Another useless computer company.

[simple_gifts]

My dislike of Dell is well documented; this stems primarily from a series of sales incidents I'm not at liberty to discuss...

Add to that list, HP. My friend picked up an Athlon 4200 dual core for free from a relative and now it needs to have the data recovered due to a windows problem (what are the chances of that?) She doesn't back stuff up

So I figure I'll put in another SATA drive, install Ubuntu and recover the data on the Windows disk. Not. BIOS won't recognize a 200Gb SATA drive.

So I drag the computer home from New Bedford MA and figure I'll remove the SATA drive and attach it to my running Ubuntu machine. Problem is, the back side of the computer case is riveted on and there are set screws holding the SATA drive in. All I need is a 180 degree phillips screw driver.

New plan, try to boot Knoppix and recover the data over the network to my already running machine.....

I guess the new plan to sell PCs is to make the ones produced too frustrating and expensive to work on, that it is cheaper to go out an buy a new one.

I have always pieced my PCs together from premium components and they tend to last longer and are more servicable that anything produced by the big Mfgs.

-T

 

[HTSS_TR]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts

....
I guess the new plan to sell PCs is to make the ones produced too frustrating and expensive to work on, that it is cheaper to go out and buy a new one.


This is exactly their plan to sell more PC's every year. If it is easy to fix with low cost parts, who's going to buy new PC's ?

 

[XS650]

Quote:
So I drag the computer home from New Bedford MA and figure I'll remove the SATA drive and attach it to my running Ubuntu machine. Problem is, the back side of the computer case is riveted on and there are set screws holding the SATA drive in. All I need is a 180 degree phillips screw driver.


Mr. Rivet, Meet Mr. Drill. Problem solved.

 

[Vspec]

...Pop face plate off, use quick release tabs and remove hard-drive.

All HP's are easy to disassemble down to barbones.

Also, floppy or USB flashdrive new updated bios, shouldnt have a problem with any sized HD after that.

 

[mormit]

Originally Posted By: Vspec
...Pop face plate off, use quick release tabs and remove hard-drive.

All HP's are easy to disassemble down to barbones.

Also, floppy or USB flashdrive new updated bios, shouldnt have a problem with any sized HD after that.


My HP and others I've worked with are easy to take apart. Only tool needed might be a #2 Phillips. This riveting in the HD sounds like a dissapointing new trend. Like auto mfgr's requiring a special tool to do routine work.

 

[williar]

My 3-month-old HP Pavilion comes apart by undoing a single thumbscrew. Same as my 10-year-old Dell.

Old owners/tech manuals may be available online from HP or Dell.

 

[Cutehumor]

What's wrong with dell? I've never owned a dell but people keep saying to stay away but don't give a reason. Whenever I check the pcs on ebay, dells get the most bids/money. I don't get it.

 

[tenderloin]

I have a Dell and a HP at work. Two of my sons have Dell laptops. My youngest son and oldest daughter have Toshiba laptops, my wife a Dell and Apple laptop.

I use a HP desktop at home. ALL have been tremendous. No problems what so ever. The oldest is 4 years, the newest over 1 year.

Highly recommended!

 

[eljefino]

I've got a newer slimcase optiplex that the motherboard capacitors all started bulging after a couple years, making the thing pretty flaky.

Brought home a 10 year old surplus optiplex from work with a "standard" 20 pin ATX power connector... but unique power supply pinout and no warning.

 

[MONKEYMAN]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
I've got a newer slimcase optiplex that the motherboard capacitors all started bulging after a couple years, making the thing pretty flaky.

Brought home a 10 year old surplus optiplex from work with a "standard" 20 pin ATX power connector... but unique power supply pinout and no warning.


I bought 4 Optiplex computers off Ebay. One died right away but it was one that was know to have problems with the capacitors. Fortunately, it was replaced for free. I like Dell due to their support website and used machines/parts are plentiful on Ebay for a reasonable cost.

 

[OVERKILL]

HP and DELL systems and laptops give me lots of work. I'll leave it at that.

 

[tenderloin]

While you would know your repair rate.... the fact that between Dell and HP the high number and overall percent of computers sold compared to the rest....would have a little something to do with numbers seen for repair

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: tenderloin
While you would know your repair rate.... the fact that between Dell and HP the high number and overall percent of computers sold compared to the rest....would have a little something to do with numbers seen for repair


Well, of clients serviced, the largest portion own ASUS, 2nd are ACER, 3rd are HP, 4th are Toshiba, 5th are DELL and 6th are Fujitsu.

While market share may give a certain picture "overall"; when you've sold 90% of the systems you service, you are no longer looking at the same picture. I don't sell HP, nor DELL (nor Toshiba for that matter) so those systems are from other sources.

The HP Pavilion AMD laptops have been the most problematic in my experience.

 

[simple_gifts]

ok, update;Instead of removing the corrupted windows disk I decided just to recover the data and use the HP restore function apparently available via bios/hidden partition.

I booted knoppix from CD, mounted the Windoze partition and safely copied all the data off to my linux box via tar/ssh; Now I have a 12Gb file will all the Documents and Settings just waiting to be restored (even the white space in the filenames)

Used the HP restore function, took 15 minutes to reimage the drive, (very nice BTW) a few reboots; did windows update with 3 updates, reboot, and then downloaded SP3. Applied SP3 and boom, machine will no longer boot.... (displays same behavior as the problem I was trying to fix)

MS OS/MS updates/MS SP=no boot, and I never even used the machine.

I'll probably head over to the HP site to see if there are issues with this SP with model a1355c; more likely this is a new candidate for Ubuntu. This machine has been down for about 8 months and the owner has been using a 750MHz duron running Ubuntu as a fill in.

I make a rule not to spend more than a college try to recover windows machines and thankfully my friends know this...

With 1.5Gb RAM/4200X2 AMD processor/Asus MB, this is quite a nice machine.

-T

 

[kc8adu]

i love dell!
gx/sx 260,270,280 and now 620 bad caps.
i have now recapped over 1000 dell boards from that series.
getting plenty of the poweredge server boards in too.
as for the hp they are very easy to strip down.most folks forget to pop off the face.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: kc8adu
i love dell!
gx/sx 260,270,280 and now 620 bad caps.
i have now recapped over 1000 dell boards from that series.
getting plenty of the poweredge server boards in too.


That's scary! LOL!

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Yeah, those models all suck. As do the equivalent HP models. And other mfr's, too. Any PC builder that used those caps is dealing with the warranty issues.

Any of the GX260-280 models or HP D530 ones that croak are replaced with new PCs. Any of the GX620 models are reparied under warranty, then taken out of service & replaced with a new PC, usually the so-far-so-good 755 model.

We see a GX620 die every week or two lately.

 

[OVERKILL]

Just had a Pavilion dv6000 die today. Video card refuses to function for any length of time unless it's in safe mode. AMD Turion system.

HP has an extended warranty fix for this "issue", since it's incredibly wide-spread.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01087277&lc=en&cc=us

There's the info.

 

[1sttruck]

Our 98 Pavillion finally died last year, a home PC that we used for homework and the Internet. It was running XP pro and Office year something. My 2000 IBM laptop from work died a couple of weeks ago due to a hard disc fail. My primary Dell desktop at work died a month ago, another hard disc fail, one I've had since something like 2004. It's been used hard as I do a lot of custom querys in different databases, make data available for people, etc., and the disc seems to get a good workout. My wife's Toshiba laptop from work lost a hard drive a few months back.

The machines above seem fairly durable to me, but as always they need to be viewed as only good for temporary data storage.

 

[occupant]

I have owned:

Apple

Mac Plus
Mac SE
Mac IIx
Mac LCIII
Mac Quadra 610
Power Mac 6500
Powerbook Duo 280c
Powerbook Duo 270c
iMac G3/400 DV
Power Mac G3/300
Power Mac G4/400

PC

Epson Equity I+ (XT - 8MHz)
IBM PS/2 55SX (386SX - 20MHz)
IBM PS/2 77 (486DX - 33MHz)
HP Vectra (Pentium I-90MHz)
IBM NetVista (Celeron - 500MHz)
HP Vectra (Celeron - 400MHz)
Dell GX1 (several, mostly Pentium 3-667MHz) Qty 3
Generic Homemade Box (Pentium 3 - 1GHz)
Dell Inspiron laptop (Pentium 3 - 933MHz)
Gateway 600YGR laptop (Pentium 4 - 1.5GHz)
Gateway ML6230 laptop (Celeron M - 1.6GHz) Qty 2
eMachines eTower 600is (Celeron - 600MHz)
Dell Optiplex GX260 (Pentium 4 - 1.8GHz) Qty 3

I will agree wholeheartedly with you about the Celeron HP I had. The P1/90 box was PERFECT to me. Not only did it run Win95 cleanly and do everything I needed it to do, but it was a free computer and all I paid for was a PCI Ethernet card and an optical PS2 mouse. The IBM computers I had were skads worse than the HP or Dell systems. My favorite PC computer was the one I built with a friend of mine, the P3-1GHz. My wife used it for over a year and loved it.

My favorite Mac was the G4/400. I'd get another but it'd be too slow for me to use day-to-day. The GX260 Dell is my current surfing machine and I use one of the Gateway ML6230s when I'm away from home or need to be online somewhere other than my desk.

I would not purchase another Dell laptop. I would also not purchase an IBM laptop based on the Thinkpad A20 a friend of mine owns, although he paid $5 for it at a garage sale, it has been a constant source of headaches for him.

At this point, the GX260 is my machine and I would only purchase another one of these. It's small, it's powerful, and it does everything I need it to do. The GX270 model can take up to a 3GHz P4, so when this one needs replaced, I'll get one with that spec in the midtower case, max out the RAM, add a video card, and enjoy glorious 32-bit speed.