Every mail room of a large company probably still has them. When you are mailing out 10,000 bills a month, you still have to fold them and then stuff them into envelopes. I remember in the pre-internet days seeing ads for making big money stuffing envelops.
Computer peeps, new laptop advice
- Thread starter Anon9283
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my local TV computer guy noted MOST manufacturers buy the internals from the same place, BUT of course assembly is KEY!! NOT a computer geek but replaced 2 hard drives EZE on an older bigger 17" Dell, not so much on a smaller 15" but got it done. the smaller thinner the computer the harder or impossible to repair or upgrade
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Foxconn is a major producer of PCB's for a variety of different manufacturers (they produce the iPhone for example) but that in no way means the quality is the same. Foxconn produces whatever the customer wants. Now, there are some that do their own, like ASUS and Gigabyte for example, but the list is indeed reasonably short. Also, HP as an example of an OEM that sources from different PCB/motherboard manufacturers, has sourced from all three of the companies I just mentioned and a few others, so just because one HP laptop has a Foxconn board doesn't mean that a different model number does too.
There are the big 4 ODM (original design manufacturer), aka contract manufacturers, in electronics. Most large American / European companies build their stuff by contracting them. All 4 of them are Taiwan head quartered, but with a majority of them made in China.
Compal
Quanta
Foxconn
Pegatron
I might have them mixed up or something like that, but these are the big 4 ODM.
Foxconn is not only a contract manufacturer but they are also make a lot of little parts, PCBs, ribbons, stickers, plastics, etc. They can live with a 6% profit margin on top of labor cost and still be profitable, because you most likely buy their little parts when you use their services. Even if you use Pegatron you end up with Foxconn parts and Pegatron cannot sustain a 6% profit margin on top of labor cost.
There are other manufacturers specialized in more focused area. For example Kingston and LiteOn also contract manufacture OEM memories and SSDs for other OEMs and their retail brands. MSI / Tyan / Gigabyte etc also do contract manufacturing of motherboard for OEMs. Cooler Master do contract manufacturing of OEM CPU coolers, etc.
Assembly wise they are really similar. Brand design the products or license them from another company to tell ODM what to build, they will eat small amount of yield loss (98.5%) as their fault but beyond that they will stop production until the brand or where they bought their design / parts from sort out the issues. That way they have the incentive to get things working optimally but the production won't get hit for a bad design.
The biggest concern they typically have is the inventory, who they buy from and how much active inventory they need to keep on hand (and lose money on when price drop). When there's a bad batch of parts if you ask ODM to buy and hold them who get the blame? When you ask them to hold 3 months inventories on the rare exotic 16 layer chips that nobody else in the industry use and then suddenly you cancel the order who eats the cost, etc.
Usually reliability is a design problem, manufacturing is pretty consistent with mature yield unless you push the design too far and you are the first design to actually try it. You cannot blame Foxconn or China if things break, they have been building things that are super reliable if design right, but if your design fail early and only you fail early, the odd is the design has problem. It will be the same result even if you make the in the US right in the same lab with the engineers in the Silicon Valley.
I wouldn't get a consumer grade laptop. But a Dell Latitude (while pricey) will definitely give you many years of service. I still think the Latitudes are the best built laptops on the market at the moment. The Dell business warranty / customer service is a lot better than their consumer warranty and CS.
I work for a small company and we have one!
I have no clue how to fix it either.
I work for a small company and we have one!
I have no clue how to fix it either.
If I were to buy a new Windows laptop today, I'd have a hard time NOT buying one of the business class Lenovos, in particular a T series. They aren't necessarily the "sexiest" models around, but everything I've seen of them indicates that they are still every bit as well built and high quality as the Thinkpads of old.
Plus, they can be optioned out with enough high-end options(especially GPUs) to make this Mac user jealous, and they haven't ditched ports/connectivity.
Plus, they can be optioned out with enough high-end options(especially GPUs) to make this Mac user jealous, and they haven't ditched ports/connectivity.
