On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:03:13 -0700 "H. S. Teoh" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 08:36:26AM -0700, Sean Kelly wrote: > > On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:48 AM, Walter Bright > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > The most common failure I've had are the power supplies, they're > > > still as bad today as in the 80's. > > > > There are good power supplies, they just don't come in pre-built > > computers because they're expensive. I think the same could be said > > of products from any era. > > Yeah, I've learned the hard way not to trust pre-assembled PCs. They > may have one or two good components listed in the ad just to hook you, > but usually many other parts (that people don't usually pay attention > to) are crap. PSUs are one of them. Nowadays I only ever buy parts, > and assemble my own PCs. Things tend to last much longer this way. > I think the last time I bought a fully pre-assembled desktop, it was a a 486. I got into the habit of building from parts just because that was the easiest way to get *exactly* what I wanted (Yea, I'm a control freak). And it's not difficult to do either, it's not like building a car from parts (Although my large hands/fingers are admittedly a liability when digging around a PC's internals). I wish it was reasonable to do the same with laptops. Unfortunately the necessary compactness tends to work against that, so you can only go with pre-built, and therefore there's *always* compromises you have to make. I mean, I like my laptop overall, but I could give you a whole laundry list of my annoyances with it. But it was the best I could find (in my price range anyway). > (Same thing goes for software... one thing I really like about Linux > is that you can replace parts freely without voiding warranties or > violating EULAs or wrestling with straitjacketed software licenses or > fighting with gratuitous incompatibilities between software not > written by the same people, that sorta thing. And usually OSS > software comes with alternatives for everything, should the default > one turn out to be crap. (Well OK, sometimes all the alternatives are > crap too, but that's another story.)) > Yup, same here. Like the "Play/Pause" keyboard button on a Win7 machine: Windows insists on taking it over - completely. Not much you can really do about it. And MS doesn't care, so you're SOL. They *could* have offered a simple "Do what when that button is pressed?" setting, but they didn't. But OTOH, sometimes the lack of standardization on Linux can be a pain, and sometimes you can't find a nice alternative (for example, I have yet to find a linux file manager I like, and I've tried LOTS of them).
