)

I still have it, but I highly doubt it'll boot.

Several years later I did the $300 WDWX1 controller/ST238 upgrade to a
hard drive but that also required a new system board.
My old one suddenly just "went bad" and I had to replace it on the M/A
... funny how that works huh?
I had a problem earlier with one of those diskette drives and needed a
new one too. They only had the 360K. ;-)

The original IBMs were 140K. I always ran with two drives and a third RAM
drive. When I booted, the first thing AUTOEXEC did was to copy B: to C:.

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 14:53:57 -0700, Oren wrote:

Seeking opinions of current parts.

CPU

Motherboard

Hard Drive (SATA)

DVD (SATA)

Monitor

A friend ask me to build him a new system. (no problem)

Windows 7 – clean install...

If you've built a system in the last year or two or had one built for
you I would appreciate your comments.

Just the above parts are what I'm interested in. Been awhile since I
built mine :-\

My work for him is free -- start to finish.


Go to Dell's newsgroup and ping "Ben Myers". He drops by every now
and then and seems to be very knowledgeable about hardware regardless
of brand. If you get into software questions, it isn't his strong
point but he knows a decent amount tho others may be better equipped
to answer like a guy called RnR, etc... .

On 7/15/2012 9:40 PM, gregz wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 7/15/2012 9:33 AM, notbob wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Red Green wrote:

And I thought I was the last one... Must be a CT thing (OEM
Stamfordite)
:-)


p.s. and also a "-ski".

Nope. Lots of us.

Better yet, you can pick up decent box fer zero $$. Ppl can't give
'em away, anymore. Actually costs $$ to dispose of 'em. I haven't
paid for a computer in yrs. Granted, I'm not running the hottest
gamer box in town, but running Linux gets me what I need for nada.
Finally hadda kick out the jams and splurge fer an LCD monitor, no
CRTs lying around. My new Acer 23" is killer. I may join the 21st
century if I can find a decent box fer $200.

Oh yeah, two days ago a 17" CRT turned up, fer free. With 2 keyboards
and two mice. I passed.

nb


Back in 93 I paid $549.00 for my first 17" CRT monitor, the price was low
because I got dealer pricing. Remember when a 20mb hard drive was
cheap at $250.00? O_o

TDD

My first 15 inch monitor was $400. First 17 inch was $400. Still have it,
Gold Star.
it was around 1993 when I broke down and bought my first personal computer.

I saw monitors way back working at DEC in 1969. They were just starting to
get into desktop monitors, vs the big rack mounted devices, using light
pens.

At another workplace $2000 monitors were common in the 90's I worked on the
worlds highest resolution monitor, something like $15k. Sony bought the
company started by IBM, to stop making the product. I remember buying a
high speed hd, $2000 for something 1-2 gb. Thing ran too hot to touch.
Hitachi.

I'm glad I don't have to play much with hardware anymore, but the software
will kill you.

Greg


I have a pair of Nokia 21" .22 dot pitch CRT monitors that originally
cost $1,100.00 ea. On a big CRT, .22dpi is like looking at a film
projection. I got them for $600.00 because they were demonstrators and
the damn things weigh upwards of 80lbs each. I switched to larger LCD
screens some time ago which saves a lot of desktop space and back
strain. ^_^

TDD

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 22:53:13 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:57:33 -0400, "
wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:22:01 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 18:41:31 -0400, "
wrote:

Plus,you can configure a desktop or tower PC to be a DVR and record several
TV channels at the same time.

Not if you have digital cable. Besides, that's what the DVR is for.

You can buy a digital TV card for a PCI machine.

Does it do the DRM stuff?

They have "cable cards" in them that you get authorized like a cable
box. I haven't done anything with that but the guys at AVS forum can
tell you more than you want to know about it. I still use my ReplayTV
and I have a DVR from Dish.

Didn't know that, but I guess it makes sense to have them available.

I use the PC I have connected for music and streaming content directly
from the net.
(Hulu, HBO-Go etc)

That's what I intended to do with the system that I bought the pieces for but
never put together.

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:28:01 +0000 (UTC), gregz
wrote:

My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)

Several years later I did the $300 WDWX1 controller/ST238 upgrade to a
hard drive but that also required a new system board.
My old one suddenly just "went bad" and I had to replace it on the M/A
... funny how that works huh?
I had a problem earlier with one of those diskette drives and needed a
new one too. They only had the 360K. ;-)

I'm thinking a large disk in mid 70's was about 20 kb or perhaps mb. ?
In 1969 loading a program by paper tape into a $10k pdp 8/I first required
you to manually machine code the program on switches so computer would
know
how to read the paper tape. Back when an oscilloscope was what you used to
fix computers.


In the mid 70s a big disk drive was a 3330 M11 and you got 200MB per
spindle on a removable pack. (ten 14" platters)

Two drives were about the size of a side by side refrigerator and the
standard array of 8 had a 60 amp 3 phase 208 power plug.

I worked on computers since they leaked oil on the floor and filled a
big room.

I started working for IBM in one of their Datacenters, the summer of '71.
just before I went to engineering school.
In those days, with overtime and being on call, you could make enough
money in one summer to pay for your school year.

On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:09:38 -0400, wrote:



My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)


Think I paid $2700 for it, with 2 floppies, maxed mem (256?), and the
mono monitor. 1984. IBM store.
Had a least another grand into it that same year with an AST 6-pack
mem card, and a dot printer. The next year a 20 or 30 meg Winchester
HD for about $500. About 25% of that went bad sector within a year.
Should have put all that money in MS stock. (-:
Getting somewhat back to topic, the clones were already coming out
then. Big thing was amber monitors. Looked cheap to me.
In '92 that PC wouldn't boot, and everything but the printer went in
the trash can.
Bought an IBM PS2 Consultant tower. 486 DX2. Paid about $1800, but a
good HD, and color monitor. Circuit City as I recall.
About '95 I was playing Doom with keyboard on lap, and something in
the game made me flip my chair over backwards.
Hosed the PS2 port tracings and almost yanked the box off the desk.
IBM wanted $1800 for a new MB!
Luckily my brother was working making diagnostic cards and fixed the
tracings at his employer's shop.
I was an IT guy, and always hewed to the "compatible" lines.
"IBM compatible." "Hayes compatible."
Even tried to use IBM OS, but the writing was on the wall.
Never had driver issues until 3Com took over US Robotics.
That was a mess,
About '98 I started making my own for me and family.
I've built about 15 since then.
Even then the savings wasn't much, because I used high end components.
But they were better than the Dells, Compaqs, HP's and whatever, and I
provided support.
Nowadays for common everyday use, a used computer or a new one on sale
is the way to go costwise.
gpsman had the right idea about "bloatware." Wipe the drive, and
install what you want.
The only catch to buying from the major PC makers is to watch for
proprietary stuff, ala that IBM MB I mentioned. Takes some study.
Dell CPU's on some models had a massive heat sink and no fan.
They did that because it reduced fan warranty costs. No big deal
there as far as I know, but something to know.
I don't know if they still do it, but I've repaired HP's and Compaqs
that had proprietary power supply case fittings where you had to use a
drill/Dremel to get an affordable new power supply to fit.
My daughter had a failed HD controller on one of those and they wanted
$400 for a new MB.
I got real lucky in googling and found a text based discussion between
2 company techs talking shop where one mentioned the manufacturer of
the board and the model number. Got it for 100 bucks. Only
difference was the HP or Compaq logo wasn't burned into the BIOS.

--
Vic

On 7/15/2012 11:15 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:28:01 +0000 (UTC), gregz
wrote:

My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)

Several years later I did the $300 WDWX1 controller/ST238 upgrade to a
hard drive but that also required a new system board.
My old one suddenly just "went bad" and I had to replace it on the M/A
... funny how that works huh?
I had a problem earlier with one of those diskette drives and needed a
new one too. They only had the 360K. ;-)

I'm thinking a large disk in mid 70's was about 20 kb or perhaps mb. ?
In 1969 loading a program by paper tape into a $10k pdp 8/I first required
you to manually machine code the program on switches so computer would know
how to read the paper tape. Back when an oscilloscope was what you used to
fix computers.


In the mid 70s a big disk drive was a 3330 M11 and you got 200MB per
spindle on a removable pack. (ten 14" platters)

Two drives were about the size of a side by side refrigerator and the
standard array of 8 had a 60 amp 3 phase 208 power plug.

I worked on computers since they leaked oil on the floor and filled a
big room.


Do you remember the UNIVAC drum memory units? I think they were the size
of a 50gal drum. I do remember the university having a UNIVAC
classic science fiction computer with all the glass doors and blinking
lights. This was back in 1965-66 when I started playing with digital
computers and the UNIVAC was being replaced by a shiny new IBM 360/50
RAX system with terminals around campus. The terminals were big L shaped
desks with an IBM Selectric for I/O and part of the desk held all the
interface electronics. The I/O was the wide green and white fan-fold
paper and I don't remember an 80 column card reader as part of the
terminal. Of course, there was a ton of keypunch machines at the
computer center. Kids today have no idea what we called computers but
those huge machines got us to The Moon and back. ^_^

TDD

On 7/15/2012 8:30 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 7/15/2012 9:32 AM, RBM wrote:
On 7/14/2012 5:53 PM, Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

CPU

Motherboard

Hard Drive (SATA)

DVD (SATA)

Monitor

A friend ask me to build him a new system. (no problem)

Windows 7 – clean install...

If you've built a system in the last year or two or had one built for
you I would appreciate your comments.

Just the above parts are what I'm interested in. Been awhile since I
built mine :-\

My work for him is free -- start to finish.

+When I started building my own computers, I would typically go to
Newegg and check ratings and reviews for each of the components, then go
with that advice.
All of my original builds, I used the best Asus motherboards available
at the time. P4PE, P4C800E-D, P5AD2E. These are Intel socket boards, and
I used the best bank for the buck processor. I used Seagate hard drives.
Those machines worked flawlessly, but ultimately all of the boards
crapped out except the original P4PE. At the end of the day I'm not that
happy with Asus
After some time of not building anything, I needed to build another
batch, these are within the last two years. This time I went with
Gigabyte motherboards and I5 intel processors. I also switched to WD
hard drives, just for a change, the Seagates were always good to me. All
my machines are running continuously, some are gaming setups, and there
hasn't been the slightest hiccup from any of them.

Do you keep the dust bunnies, elephants and rhinoceroses out of your
machines? ^_^

TDD

Yes, but the teenagers don't

On 2012-07-16, Atila Iskander wrote:

The Windows I run on top of the Linux, gets re-booted once a month.

Yet you, like 2 other posters, run M$ Windows despite a history going
back to pre DOS days. I find this extremely curious. One of the
reasons I haven't run Windows in over 10 yrs is because it's a flakey,
unreliable, intrusive piece of crap that's more of an hassle than a
help. Regardless of my views, we have 3 old Unix hands running Windows.
Jes outta curiosity, why?

nb

On Jul 15, 8:28*pm, wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:48:55 -0400, Duesenberg wrote:
On 7/14/2012 7:15 PM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 07/14/12 05:53 pm, Oren wrote:
Seeking opinions of current parts.

My work for him is free -- start to finish.

For years I've bought nothing but Asus motherboards, AMD CPUs and
Seagate hard drives (except that I bought Hitachi drives for notebooks)
-- almost all my dead drives are Western Digital. Most recently I've
been buying G.Skill RAM but previously bought mostly Kingston. The DVD
drives I've bought recently have been whatever was on sale at the time..

My most recent purchases have been from NewEgg.com, but TigerDirect.com
has occasionally had better prices.

Perce

Western Digital has a perceived lower failure rate than Seagate the last
few years from the websites I buy from.

I have magnets from a couple dozen bad hard drives from various
sources, usually "dead" machines I was given.. several were drives I
bought. Most were from W/D Caviars. Certainly more than every other
brand combined. I won't ever buy one again.
Unfortunately there are only a couple companies making all the brands
these days.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I'm not sure that proves much about W/D. Isn't it
just possible they were the supplier for the systems
you bought. Meaning if they had used brand Y,
you would have gotten a lot of dead machines with
brand Y drives instead.