13 Aug
2007
13 Aug
'07
3:59 a.m.
On 12 Aug 2007, at 17:16, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 12 Aug 2007 at 13:10, Stroller wrote:
Indeed. I have used these for the same purpose the last 4 or 5 years.
I was using a 400mhz but upgraded to a 700mhz one which a customer
was throwing out; between them they have given me my highest Linux
uptimes. The low-profile PIII Compaqs are _lovely_ - thought has
obviously been put into their design; slotting drives in & out is
very quick and easy and it is convenient to access the PCI card slots
through the removable risers.
When I got that workstation home I was *so*
pleased with it. I wiped
the dust off it with a damp cloth and stood back and admired it, then
started taking it apart. (That old monkey curiosity, eh?) I was so
impressed with how solid & well-made it was - each piece of FAR
better quality than the commodity PC hardware I was familiar with
(despite having paid ?115 for one of the first 56k PCI modems).
...
At one time, there *were* high-quality PCs being produced for the
commercial use market. Even some of the old Deskpros were pretty
well constucted. I still use a 600MHz P3 as my mail server. There may still be
such animals--but I haven't bought a new PC in years.
I work on PCs for a living. I don't think I've come across any as
nice as the Deskpros, but I guess that doesn't mean there aren't any
in production. I've come across some which are nearly as good - I
find the build quality of Dell desktops to be surprisingly adequate
and a customer bought a Fujitsu perhaps 6 months ago which had a
worthy design involving a hinged power supply. Having the drives on
quickly removable rails is common on PCs aimed at the corporate market.
The reason I didn't mention this in my previous post was that I
hadn't seen those PCs when I got my SGI 6 or 7 years ago. Beige boxes
built by the local PC shop - and using the nastiest components - seem
to be much less common now than they were a decade ago and most of
the PCs I see are branded and come from a factory which must produce
hundreds or thousands of PCs each day. Many still use the cheapest
and nastiest components - Packard Hell & eMachines spring to mind -
but others (like Dell & the Fujitsu I mentioned; I think the most
recent HP / Compaq I've seen was a model of perhaps 4 years ago, a
Pentium 4) do start to approach the build-quality of days of yore;
they seem to be manufactured with the corporate market in mind.
But let's face it--today's consumer PCs by and
large are designed for
a year or two of operating life. They're essentially disposable
items. People upgrade even when they don't have to--and sometimes
the upgrade path is forced by software bloat (but I'm not going to
climb onto that horse right now).
Indeed, this is true, although corporate shops don't seem so
affected by this. They do still seem to budget for better quality PCs.
If Apple wants to over-engineer their consumer
products, then good
for them. I predict that the trend won't last, however.
Zane Healy has addressed this very well indeed, and I don't think I
can add to his comments.
Stroller.