COMPUTER DIED
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Lovely thing happened this week. I got an email from my mother simply titled "COMPUTER DIED". I expected it would happen eventually, given the machine's age. It was a ~2006 HP machine that was still running XP (64-bit edition for some reason). With Office 2003. Just a little behind the times.
Anyway, the email explains that the machine powered down suddenly, and when she turned it back on, she got a message that said "CPU Failed". I'd never actually seen a CPU fail, except that one I melted a little, but figured, oh well, that was it, had to buy to new computer.
So on the way over, I stop by the computer store, do a little comparison shopping and by a new ~$500 desktop that should do just fine. And the latest version of Office. Take it back home to get things installed and set up.
The next day, I get over to my parent's house, power on the old machine, just out of curiosity. It shows me the BIOS screen on which it displays the CPU model. I thought that was a little odd that it could still identify the CPU. Then I saw the error message:
ERROR: CPU Fan has failed. Restarting to prevent damage to the CPU.
Now, there's a key word there that was missing from the email I got. The word was... fan! The fan failed! A fan only costs $10!
I pop off the side panel, vacuum out all the dust bunnies and poke at the CPU fan. It's a little stuck. Poke a little harder, and it pops free. It's stiff, the bearings are worn badly, but it can turn.
Power on the old machine again, and it starts up and seems to run fine. Fan will probably crap out again at some point, but it's working for the moment.
Lesson re-learned for the hundredth time: Never trust the user.
Epilogue: So now she wants a laptop, I think. But she would rarely take it anywhere. Maybe I should get something with a dock? Thoughts?
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@Bort Depending on how tech-savvy she is, if you get her a dock she might just never take it out of there, thinking that it's some sort of base.
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@bb36e said in COMPUTER DIED:
Depending on how tech-savvy she is, if you get her a dock she might just never take it out of there, thinking that it's some sort of base.
Do they still make docks that aren't just USB hub-looking things?
Even the most newbish user wouldn't look at this:
http://www.diamondmm.com/ds3900-diamond-ultra-dock-dual-video-usb-docking-station.html
And think it's part of their laptop.
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@Bort said in COMPUTER DIED:
~$500 desktop that should do just fine.
Y'all looking way to high on the shelf if that's the kind of machine you'd give your mother.
I wouldn't go much higher than $200 if at all possible, and she'd be none the wiser...@Bort said in COMPUTER DIED:
missing from the email I got.
This is why I instruct all my
family membersclients: Don't tell me what you think you saw, use your phone that I showed you how to take a picture with and send me a picture of the problem!Case in point:
GrandmaElderly lady client spend about three pages of texts regaling me about how her computer was broken and clicking things made a weird message appear. The problem:Right-clickingcontext menu activating with the mouse. Something I would have caught on to instantly with a picture, whereas I had to sleep on the phone (and in person) while she tried explaining all the things she was trying to do up until the problem for literally two hours.@Bort said in COMPUTER DIED:
poke at the CPU fan. It's a little stuck. Poke a little harder, and it pops free. It's stiff, the bearings are worn badly, but it can turn.
Pre-emptively you should have replaced it, but I'm sure you probably don't carry CPU fans with you, eh?
@Bort said in COMPUTER DIED:
So now she wants a laptop, I think. But she would rarely take it anywhere. Maybe I should get something with a dock? Thoughts?
Dock will probably be too confusing. If she's not going to be moving it (and you can't convince her of the utility of a non-portable (i.e. not expected to be moved regularly) computer, get a cheap one she can try out, and if it's enough it's enough, but if she finds herself needing more, then help do comparison shopping in person to help her determine her actual operating needs.
@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
look at this:
That's not really a dock, it's more like a port replicator, but I can see how marketing drones could make such a mistake.
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@Tsaukpaetra How is it not a dock? You plug the laptop into it and it provides extra monitor, keyboard, mouse, network connections.
I know they used to make docks your laptop either slides into or sits on top of, but I haven't even seen one of those in like 5 years. It's all USB3 docks now.
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@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
@Tsaukpaetra How is it not a dock? You plug the laptop into it and it provides extra monitor, keyboard, mouse, network connections.
I know they used to make docks your laptop either slides into or sits on top of, but I haven't even seen one of those in like 5 years. It's all USB3 docks now.
A port replicator is what it says on the tin: It provides more ports for your stuff to plug into. A dock (as you mentioned) typically a case-fitting unit meant to be stationary and (more often than not) customized to a particular laptop or brand of laptops.
The difference is that a dock is typically "closer" hardware wise to the laptop's motherboard than, say, a USB hub, and often contain(ed) more stuff inside, such as an expansion bay for extra hard drives, batteries, or possibly even a PCI device.
In modern times, a port replicator can serve many of these functions (add a USB hard drive there, USB DisplayPort monitor device here, etc.), but it's all driven as just another USB peripheral, and loses the "base unit" design that a dock would have. Essentially, it's a glorified USB hub.
A similar comparison would be, A dock is to port replicator as an internal hard drive is to USB flash drive. The end result is the basically the same (you get another hard drive visible on the system), but in reality it's not exactly.
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@Tsaukpaetra Plerp plerp plerp it's a fucking dock.
The manufacturer of the device calls it a dock. They have officially decreed it is a dock. This company has 55 employees all of whom have one of those things, and all of us (including the IT guys who purchased them) call them docks.
If it quacks like a dock and it walks like a dock it's a duck. Er. Dock.
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@Tsaukpaetra It was a rhetorical question and I reject your answer as being mega-retard++.
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@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
It was a rhetorical question and I reject your answer as being mega-retard++.
Forgive me if I can't read your mind. Also, I never called you a retard.
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@blakeyrat I was thinking more along the lines of those Lenovo docks. You know, the big slabs of plastic that are annoying to move. Much like a naval dock, the mobile laptop ‘ship’ is meant to enter (dock with) the immobile, larger dock.
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@blakeyrat They make actual computers like that! (CF, if you dare, @end's blog post a few months ago.) I'd buy one in a heartbeat if I could find a good use for it, or if they had better gaming chops.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
Pre-emptively you should have replaced it, but I'm sure you probably don't carry CPU fans with you, eh?
The nice thing about living in a big city is those are easy to come by. I can think of four--no, five--stores in a 20-minute drive where I could pick up a CPU fan.
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@FrostCat said in COMPUTER DIED:
They make actual computers like that!
Yeah, I'm building my next fleet off of them. The look like a slightly-flattened battery pack (and have the same micro-USB port for power and 2 USB ports for "power" as well).
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@Bort My folks' computers can't die, they're Macs.
/troll
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@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
@Tsaukpaetra Plerp plerp plerp it's a fucking dock.
for some reason this almost made me laugh
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@fbmac said in COMPUTER DIED:
for some reason this almost made me laugh
Let it out, it's your inner talking!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
Yeah, I'm building my next fleet off of them.
ALIExpress has about 50 billion models. I'm tempted to buy one anyway--I could get one that's almost better than my work machine; I'd just install all the software I need, and they carry the fucker home if I felt like working from home. It'd actually be more convenient than a laptop!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
The difference is that a dock is typically "closer" hardware wise to the laptop's motherboard than, say, a USB hub
Which is why they stopped making them. Because this means you need one dock model per laptop model and that's just unsustainable.
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@anonymous234 said in COMPUTER DIED:
Which is why they stopped making them. Because this means you need one dock model per laptop model and that's just unsustainable.
Agreed. If only there was a way to standardize such a connection...
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@FrostCat said in COMPUTER DIED:
@blakeyrat They make actual computers like that! (CF, if you dare, @end's blog post a few months ago.) I'd buy one in a heartbeat if I could find a good use for it, or if they had better gaming chops.
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@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
Do they still make docks that aren't just USB hub-looking things?
Yes.
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@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
Plerp plerp plerp it's a fucking dock.
No it isn't. Stop raping technical language.
@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
The manufacturer of the device calls it a dock. They have officially decreed it is a dock.
If they called it an elephant, would you say that it is an elephant?
@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
This company has 55 employees all of whom have one of those things, and all of us (including the IT guys who purchased them) call them docks.
Your company is staffed by retarded people.
@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
If it quacks like a dock and it walks like a dock it's a duck. Er. Dock.
It does nothing like a dock. It is not a dock. Nor a duck.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
Also, I never called you a retard.
I have, and did. @blakeyrat is a retard for thinking that is a dock. It is a port replicator.
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@anonymous234 said in COMPUTER DIED:
Which is why they stopped making them. Because this means you need one dock model per laptop model and that's just unsustainable.
The new Dell docks are more universal. Depending on the layout of your laptop, there may or may not be an insert that snaps on. One dock fits a shitton of laptops.
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@Polygeekery the plerp plerp plerp argument was better. It's a dock then.
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@anonymous234 said in COMPUTER DIED:
Because this means you need one dock model per laptop model
Nah, more one generation of chipsets.
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@Dreikin That post, yeah. The Skull Canyon box he references is something of a white elephant.
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@Polygeekery said in COMPUTER DIED:
If they called it an elephant, would you say that it is an elephant?
Yes.
@Polygeekery said in COMPUTER DIED:
Your company is staffed by retarded people.
Undoubtedly.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
@fbmac said in COMPUTER DIED:
It's a dock then.
Nope. This is a dock:
This is a dock!
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@dkf said in COMPUTER DIED:
@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
@fbmac said in COMPUTER DIED:
It's a dock then.
Nope. This is a dock:
This is a dock!
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@FrostCat said in COMPUTER DIED:
@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
Pre-emptively you should have replaced it, but I'm sure you probably don't carry CPU fans with you, eh?
The nice thing about living in a big city is those are easy to come by. I can think of four--no, five--stores in a 20-minute drive where I could pick up a CPU fan.
The nice thing about living in a small packed city is those are easy and cheap to come by. I can reach one store within 5 footsteps from ground floor of my building, to get one with HKD$50 (around USD$6.4).
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@cheong said in COMPUTER DIED:
@FrostCat said in COMPUTER DIED:
@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
Pre-emptively you should have replaced it, but I'm sure you probably don't carry CPU fans with you, eh?
The nice thing about living in a big city is those are easy to come by. I can think of four--no, five--stores in a 20-minute drive where I could pick up a CPU fan.
The nice thing about living in a small packed city is those are easy and cheap to come by. I can reach one store within 5 footsteps from ground floor of my building, to get one with HKD$50 (around USD$6.4).
The nice thing about living in a hoarder's house is those are easy and cheap to come by. I can reach one pile of them by moving 3 stacks of old newspapers and digging out a pile of headless Barbie dolls.
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@boomzilla said in COMPUTER DIED:
The nice thing about living in a hoarder's house is those are easy and cheap to come by. I can reach one pile of them by moving 3 stacks of old newspapers and digging out a pile of headless Barbie dolls.
The nice thing about living in a somewhat conservative country is that those are easy and cheap to come by. I can order one from a number of websites, and have it delivered to the nearest post office (opening hours: 09:00 to 11:00 and 14:30 to 18:00, monday to friday), where I will never be able to pick it up because they never are open when I'd have time to go there.
Home delivery is even worse -- it'll be delivered some time between 11:00 and 16:30 on a work day, or you can pay extra for saturday delivery between 07:00 and 11:00. Fuck you, I'm not going to pay extra to get up early on a saturday for the off-chance that you will deliver some shit during a time normal people would consider early night.
</rant>
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@cvi The nice thing about living in Canada is that I can order it online from our nice neighbor south of us for about USD $6 with free shipping (anywhere in US of A), get charged USD $20 for shipping (because raisins), then wait about 4 weeks for it to clear customs. Then realize I was billed CAN $40.
Thanks Free Trade Agreement !
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@cheong said in COMPUTER DIED:
small packed city
I don't know if I'd want to live in a small packed city, though.
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@TimeBandit said in COMPUTER DIED:
Thanks Free Trade Agreement !
At least we Americans can feel good knowing we're not the only ones who've been screwed by that.
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@FrostCat said in COMPUTER DIED:
At least we Americans can feel good knowing we're not the only ones who've been screwed by that.
I always thought that the American definition of "Free Trade" was :
It's OK to give a little if you receive a lot ;)
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@TimeBandit said in COMPUTER DIED:
It's OK to give a little if you receive a lot
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@FrostCat said in COMPUTER DIED:
I don't know if I'd want to live in a small packed city, though.
No, you don't.
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@Bort If the CPU actually failed, you wouldn't see any messages.
@Tsaukpaetra said in COMPUTER DIED:
@fbmac said in COMPUTER DIED:
It's a dock then.
Nope. This is a dock:
Beastiality's still illegal, I thought?
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@anotherusername Only in countries run by prudes.
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@anotherusername said in COMPUTER DIED:
Beastiality's still illegal, I thought?
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@PJH Until very recently (2006), Washington State was grey.
... don't look up why the law was changed. shudder.
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@blakeyrat said in COMPUTER DIED:
... don't look up why the law was changed. shudder.
We've talked about Kenneth Pinyan on here before, and you were a little less reticent last time about the reason for the change.
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@PJH Thanks Mr. Super Memory Man.
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@PJH I don't know how to feel about the thread being taken in this direction, but I wonder what caused that particular distribution of laws. There doesn't appear to be a strong relationship between region and the severity of the offense.
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@Bort said in COMPUTER DIED:
I wonder what caused that particular distribution of laws.
What was a hot topic when the relevant legislators had some spare time?
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@Bort said in COMPUTER DIED:
I wonder what caused that particular distribution of laws.
I can't speak for the rest of the country, but as a denizen of the Midwest I would be willing to wager that Kentucky and West Virginia kept it legal because...well if you ever went to those states you would fucking know. Goddamn, I love the city of Louisville, but when you leave that city you go straight from pleasant city to...
Squeal Like a Pig - Deliverance (3/9) Movie CLIP (1972) HD – 04:05
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