On 10 Feb 2006 at 18:24, A-NO-NE Music wrote: > ThinkPad is the only laptop I am comfortable carrying around. I have > two here, and they are built like a tank, similar to Lombard/Pismo, > but not bulky as DELL laptops. Sony BIOS, once I was having a problem > (forgot what it was), which should had been cleared by power cycling. > No go, so I called them. They told me that I have to remove internal > battery to make it forget the bad command. Very unusual design.
Actually, that's quite a common solution to any number of problems in laptops. For instance, once there was a software power off in Windows/Windows PCs (i.e., the Windows shutdown could tell the hardware to turn off), this became a major problem whenever the OS would hang at shut down. And pulling the power was sometimes the only way to force the shutdown (this was a major problem with the early versions of Win98, for instance). On a laptop, pulling the power plug is not sufficient, and you have to pull the battery, too. I've done it dozens of times, though never for a BIOS incompatibility. > I had been a big IBM fan. PC200 was a rock star. Granted, they had > bad ones, like the 1st gen Aptiva. But the major benefit on IBM is > they make PC with widest compatibilities. After all, they were the > one speced the PC. They didn't sell well since they don't put > freebies, but in other word, their PC didn't come with full of shitty > software that later causes problems. Well, my praise of IBM only extended to the ThinkPad lines. After c. 1990, I really don't think IBM ever produced a decent desktop PC. They were poorly designed with poorly performing components (especially doggedly slow hard drives) and hig prices in comparison to the competition. So I always say IBM as the mirror image of Dell -- with Dell, desktops were great, laptops sucked, with IBM, it was the opposite. > After IBM is gone, I am now forced to buy DELL just because there is > nothing better out there. I don't trust factory installed anything so > I format and install everything by myself the day I receive computer. > This is true for both Mac and PC. To my surprise, the DVD Player > software DELL preinstalled isn't provided on the installer CD. I > called them. They told me I have to pay for it!! You might consider going with the Optiplex line from Dell, then. They are designed for large enterprise customers and with the idea that a particular model will be stable for a very long time (3-4 years). But they also ship with NOTHING pre-installed. This makes them wonderful to set up if you've already got your software licenses. But there is something of a price premium for them (depending on where in the product life cycle you buy). That is offset in a large organization by the vastly reduced support costs (if you're buying 2000 identical PCs, they become fungible, which makes replacing them much cheaper). -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
