Low end desktop for EE tasks?

[Jeff Liebermann]

Actually, I've had more problems buying from Dell and the various Dell
refurbished online stores, than from either eBay or Cragislist.
<http://www.delloutlet.com>
<http://www.dfsdirectsales.com>

You're right that you can get a much better new machine for "not much
more money". However, at the original price, you can get TWO Dell
SX260's for the price of a new Vostro.

Another reason why not to go (too) used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

One of the 14 SX260's had literally all of the electrolytics
simulating a volcano. Strangely, it worked just fine, but was
obviously going to blow up soon. The eBay vendor sent me a
replacement motherboard, which I installed, and lived happily ever
after. I also tried to repair the board with the blown caps, but
managed to rip out a few too many plated through holes, which
destroyed the board.

A computer tech here at work complained that the Dell desktops aren't
that great. (The laptops are good, he says.) He's had to replace WAY
too many motherboards and Western Digital hard drives on our Dell
Optiplex SX280s.

Are you sure you don't have it backwards? Almost all my office and
home machines are Dell desktops. I don't have any problems with those
(other than the usual moving parts failures). It's the laptops that
are dying on me. If the laptop doesn't blow up, the giant brick of a
laptop power supply blows up. Also, plenty of dead LCD CCFL power
supplies. I won't claim that the desktops are perfect, but I do have
far fewer problems with them.

The SX260's all came with Hitachi 40GB Travelstar laptop drives. I've
had VERY bad luck with the 3.5" Travelstar drives, but these 2.5"
laptop drives seem to be surviving so far. Out of 14, I've had no
failures of any type. I also monitor the S.M.A.R.T. statistics using
SpeedFan:
<http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php>
which has been quite useful at predicting hard disk failures. No
unusual problems so far.

Our policy at work is, Save your work to the Network Drive (file
server, backed up nightly), not to your C: drive !

Good plan. I use two mirrored file servers and/or NAS (network
attached storage) boxes. I don't just backup the work. I do image
backups of the entire hard disk so that the effort necessary to
restore Humpty Dumpty is much less than the mess produced by
overlapping incremental or partial backups. Think of backup in terms
of how long will it take to get you back to normal operation. It's
often much longer than you would initially suspect.

 

[[email protected]]

Actually, I've had more problems buying from Dell and the various Dell
refurbished online stores, than from either eBay or Cragislist.
<http://www.delloutlet.com>
<http://www.dfsdirectsales.com>


You're right that you can get a much better new machine for "not much
more money". However, at the original price, you can get TWO Dell
SX260's for the price of a new Vostro.


One of the 14 SX260's had literally all of the electrolytics
simulating a volcano. Strangely, it worked just fine, but was
obviously going to blow up soon. The eBay vendor sent me a
replacement motherboard, which I installed, and lived happily ever
after. I also tried to repair the board with the blown caps, but
managed to rip out a few too many plated through holes, which
destroyed the board.


Are you sure you don't have it backwards? Almost all my office and
home machines are Dell desktops. I don't have any problems with those
(other than the usual moving parts failures). It's the laptops that
are dying on me. If the laptop doesn't blow up, the giant brick of a
laptop power supply blows up. Also, plenty of dead LCD CCFL power
supplies. I won't claim that the desktops are perfect, but I do have
far fewer problems with them.

Interesting. No I don't think I have it backwards, and at least two
of my co-workers in my unit (there are about a dozen of us in my unit)
had their mainboards replaced on failure to boot - problem I think was
bad caps. And at least one WD HDD replacement.

Our computer tech is one of three who help about 200 of us.

The SX260's all came with Hitachi 40GB Travelstar laptop drives. I've
had VERY bad luck with the 3.5" Travelstar drives, but these 2.5"
laptop drives seem to be surviving so far. Out of 14, I've had no
failures of any type. I also monitor the S.M.A.R.T. statistics using
SpeedFan:
<http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php>
which has been quite useful at predicting hard disk failures. No
unusual problems so far.

Very strange! I've heard IBM/Hitachi is one of the most reliable
available.

Good plan. I use two mirrored file servers and/or NAS (network
attached storage) boxes. I don't just backup the work. I do image
backups of the entire hard disk so that the effort necessary to
restore Humpty Dumpty is much less than the mess produced by
overlapping incremental or partial backups. Think of backup in terms
of how long will it take to get you back to normal operation. It's
often much longer than you would initially suspect.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 [email protected]-cruz.ca.us
#http://802.11junk.com [email protected]
#http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Yeah, I work off my C:, and then schedule a batch-file backup with
7zip and then transfer that big file to our network drive overnight.

Michael

 

[Mick]

Never had any troubles with PCs. Unless they got really, really old and
banged around a lot. Ok, this one is slowly going but it has been
through a lot and it gave me 10 years of reliable service. Not bad.



Somehow my eyes can't get used to them. A few hours of Gerber reviewing
and they hurt. Not with the large Trinitron tube here.



I remember the story when you went to HP. But that was a different
category, full blown servers AFAIR. I really don't need that for this
desk. In the lab that's different but there I've got a fast laptop which
works nicely.

Why go low end? Late model dual core large hd, wlth wlth a half
terrablte removable hd /usb 2/ for all that data /keep lt ln a safe lf
you really want.
Get a dlrt ass cheap kb /coffee spllls/ and the largest lcd screen you
can afford.
Go for llnux, you can dual boot wlndows, or even use wlne, a wlndows
emulator, llnux /sorry my kb ls playlng up...
Buy the blggest ass LCD monltor you can get your hands on, they look hot
and burn shltloads less than a beam monltor.
A setup llke thls wlll get you golng good and proper, save you tlme ln
the longrun and your frlends wlll wet themselfs at the slght of lt.
My favorlte passtlme atm ls rlpplng cds onto the Mp3 player and playlng
them though the bluetooth headphones l have just bought. l can walk
around most of the house llstlng to good muslc wlthout worrlng about
annoylng the nelbours.
Mlck C
Stlll looklng for the faulty Australlan
When we golng to see a EE on the slmpsons?
Waaay cool

 

[[email protected]]

Why go low end? Late model dual core large hd, wlth wlth a half
terrablte removable hd /usb 2/ for all that data /keep lt ln a safe lf
you really want.
Get a dlrt ass cheap kb /coffee spllls/ and the largest lcd screen you
can afford.
Go for llnux, you can dual boot wlndows, or even use wlne, a wlndows
emulator, llnux /sorry my kb ls playlng up...
Buy the blggest ass LCD monltor you can get your hands on, they look hot
and burn shltloads less than a beam monltor.
A setup llke thls wlll get you golng good and proper, save you tlme ln
the longrun and your frlends wlll wet themselfs at the slght of lt.
My favorlte passtlme atm ls rlpplng cds onto the Mp3 player and playlng
them though the bluetooth headphones l have just bought. l can walk
around most of the house llstlng to good muslc wlthout worrlng about
annoylng the nelbours.
Mlck C
Stlll looklng for the faulty Australlan
When we golng to see a EE on the slmpsons?
Waaay cool

Looks like you can use a new keyboard while you're shopping, mate ;-)

M

 

[John Larkin]

Never had any troubles with PCs. Unless they got really, really old and
banged around a lot. Ok, this one is slowly going but it has been
through a lot and it gave me 10 years of reliable service. Not bad.

I guess you've been luckier than me. I've had lots of hard drives die,
power supplies mess up, and Windows suicides. Each one winds up
costing me a week or so to recover.

Somehow my eyes can't get used to them. A few hours of Gerber reviewing
and they hurt. Not with the large Trinitron tube here.



I remember the story when you went to HP. But that was a different
category, full blown servers AFAIR. I really don't need that for this
desk. In the lab that's different but there I've got a fast laptop which
works nicely.

The boxes we bought are sold as servers, but we use them as regular
PCs. What we're paying for is reliability in both hardware and
software. The software reliability comes from having full C: drive
clones ready to plug in if Windows ties itself in knots.

John

 

[Joerg]

Looks like you can use a new keyboard while you're shopping, mate ;-)

Actually, happened to this here no-name cheapo KB as well. So, I took it
apart, mostly for learning purposes. Always interested in low cost
designs. In the end I had about ten large pieces, rubber mats, plastic
sheets and what not. Hosed it all off in a large sink, let dry in the
sun, works again! Except for one key but it ain't an important one.

 

[Joerg]

I guess you've been luckier than me. I've had lots of hard drives die,
power supplies mess up, and Windows suicides. Each one winds up
costing me a week or so to recover.

I had two drives die, both on the old Compaq Contura. Both replaced
under warranty. However, that laptop has survived episodes like skidding
off the runway, overhead bins opened, stuff clattered down. Followed by
other flights where the pilot "nailed it to the runway". Well, in the
end it didn't survive because the frame developed cracks.

The boxes we bought are sold as servers, but we use them as regular
PCs. What we're paying for is reliability in both hardware and
software. The software reliability comes from having full C: drive
clones ready to plug in if Windows ties itself in knots.

I run a central storage. Stuff is always present on the PC I work on
plus that storage. No PC has ever croaked here (this old one may be
about to) but when big Rottie let's one rip under the desk and the
stench becomes unbearable I walk over to the lab and just continue from
that PC. He follows ...

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

Interesting. No I don't think I have it backwards, and at least two
of my co-workers in my unit (there are about a dozen of us in my unit)
had their mainboards replaced on failure to boot - problem I think was
bad caps.

I've seen far too many machines with the low-ESR capacitors blown. I'm
working on a Dell Optiplex GX270 (2.4GHz) as I type, replacing most of
the capacitors. What a pain, but at least I have a Pace desoldering
station to make it easy. Dell has had its share of capacitor
problems, as have other manufacturers. Mostly, those ended with
products made before about 2003. I haven't seen bad capacitors in the
Optiplex E5xx or 3xx series of desktops, or later. Incidentally, I'm
typing this on an old Dimension 8100, which is one of about 15 that
has not given me any problems (other than finding cheap RAMBUS chips
and the usual filth in the fans problem).

And at least one WD HDD replacement.

Sorry. I forgot to mumble something about the hard disks. Every few
years, the various disk drive manufacturers take turns selling garbage
for hard disks. The problem is that it often takes several years for
the drives to fail. By that time, they're out of warranty. About 7
years ago, IBM drives were the hot ticket. They were fast, silent and
cheap, so I used them everywhere. 3 years later, I was replacing them
at my expense. IBM gave up and sold out to Hitachi, which initially
shipped the remaining inventory, which again failed in about 3 years.
It took the loss of a few OEM's before Hitachi got the clue and fixed
the problems.

I won't rattle off my history of hard disk disasters. I've been
burned by literally all the major manufacturers (Fujitsu, IBM,
Hitachi, Maxtor, WD, and Seagate) at some time since I started
fighting computers about 25 years ago. They just have bad lots, bad
processes, bad design, or tiny screwups, which result in bad drives
that take a while to self destruct. Recently, I've been using Seagate
drives, with almost no failures or problems. However, I'm not holding
my breath or assuming my good luck will continue forever. If history
repeats itself, as it seems to always do, Seagate will eventually cut
corners to save a few pennies, and introduce a problem.

As for Western Dismal, they are the worst. Most of their drives died
within the warranty period and were replaced by nearly identical
refurbished drives, that also died in a few months. The office next
door went through several in their Sony desktops before they gave up
and let me install a replacement Seagate. That was about a year ago,
and I've sworn off WD since then. I have no idea if their current
offerings are any better (or worse) and have no interest in finding
out the hard way.

You can sorta get a clue by looking at the warranty lifetimes. The
current retail Seagate Barracuda drives all show a 5 year warranty. WD
Caviar offers a 1 year warranty. Only the WD Raptor has a 5 year
warranty.

Our computer tech is one of three who help about 200 of us.

The usual ratio is 1 tech per 100 desktops. I know of some companies
with 150 desktops per tech. If IT also supports the servers, the
ratio is much less. If your organization needs 70 desktops to tech
ratio, then there might be some kind of equipment, environmental, or
organizational problem.

Very strange! I've heard IBM/Hitachi is one of the most reliable
available.

As I indicated, it depends on IBM drive type and model. It was bad
enough that there was a class action suit against IBM for shipping
junk:
<http://www.ibmdeskstar75gxplitigation.com/>
I got the option of 25 blank cdrom's or a 15% discount on future
purchases from IBM. Swell.

Yeah, I work off my C:, and then schedule a batch-file backup with
7zip and then transfer that big file to our network drive overnight.

You don't have a backup unless you've done a dry run and tried to
restore it. 7zip is just a file compress/uncompress utility. It's
not really suitable for backup and restore. Batch files and even some
backup utilities have problems when they encounter open files, thus
making file by file backups a crap shoot. That's another reason why I
do image backups.

The most important part to backup is the bloated registry. I suggest
ERUNT:
<http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/>

About 5 weeks ago, one of my customers had their hard disk go bad. It
was an old 20GB IBM Deskstar that I should have replaced long ago. No
warning with SpeedFan this time. I was recovering from surgery and
really didn't need a major project. So, I dragged out the last image
backup, which fortunately was only a month old at the time, crammed in
a new (Seagate) disk drive, recreated the boot record, updated the
BIOS (oops), used Norton Ghost 2003 to restore the image, and was back
in full operation in about 4 hours (I was moving kinda slow at the
time). All the bookkeeping data was backed up daily to USB flash, so
restoring that was trivial. Try doing that with your file by file or
incremental backup system.

 

[Andy]

Hello Folks,

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It
only needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit
sims (the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the
grunt works PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

Dell Vostro (desktop): Windows XP. 1GB RAM which is nice. No parallel
port which ain't very nice, and the card from the old one won't fit I
guess. Around $350.

HP Compaq DX2250: Windows XP. Has parallel port which is nice. 250MB
RAM, well, that ain't cutting it. Price seems to pop right up if you
deviate from pre-config. Otherwise around $350 as well.

GIGABYTE GA-945GCMX-S2 MATX Motherboard $53.56
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-945GCMX>
Intel Dual-Core Processor E2140 1.6GHz LGA775 CPU $67.47
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=E2140BOX>
STT DDR2-667 1GB/64x8 S-RIGID Memory $26.27
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=T6UB1GC5>
EVGA nVidia GeForce 7200GS 128MB PCI-E Video Card $35.02
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=EV-7200GS>
Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160GB SATA2 Hard Drive $51.70
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W1600AS>
SonyNEC Optiarc DDU1615 16X DVD-ROM $18.03
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=DVD-1615BK>
Logitech Deluxe 250 Desktop Keyboard & Optical Mouse $11.85
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=KB-DEL250C>
iMicro CA-IMJ230L 375W 20+4pin ATX Mid Tower Case $20.60
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=CA-IMJ230P>
Microsoft Windows XP Home W/SP2B $91.67
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MSN0901991>
=======
$376.17

 

[Peter S. May]

Hello Folks,

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It
only needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit
sims (the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the
grunt works PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way).
And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got
experiences with these lines?

My couple of cents...if you can build your own, do it.

One I built recently is working quite nicely for me; I bought
motherboard, CPU, video, RAM, PSU, and case for just under $500. The
only reason it's that much is because I sprung for the hot CPU, an Intel
E6600 for something like $175. I've read that for a lower-end machine
AMD is still more bang for the buck. The money you'd spare on a cheaper
processor and motherboard might buy you a hard drive or a Windows license.

Anyway, as long as you only have one hard drive and one optical drive on
your current system, you can use them both if you get a system with one
PATA channel. As for me, I already had a PCI PATA controller that came
with a drive I got, so I had no excuse to buy a new hard drive. It's
nice to know my rig can finally support SATA, though!

And why are we still using Windows? ;-) I'm sorry...I'm from a computer
science background and not an EE one, but Ubuntu is my thing of choice
these days. Anyway, I've read that pretty much all of what you needed
is covered in Linux-supported software, but it's just a thought.

M2C
PSM

 

[Nobody]

And why are we still using Windows? ;-) I'm sorry...I'm from a computer
science background and not an EE one, but Ubuntu is my thing of choice
these days. Anyway, I've read that pretty much all of what you needed
is covered in Linux-supported software, but it's just a thought.

There's too much Windows-only software. Okay, so you can probably run
at least half of it in Wine, but that largely defeats the point of using
Linux.

[Not that I'm really in a position to preach; the currently-open windows
on my WinXP box are: 4 Explorer windows, Firefox, XEmacs (Cygwin), XEmacs
(running on the Linux box via Cygwin's X server), Pan and GIMP. One of
these days, I'll install CoLinux on it for good measure.]

 

[Joerg]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:


[...]

The most important part to backup is the bloated registry. I suggest
ERUNT:
<http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/>

Sometimes the challenge is how to un-bloat that without deleting that
one entry that was really important.

About 5 weeks ago, one of my customers had their hard disk go bad. It
was an old 20GB IBM Deskstar that I should have replaced long ago. No
warning with SpeedFan this time. I was recovering from surgery and
really didn't need a major project. So, I dragged out the last image
backup, which fortunately was only a month old at the time, crammed in
a new (Seagate) disk drive, recreated the boot record, updated the
BIOS (oops), used Norton Ghost 2003 to restore the image, and was back
in full operation in about 4 hours (I was moving kinda slow at the
time). All the bookkeeping data was backed up daily to USB flash, so
restoring that was trivial. Try doing that with your file by file or
incremental backup system.

That's what I do and the USB then goes offsite. Brings up a question:
How reliable are those USB sticks?

Western Digital, hmm, that's not good to hear. I have a WDC MyBook LAN
drive here and it's purring quietly and reliably for a couple months
now. Hopefully it'll continue. They thoroughly botched the USB extender
by requiring to connect to some web company they bought, Mionet.
Probably some manager had to "justify" that acquisition. <banging head
on table>

 

[Joerg]

GIGABYTE GA-945GCMX-S2 MATX Motherboard $53.56
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-945GCMX>
Intel Dual-Core Processor E2140 1.6GHz LGA775 CPU $67.47
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=E2140BOX>
STT DDR2-667 1GB/64x8 S-RIGID Memory $26.27
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=T6UB1GC5>
EVGA nVidia GeForce 7200GS 128MB PCI-E Video Card $35.02
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=EV-7200GS>
Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160GB SATA2 Hard Drive $51.70
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W1600AS>
SonyNEC Optiarc DDU1615 16X DVD-ROM $18.03
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=DVD-1615BK>
Logitech Deluxe 250 Desktop Keyboard & Optical Mouse $11.85
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=KB-DEL250C>
iMicro CA-IMJ230L 375W 20+4pin ATX Mid Tower Case $20.60
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=CA-IMJ230P>
Microsoft Windows XP Home W/SP2B $91.67
<http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MSN0901991>
=======
$376.17

Dell Vostro $349.00
Pad Kra Pow at Thai restaurant $ 10.00
Singha beer at Thai restaurant $ 4.00
Tip $ 3.00
=======
$366.00

No assembly, just click in your order, wait, unpack, set up, start HD
mirror and go to Thai restaurant

 

[Joerg]

My couple of cents...if you can build your own, do it.

One I built recently is working quite nicely for me; I bought
motherboard, CPU, video, RAM, PSU, and case for just under $500. The
only reason it's that much is because I sprung for the hot CPU, an Intel
E6600 for something like $175. I've read that for a lower-end machine
AMD is still more bang for the buck. The money you'd spare on a cheaper
processor and motherboard might buy you a hard drive or a Windows license.

Anyway, as long as you only have one hard drive and one optical drive on
your current system, you can use them both if you get a system with one
PATA channel. As for me, I already had a PCI PATA controller that came
with a drive I got, so I had no excuse to buy a new hard drive. It's
nice to know my rig can finally support SATA, though!

And why are we still using Windows? ;-) I'm sorry...I'm from a computer
science background and not an EE one, but Ubuntu is my thing of choice
these days. Anyway, I've read that pretty much all of what you needed
is covered in Linux-supported software, but it's just a thought.

Not really. Some of the stuff in the lab only comes in Windows flavors
up to XP (no Vista). Plus I need to test some of my work on Windows so
it runs at clients who all use Windows (also no Vista there).

 

[JeffM]

There's too much Windows-only software.

*Any* is too much.

Okay, so you can probably run at least half of it in Wine,
but that largely defeats the point of using Linux.

"Any port in a storm."
It's not like there is a performance hit with W.I.N.E
(Wine is NOT an Emulator).
Actually, *more inclusive* is one reason why some folks
are going to Mac or Linux--and deserting Redmond.

For the uninitiated: "Equivalents"
(Any actual links in the *Windows* column are cross-platform.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cach...lication.you.used.to.use+The.original&strip=1

[...]the currently-open windows on my WinXP box are:
4 Explorer windows, Firefox, XEmacs (Cygwin), XEmacs
(running on the Linux box via Cygwin's X server), Pan and GIMP.

The cross-platform open-source empirical evidence you give
does seem to crush your original doom-and-gloom postulate
--which was already blunted by WINE.

....then there's "Support the vendors who support YOU".

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

Sometimes the challenge is how to un-bloat that without deleting that
one entry that was really important.

It's a serious problem for me. I find it difficult to charge a
customer about 45 minutes of shop time to so nothing more than
*REMOVE* software. Some uninstalls are really tedious the ugly. Some
versions of McAfee Anti-Everything is a good example of one that can
take forever to remove. An other part of the bloatware problem is
removing the archived software from the machine so that the hard disk
backup doesn't have to backup 4GBytes of junkware every time. If they
dumped it in the "recovery" partition, I wouldn't complain and
probably leave it there, but not on the main C: drive.

The rest of the time setting up a new machine goes into running
updates, installing various utilities, and general setup. Typical
time is about 3-4 hours elapsed time for a brand new machine. There's
no way I can bill a customer for all that on a new "pre-installed"
machine.

That's what I do and the USB then goes offsite. Brings up a question:
How reliable are those USB sticks?

I've seen one or two real failures out of perhaps several hundred in
use. I bought several cheapo packages of three, and had literally all
of them die on me within a few days. I'm not counting the
do-it-thyself user, that plugged the connector from the front panel
USB jack to the motherboard in backwards, and gave every USB device he
owned a reverse battery test. Wiped 2 of mine before I figured it
out. I now carry an LED light, which I use on home build machines.
The only other failures I've seen are from mechanical damage or
immersion. I would say they're quite reliable.

What I tell customers is to get two or more of these and use them
alternately. Typical is 5 of them, labelled Mon thru Fri. The
problem is that they are just too easy to trash the data on them. I
had a virus scanner declare that the Quickboosk QBB data file on one
device was a virus, and try to "fix" it. If it wasn't for the
previous few days backups on other USB memory things, the backup would
have been trashed. I also have the owner or bookkeeper take a full
backup (on DVD) home, just in case of fire, which will melt both the
computah and the backups.

Western Digital, hmm, that's not good to hear. I have a WDC MyBook LAN
drive here and it's purring quietly and reliably for a couple months
now. Hopefully it'll continue. They thoroughly botched the USB extender
by requiring to connect to some web company they bought, Mionet.
Probably some manager had to "justify" that acquisition. <banging head
on table>

It's epidemic. I buy the hard disk drives and USB adapter boxes
seperately and build my own. They're not as aesthetic, cool looking,
or aerodynamic as the designer packages, but they work well enough.
You might want to add a sticker on the WD drive with the warranty
expiration date, so that you have a target date to begin worrying.

 

[Ecnerwal]

Western Digital, hmm, that's not good to hear. I have a WDC MyBook LAN
drive here and it's purring quietly and reliably for a couple months
now. Hopefully it'll continue.

I bought 7 MyBooks (USB/FIrewire version) this fall. 3 smoked
(literally) as soon as they were plugged in. I'm not impressed.

 

[Rich Grise]

Oh no, definitely not. Seen too much DOA stuff.

I've found that they have a very good return policy - if something
doesn't work, they'll swap it out and sell the old one to somebody
else. ;-)

But, admittedly, taking stuff back can be time-consuming, and also
admittedly, I've never had them assemble a system for me - I've always
just bought components and assembled them myself.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

Why go cheap? Your time to hassle with cheap crap isn't worth the savings.

And LCD monitors rock!

The last few Dells I've bought have been increasing garbage; never again.

Yeah, but you're a leprechaun. Not all of us have a pot of gold to dip
into. )-;

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

Looks like you can use a new keyboard while you're shopping, mate ;-)

"Pvpry timp I strikp thp lpttpr 'p', I gpt an 'e'." ;-)

Cheers!
Rich