Low end desktop for EE tasks?

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.

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

Yeah, I work off my C:, and then schedule a batch-file backup with

Michael

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 ;) :p

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 ...

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).

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.

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.

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:

I got the option of 25 blank cdrom's or a 15% discount on future purchases from IBM. Swell.

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:

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.

GIGABYTE GA-945GCMX-S2 MATX Motherboard $53.56

Intel Dual-Core Processor E2140 1.6GHz LGA775 CPU $67.47

STT DDR2-667 1GB/64x8 S-RIGID Memory $26.27

EVGA nVidia GeForce 7200GS 128MB PCI-E Video Card $35.02

Western Digital WD1600AAJS 160GB SATA2 Hard Drive $51.70

SonyNEC Optiarc DDU1615 16X DVD-ROM $18.03

Logitech Deluxe 250 Desktop Keyboard & Optical Mouse $11.85

iMicro CA-IMJ230L 375W 20+4pin ATX Mid Tower Case $20.60

Microsoft Windows XP Home W/SP2B $91.67

======= $376.17

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

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.

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

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.

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 :-)

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).

"Any port in a storm." 8-) 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.)

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".

Joerg hath wroth:

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Thanks, Rich

...

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

Cheers! Rich