How many functioning computers do you have?

[wabmester]

Watch out.  I heard those catch fire.

True, but only if they're sitting next to a P4. But then anything next to a P4 will catch fire.

(But the upside is that I can blow my hair dry with my system fans.)

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Yes, they burn up with envy...

Who the hell uses P4's anymore?

 

[wabmester]

Who the hell uses P4's anymore?

Yeah, you're right. Everybody uses AMD these days. But Intel still sells P4's for some reason.....

(Hey, does this kind of stuff still push your buttons?! You can take the man out of Intel, but you can't take Intel out of the man....)

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I'm one of those suckers who figured if he felt like he had a stake in something, he did a better job. And hey, I was well paid for my efforts.

I suppose I should be pleased that my dedication didnt end with the paycheck. Even though the company did and does drive me nuts. I guess the good news is that just about everything that was roadmapped or that I was involved with getting past the concept stage has now shipped. The next generation of stuff wont be my 'babies'. To be honest, at this point if I saw a much better performer at a competitive price, I'd probably buy an AMD based product.

Apparently you missed the development of something called a Pentium-M? Or the dual cores? Looks like the M is a pretty competitive product. I had been really leaning towards that but I was paddling upstream against a lot of people who wanted to drive the p4 to 6 or 8GHz. Geez louise, can you imagine hooking a car radiator up to your computer to keep it cool?

AMD's always had some issue...no thermal protection, hot cores, lousy floating point performance, etc. Not to mention their biggest problem isnt the technology or even the processing architectures...say what you will about Intel, they're one of the most efficient manufacturers in the business. You can have a great product, but if you dont have the pricing power of a strong manufacturing base, it doesnt matter. Witness AMD's profitability...

At least AMD's gotten smarter on the marketing side and they're getting some market traction. Everybody wants 64 bit although almost nobody can say why and except for servers and some niche workstation apps, neither can I. In fact, all things being equal a 64 bit machine will address more memory but should be slightly slower than its 32 bit brethren. The "NIH" and non-adoptive atmosphere at intel really cost Intel in not adopting that. A little of that old 'pentium flaw' "this isnt a problem and nobody needs it because we know better" mentality still exists. The AMD "performance ratings" were tough to pull off although they did, and again forced Intel to follow suit, nice job there.

Now how to solve that big manufacturing problem in-house and become profitable...

 

[sailor]

sailor, are you reselling computers or doing donations?

both. but rarely computers, this was just a "special order".
I mostly deal with network hardware for small telco/ISP providers.

DW & I would like to send computers to a couple schools overseas (in Fiji & Rarotonga) and wonder whats involved with accumulating, testing and shipping them. Are you doing something like this with your 100+ computers?

Yup. I'm buying them on eBay, preferrably in multiple quantities (to save on shipping), sometimes local (it helps to have a pickup truck).
I just boot them up and run diagnostics - actual OS/applications installs are done on the other side of Big Pond.
Than I pack them nicely (after 4 years in international shipping business I learned to use a lot of padding and still expect casualties), put them on pallets (use plastic pallets to save money on fumigation) and ship freight (air cargo or ocean cargo)
For international shipping you need to at least provide a commercial invoice with the shipment and if you ship more than $2500 worth of one commodity you need to provide SED document with it.
I can help you with finding commodity codes for most computer related products if you need help there.
I typically ship CIP (meaning I pay for "Carriage, Insurance Provided") meaning that the receiving end is responsible for local duty and potential VAT taxes (for most countries both on shipment value and shipping cost)
You also need to check US exports regulations - some technology exports are restricted, but I wouldn't think Fiji or Ratoronga are on the list.
After 9/11 if you want to send your stuff Air Cargo, you need to become "a known shippper", meaning that somebody for carrier office will visit you location, I showed the DHL/Danzas guy kitchen and garage at my house

If you want to make a donation, the easiest option might be to work with a charity which has presence both in US (and they have no-profit status, so you can deduct the stuff from your income) and in the target country, so they can deal locally with customs.

If you have more questions let me know.

 

[JB]

I voted 2 (laptop and desktop) but I really have about 1.75 -- one is often broken :-(

In 1 year I had:
-Fatal crash on win2k laptop which required a reinstall
-Fatal HD crash on desktop (this hasn't happened in a long time)
-Failed logitech wireless keyboard
-Failed CPU fan (thankfully the CPU automatically shut itself down)
-Failed boot on laptop (required reassemble/cleaning)

Now my laptop (PIII) freezes whenever the Intel Speedstep shifts from low speed (battery powered) to full speed (plugged in). If I boot plugged in it freezes as windows starts. After spending too much time trying to determine the cause (Win2k takes a long time to start!) I ended up running at low speed only. Now my 900MHz CPU runs at 700Mhz -- nice and cool. Orig machine had a 1GHz (another story).