Uncreative Labs

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 5:27 pm

I'm getting sick of dealing with them. They push them too hard, they run too hot and are unstable. The die processes are so small now that chips are just too fragile, you look at one wrong and they die on you. Hard drives are becoming less reliable than the old floppy disks were because they are trying to pack so much on them and make them go so fast. The parts are all mass marketed crap, even ATI, because they know in a few months all the fanboys are just going to toss them out and buy faster ones anyway. My old IBM XT is sitting over here, never crashes and after 20 years still works perfectly. I know I'm babbling but I just lost yet another PC and I'm getting tired of it all. Too expensive for such cheaply made garbage. I think I'm going to buy another old Deskpro and be done with it. At least they never stop working and don't sound like Hoover vacuum cleaners. If I want to play modern games I'll just get a console.

Evil or Very Mad

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 5:49 pm

Don't buy cheap computers.

You want "Enterprise" or "Business" class machines. I've got one that has dual processors. If you drop that computer on your foot, look out! It's a broken bone for sure. The computer, OTOH, will just suffer superficial damage.

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 5:58 pm

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe, Seagate 7200.8, Radeon 9800 Pro, Corsair XMS RAM, etc. I bought the very best I could find at the time I built it. It's dead anyway though. I never had these problems back in the 440BX days. Seems like things were made a lot better back then, and weren't pushed beyond their limits just to please the sheeple who have to have the fastest. Oh well...

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

I think I'm going to buy another old Deskpro and be done with it. At least they never stop working and don't sound like Hoover vacuum cleaners. If I want to play modern games I'll just get a console.

Yep, I like my PC's American-style and not Chinese as well. Realize though that electronics manufacturing (not just computers but ALL segments of electronics manufacturing) has gone largely offshore; you'll be hard pressed to find any components made here (except maybe a hard drive).

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I really agree with the mass marketed shit. I've been bitching about it for years. It's not just computers though, it's pretty much everything these days. That's why I like to buy a lot of my stuffed used. I've been running the same system for five years now, and I have no intention of upgrading. I'm going to let the damn thing go until it fries or until software won't run on it. That brings me to another very important point. What the hell is the point of having a reliable machine these days if the software is all junk. All I do is use the internet, write documents, watch movies and look at pictures. Maybe a little chatting now and then. Despite all that, Bill Gates still manages to fuck it all up. Some people claim that Apple has a better platform. It may be true to some extent, but it's really headed in the same direction...to mass marked garbage. It's perfectly understandable that the companies need to appeal to the sheeple to make $$$, but would it be so damn hard to offer a premium line of products? I'm not talking about raw speed improvements, but some manufacturing quality improvement. It would probably cost too much however. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to manufacture an XT or an AT these days. They had retail tags between $5k-$10k back in the day. Just think of what that would cost in 2005 dollars!!! Anyway, computers are evil and a waste of money. I try to spend as little on my PC as possible. Most of my spare $$$ goes into my hobby, which could be any number of my vintage systems. I probably could have had a new car for all the money I've spent on my hobby.

P.S.
American made electronics are one of the few things that americans can do properly.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

...Unless of course we're talking about automobile electronics...

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

Anonymous wrote:

I'm getting sick of dealing with them. They push them too hard, they run too hot and are unstable. The die processes are so small now that chips are just too fragile, you look at one wrong and they die on you. Hard drives are becoming less reliable than the old floppy disks were because they are trying to pack so much on them and make them go so fast. The parts are all mass marketed crap, even ATI, because they know in a few months all the fanboys are just going to toss them out and buy faster ones anyway. My old IBM XT is sitting over here, never crashes and after 20 years still works perfectly. I know I'm babbling but I just lost yet another PC and I'm getting tired of it all. Too expensive for such cheaply made garbage. I think I'm going to buy another old Deskpro and be done with it. At least they never stop working and don't sound like Hoover vacuum cleaners. If I want to play modern games I'll just get a console.

Evil or Very Mad

Amen. I've come to the point of not even upgrading my stuff. Heck, if I'd stop playing all the high-falutin' games I still play (GTA2, The Sims, and Robot Arena), I would probably still be running a Pentium 200MMX in a standard AT case, or something even "slower". Instead of buying new, I just took my old AT, cut it up, threw a server grade motherboard in there, a PIII CPU, and a huge mass of RAM, and a $50 new NVIDIA video card, and have the following "dances circles around brand new stuff" computer below......and I spent around $500 over 5 years. I hate the way modern stuff looks myself, I want a TOOL not a TOY! I've had enough of PC Ricers, where are the tweakers? I have people who tell me if I install 500 of these "uber awesome brand new programs" on my PC as well as XP, I won't have any problems.....welll.......

She sits on-line via cable ALL DAY, is never turned off, has to be rebooted twice a week running WIndows 98 SE, and never whilst running Linux! And this computer can do stuff a $500 HP or even a $3000 Mike Signature Model Dell can't do, like play VHS tapes (I have a VCR hooked into the monitor which has screen-in screen If I remember right). I have a 40 GB Hard Disk holding Win98, Linux, backup CD's for everything on my network on down to my 286, and STILL never run out of space or have a problem.

Yet I still go into stores every year to buy some silly little part, and some BLink 182 band member lookalike with spikey yellow hair dressed in wannabe geek garb looks at me and goes "dude, if you put XP, your computer will be faster, more reliable, more stable, and more secure" or "Man, you NEED A 200 Gig hard disk!". THat's just hype to get you to buy stuff. I'm not ditching my 286 or my 486 either, heck, if there ever was a major worm or virus that attacks flash BIOS or whatever, and I was vulnerable, I think anyone can guess what I'd do....

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

Yet I still go into stores every year to buy some silly little part, and some BLink 182 band member lookalike with spikey yellow hair dressed in wannabe geek garb looks at me and goes "dude, if you put XP, your computer will be faster, more reliable, more stable, and more secure" or "Man, you NEED A 200 Gig hard disk!". THat's just hype to get you to buy stuff. I'm not ditching my 286 or my 486 either, heck, if there ever was a major worm or virus that attacks flash BIOS or whatever, and I was vulnerable, I think anyone can guess what I'd do....

(shoulda been "some backwards-cap-wearing Blink182 band member lookalike"...)

If push came to shove, I could live with a Compaq 386s20n with 8MB of RAM and a 60MB HDD. I've got it torn apart now, testing drives, but I think I'll just put it back together (maybe with a larger HDD) and leave it at that (not that I really need another system... Very Happy

)

Guest

I was living on a Pentium 133 with a 60gb hard drive for a while a couple years ago, it had USB and all the software and business stuff I needed and got the job done, just slightly slower than my trusty slot A athlon 750 I keep and don't plan on upgrading. The funny thing is many of the image editing programs and business programs I run really do NOT benefit at all from a faster CPU. My athlon XP 2000 doesn't seem all that much faster than either of the latter but it can run N64 emulators better Smile

Though thats about it. I really could live on an old 386 or 486 unit so long as I had enough disk space for my crapola. Heck I still go online using a Pentium 150 laptop with a wireless card and it suffices just fine.

I have a feeling the PC evolution will start fading and turn into PC appliances. The desktop PC might die and become integrated into my toaster someday Smile

Cheers

Guest

Creepingnet, that's a sweet looking case. I miss those days.
Now you go on eBay or somwhere to try and buy a new case
and all you see is ridiculous crap like this:

These new cases are the ugliest things I've ever seen. I wouldn't
have something like that in my house, I'd be embarrased to death
to be seen with one in fact.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

I agree 100%. I hate those new cases. I like the reeeeal simple ones without all that colorful crap on it. Unfortunately, too many people think those are boring.

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:50 pm

I like some of the newer cases, but not many. It doesn't really matter what the case looks like past the front, though... I've got two computers wedged inbetween sheet rock and a hard place! (My desk.)

Personally, I could use more power in one of my machines because I want to have a home-made DVR. Forget those ones that require service agreements. I hate not owning (but leasing) stuff.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

what is a dvr?

Joined: 22 Oct 2005 Posts: 61 Location: sunny AZ

Jason S wrote:

These new cases are the ugliest things I've ever seen.

I guess you haven't looked at any new cars lately?

I haven't had any trouble with the "modern" computers we have, but then I built them all, using older cases. And they're not the fastest, I can't spend more than $100 for a cpu or $50 for a motherboard or $50 for a video card.

I'm still a long ways from using XP, I have gotten to where I can get 2000 to run ok and do what I want.

I have seen the problems others have with their recent store-bought computers. ugh!

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

what is a dvr?

Digital Video Recorder (aka: TIVO)

http://www.tivo.com/0.0.asp