Don't Buy High End!!!

Some of you guys are now out there going: WHAT THE *%&* !!! First he tells us not to buy the bottom end "consumer" computers, now we aren't supposed to by the "high end"!?! 

Well....snuggle down and let me tell you a little fairy tale..... OK, no fairy tale, but in a land not so far away, laptop manufacturers started looking for increasingly higher end graphic chip solutions so that everything could look cooler and games (that which laptops were never designed to do) could be played better. Actually, it wasn't even that long ago; about 6-8 years ago, around the time of the late P4-M and early Pentium M processors. ATI was first "out the gate" with full-blown very capable graphics processors (GPUs), of that generation. Around the 2 year (remember this) mark, computers ranging from Apple iBooks to ThinkPads began succumbing to the "black-screen" syndrome. Basically failing to P.O.S.T. due to the graphic subsystem failing. Come to find out, they had developed what became known as the Ball Grid Array (BGA) cracking issue. Essentially, the problem was that over many cycles of heating and cooling the differing materials of the MB vs. the chip's differing cooling rates cause stress fractures to occur at the "ball" of solder that was the attachment point between the two. Over time, this would become severe enough to cause the two to lose communications and the result would be the infamous "black-screen". Occasionally, people would "reflow" them and through heating would create a reattachment, but in most cases, it would fail again. 

Fast forward 5-6 years and the high end of the notebook GPU market had been taken over by arch-rival nVidia. So if you were really interested in power, then you upgraded from the integrated Intel GPU to a full-blown stand-alone graphics solution. Two years and a class action lawsuit later, it was found that these high end chips had a flaw, plus also suffering from the dreaded BGA issue as well! TA-DA!!! 

Light the torches, grab the pitchforks, and let's go get those money-grubbing graphic chip manufacturers and string them up! They must be witches! We'll all run out and get some Savage S3 or better yet, Hercules graphic cards! Derp....... So what happened? The fact of the matter is: that amount of heat is not designed to be contained in a very small notebook computer case. It doesn't matter whether the manufacturer is ATI or nVidia, high end stand-alone GPU are not designed to be sufficiently cooled in notebook computers. I'll go a step further to say that it's mostly the consumers' fault!

Let me start by stating very clearly that what I relate is from my observation and experience talking to original users of failed machines. For the last couple of years, an inordinate number of folks have brought me their dead machines that have suffered similar dead GPUs. In almost every case, the user had been either a gamer (derp), or someone who routinely used the computer on carpet, a blanket, or pillow, and many case....all of the above! You know those funny looking slots on the bottom? Yeah, anything soft that can cover those up.....not good. When you combine a major heat generating chip with covered up vents, that's really not good.

Today, I was brought another machine exhibiting the same symptoms, a HP DV6000 series. That'd be the third one of that series alone in the last 6 months. So imagine what a place like Best Buy's Geek Squad looks like? Last year a co-worker brought me her son's machine that was exhibiting the same issues. I even managed to reflow that Dell XPS M1530 so that it worked for several months.

Now, all isn't lost. If you have a machine that's been office used (eg. on an actual desk) and not abused, then chances are good that it'll run for several years. Actually my wife has been very happily using one of these "defective" T61s for close to a year now. It was used corporately for about 3 years before that. It's fast, does everything anyone who's not a gamer would want and it cost me $65 off of the local Craig's List. After bumping the RAM up to 4Gb, and installing a 240Gb SSD, it and the high res. WSXGA screen is everything that she wants: not one complaint since I put her on it last year! Now, does that mean that I'd recommend that for everyone? The answer is an unequivocal, NO! Just go back and read about the T61 I just did for a friend's wife who had an Acer with a  broken screen. I purposely sorted through literally dozens of T61s for sale on eBay to find one that had the cool running (relatively speaking) integrated Intel GPU that I picked up at an excellent $126. She won't have to worry one bit about that machine. For me; the $65 risk is worth taking given that it's my wife and if it fails, I know it's backed up (because my server automatically does this) and I can put her into another computer in the blink of an eye. 

So, what's the deal? Are those graphic companies just incompetent or are they out to try and take us all to the cleaners? I believe the answer is no on both counts. I believe that the consumer and the market has them in a "no win" situation. We demand new more powerful computers capable of doing more. And as the market shifted from desktop to laptop computing, we asked for something that laptops were never designed to do and we wanted to do it in smaller packages. Smaller means less capability to cool. However, nobody wants to say no, so the engineers do what the managers want, who have been convinced by the marketing guys that it's what the consumers are demanding. So they create designs that stand on the knife edge of functionality that can do exactly that they say it can, if conditions are just right, but only for so long. Then when the consumer pushes the envelop ever so slightly..........

 

.....It Poured ThinkPads.....and It Was Good

Guess who was sick again yesterday? Other than the usual tap-dance of getting everything set up for a substitute teacher, it was great timing for me! The night before, the deluge of ThinkPads came. I've been looking to finish up my wife's little ThinkPad powered classroom network awaiting the arrival of two more of the beloved A31s that my fiend Andy was sending me. It happened that when I was asking about them, I caught him in a "clean out" mood (it sometimes strikes us ThinkPad hoarders at random times). So, he took the opportunity to dump his unloved ThinkPads and unwanted projects into a huge box appropriately marked "Toys" (from a recent move), then ship it to me. Actually I was expecting it today (or yesterday at best), but Tuesay, it came as I was getting a school bus ready to take our cheerleaders to a basketball game. So the big box came along for the ride. 

This is what I felt like when I opened it that night after I got home. There were 3 ThinkPads (2 A31s and 1 T61) and one R60 motherboard, along with 3 A/C adapters all crammed into that one box. So yeah, that picture is what I felt like trying to get everything out of there!

The A31s are of the NASA/International Space Station fame that I've talked about before, but currently, I'm in the process of changing over to the "x6x" line as the basis of my current general use computers around the house. Of this design series, I've already had a number of the "Zs" (Z60t- son, Z61m- wife & myself) as workstations, but lately, we've begun moving over to the T61 line, along with my daughter's X61.

These are "workhouse" computers, that have just come through the corporate 3 year cycle, so are plentiful and cheap to buy. You might remember me describing my wife's T61 with a 15.4" WSXGA screen, 240Gb SSD. Now, out of the magic "toy" box, came a virtually identical one (although w/o battery, and hard drive). In all probability it will become my son's new machine, retiring the last non-"Core" processor'd machine in our fleet. 

Of greater interest to me though, was the last thing out of the box....an R60 motherboard. A few months back, I was down at the monthly computer Flea Market and came across a much abused T60, after much haggling, I paid the guy $25 and went home with 2, 4Gb sticks of ECC spec'd, DDR2 RAM, and a wretched looking T60 that got power, but not much of anything else. It had a severely cracked screen where someone had stepped on it, and of course, a bowed lid, but to add insult to injury, somebody had painted it blue with enamel house paint. I don't mean "in an attempt to mod" spray paint: I mean in a attempt to destroy, slathered on with a brush, canned paint! Of course, me, being me, the fact that just the A/C adapter was probably worth what I paid just wasn't good enough. I decided that I need to revive this thing. So it sat under my desk for several months other than the occasional forays out for attempted cleanings.

The stubborn streak in me decided that I wanted to get it back up and running again despite the fact that it would probably be cheaper to just buy one! Anyway, I guess that's the geek Propellerhead side of my coming out! As luck would have it, my buddy Andy who had the A31s also had a motherboard from an R60, which (under the casing) is virtually identical to the T60. If you haven't seen the never ThinkPads with the "roll-cage" system, above is an image of the T60 version. All the grey stuff is the aforementioned "roll-cage", to which the motherboard (planar in ThinkPad speak) is attached along with the casing. So yesterday, I happily got to play ThinkPad "Lego" while the sick child slept and watched TV! As I make more progress on this thing, I'm sure I'll add more post this project.

Tale of 2 Computers: A Case Study

It was the best of times, it was the worse of times......technologically speaking of course! You guys have read my various anti-consumer computer rants for some time now, but I'm going to actually use a current project as an example of how this situation plays out in detail; otherwise, known as a "Case Study". 

In this particular case, it starts with one of my former colleagues who has gone on to teach and coach at a different school. They are about as average of an American family as you'd want to meet. Mom and dad, both college educated trying to raise two kids and live the great Best Buy......er, I mean American dream. And of course, it being the 21st Century, that dream would include a number of computing devices. I've worked on others for them (he's pretty good at coaching football linemen and teaching history, but not much of a technician), but here's the latest.

This is an Acer Aspire 6930. It's around 3 years old, making it of the late Core 2 Duo generation. This was a good vintage. This design of processors sipped power, but yet, were very powerful. They came along in the Post-SATA and DDR2 revolution, so will take drives and memory that are big and aren't ridiculously expensive. This model was one of the nicer ones for sale at the time at around $1000. It was in the high-end of the Wal-mart range and middle of the Best Buy lineup. Equipped with a good sized 16" screen (warning bell for tech folks), it was shiny, pretty and nicely spec'd. In fact there were even versions that had a second drive capability, so nothing to sneer at!

However, just when things are looking good...... My friend called to say that his wife's computer was experiencing problems with the screen. I turned out that she had a cracked LCD. I figured; no big deal. $50 and she'll be good? Remember when I said that there's a "red flag"? The 16" screen? What is typical in the screen market place: 14.1", 15.4", 17.3"? That's right, the 16" is a bit of an unusual size, which means $$$ because of the great economics Law of Supply and Demand. I promptly got on eBay and started looking....to find that the cheapest screen available was going to $150! Three times the norm! So expensive in fact that people were selling special "conversion" cables to allow computers to use a completely different type of screen! So the next course of action for me was to try and find a broken one with a good screen. I was thinking maybe $100, $125 right? First of all, there was only about 20-something for sale period, only 5 or 6 were broken, of which all but one had......you guessed it.....cracked screens! This sounds suspiciously like a design flaw on a very expensive part. And remember, this thing was about $1000 at purchase time! 

The more I looked at it, the more ridiculous the whole thing sounded to me. I knew I had bought both Dells and ThinkPads of similar generation for less than $150, so I started looking at that as an option. Actually I started looking at similar machines to her's which includes the HP Pavilion G60 and some Toshiba A505, however, they were all well above $150 in selling price, so I turned to the Dell E6500. This machine was the 15.4" version of the E6400 (14.1") which I've bought quite a few of in the last year. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite able to snag one around the $125 mark that I set as a limit. As this was going on, I began to keep an eye on the ThinkPad T61 as well. This is a machine that I'm very familiar with and indeed have my wife on one right now. Well, to make a long story, shorter, I'll cut to the chase and say that I snagged one for $126.20, with all drives, A/C adapter and just needed to have the OS loaded. No Sweat, for that kind of money! Oh yeah! it's also the Intel graphics version that's NOT susceptible to the great nVidia GPU debacle of that generation.

So, what does this all mean? First of all; although, the cracked screen is an accident that couldn't be anticipated and probably not the fault of the computer, I will say that if it's not one thing, it'll be another. At least in the case of consumer PCs, I find that your unlikely to hit year 3 without having to do something to repair or upgrade it. So let's look at this case study: $1000 into 3 years comes to $333 per year. I'll admit that I got a great deal on the T61 so I'll inflate that number a little bit to $225 which is what "ready-to-go" laptops commonly costs. This comes out to be $75 per year. If you aren't some sort of "expert" and need special brand-new leading-edge technology, most people are perfectly fine with a 3-year-old off-lease corporate laptop. So do you really just want to throw that other $150 per year away?

Master and Commander

No, I'm not anything like the famously difficult to work with actor. I'm just referring to my basically finished "workstation" setup. I know there are people out there with way more elaborate rigs than the one I have (particularly high level gamers and professional bloggers), but I think mine does a pretty good job for me and since it's unlikely to go through a major change anytime soon; this would be a good time to describe it to my readers....all three of you....that haven't see it in person.

To many who come to visit and experience it for the first time, their comments are usually along the line of; "what do you do, fire missiles from here"? No, I need way more screen real estate and approval from a higher level authority (Madame President Mrs. Propellerhead) to install several TV-sized LCD/Plasma panels on the wall behind my desk for that to happen!

 

However, I can probably say that there's more computing power here than was in the Houston control room that served as guidance for the Apollo moon flights though. 

So, lets start with this, my basic workstation. What you see here is the display and control area. It generally is the interface for 3 computers, sometimes more depending on how many laptops, tablets, etc. that I'm working on at the moment. The center monitor is a Lenovo 22" ThinkVision L220p, an S-PVA panel which has a resolution of 1920 x 1200. To the right of that is an IBM ThinkVision L200p an IPS panel which has a resolution of 1600 x 1200. They are my main displays and work very well as a normal pairing running off of two AMD Radeon graphics cards in the "Blackbird" workstation. The matching vertical resolution of 1200 makes it especially nice. 

On the upper left (at a weird angle because it's on a swing arm) is a Westinghouse SK19H210S which is actually a television and has a 1440 x 900 resolution. I had a little 13" tube TV here in the office for a number of years that I kept on whenever I need to do work and there was a baseball game I wanted to keep an eye on. When the office was reconfigured two years ago and I built what you see, I decided to go with a better solution. Most people "know" it, but fail to use the information: the fact that LCD TVs are really computer monitors with a tuner and more inputs. In this case, I went with the Westinghouse because it was cheap (at that time) and had a higher resolution than most which was a perfect match for the panel of my X300. It's connected through an Inline 3562R High Resolution VGA Switcher. Currently, input 1 is connected to the workstation and input 2 is connected to the server. Although it doesn't strictly need a monitor since it's designed to work headless, I'm a little OCD about control. Of course, it's also connected to the cable (TV), and A/V stack as a video monitor for the DVD/VCR. But when the new server is built and has a HDMI output, I'll use that and give the input 2 on the switcher back to it's original purpose of being a test monitor for client machines to work on. Mostly, it's folded away unless I have a ton of windows open doing a lot of file transfers or something like that. 

Just below it, you see my latest concept; the use of my ThinkPad Tablet as an extension monitor. For those of you keeping count, I'm now up to 4 monitors. It's an IPS panel with a 1280 x 800 resolution. What do I use it for? I found that it's almost perfect for a music player, since it has touch capability, so I just throw that over there when I've got tons of stuff open and I can control the player right from the screen! Plus the stand holds it perfectly while charging the tablet. Also in the picture is my trusty ThinkPad X300 just to give everything some scale. The other miscellaneous stuff in the picture are the three keyboards, one for each computer. Two of them are IBM/Lenovo "TrackPoint" style with the famous eraser nub so they don't need mice. Those two are mostly stowed out of the way under the monitor stand (that I built for exactly this purpose) unless they are needed. The main "Blackbird" workstation is controlled by the Logitech "Illuminated" keyboard and a Logitech Revolution MX mouse. I have other controller as well such as the Microsoft Sidewinder Strategic Commander gaming controller given to me by my friend Pat who only games on console now since he's all Mac these days. 

To the right and below are my two workstations. The taller one built in a Cooler Master Centurion 590 case, is the "Blackbird" main workstation that I've written a lot about, so I won't repeat it here. The other one built in a Cooler Master Elite 341 is the "Nighthawk" Windows XP workstation. It was kind of a thrown together project from old left-over parts when I realized that I had several (one very important) clients who are still exclusively working on Windows XP (and sometimes Office 2003). You might be asking yourself, why I didn't do VM on my regular workstation? I don't like to be switching back and forth on the same machine when I'm doing something. I actually like to keep things separate, AND I pretty much had the parts handy. I had just bought and switched my server to the Cooler Master Elite 343 case (more drive bays), so the 341 was available, I had a Gigabyte GA-G41 motherboard/CPU combo laying around since it was one of three cast-offs that my brother sent me, so it went together. Not one thing was bought for this build. When "Nighthawk" is up and running, it uses the right "UltraNav" keyboard and the analog inputs of the L200p. I've already found a great use for it recently. A few months ago, my wife bought a Husqvarna/Viking sewing machine with programmable embroidery capabilities. In order to use it, you have to run the XP only software and transfer the information to a special memory card which is uses a special card reader/writer (the white thing on the shorter computer case). 

  

My preferred desk arrangement is an "L" Shape. I'd do a "U" if I had plenty of room, but until then (if ever), I'll do the "L", which is called a "return" (who knows why) in the furniture industry. Mine is an old "credenza" that I picked up from the surplus warehouse at Texas Tech University when I worked there. It was old, all scratched up and $10. Where are you going to get 60" of solid wood furniture for $10!?! I used it in it's original (read ugly) state for some years, until we reconfigured the office and it not only got refinished (in satin black), but the a custom designed and built hutch to house a lot of my equipment. There's a space for the TV/monitor on it's folding arm as well a a shelf to hold a variety of media and manuals that I regularly use as well. The one (right) side of the credenza that you can't see since it butts up against the desk is where the file server and UPS lives. Since neither requires me to interact with it physically, that's a good place for them. I just had to cut some holes in the back to allow ventilation and wires. The left side though is a different story! That is the home of the A/V stack. It's a complete system of audio AND video equipment in and of itself, but it's also connected to the "Blackbird" workstation to fulfill it's main purpose; digital archiving of obsolete media. From top to bottom, this is what's there: Dual 1219 3-speed turntable, Yamaha RX-V870 A/V Receiver, Sony SLV-D360p DVD/VCR Deck, Sony MXD-D40 CD/Minidisc Deck, Yamaha KX-200U Cassette Desk, and last, but not least (OK, maybe it is least) is the Panasonic RS-803US 8-Track Deck. The system is hooked up to a pair of a/d/s/ L300 2-way speakers for direct monitoring. This pretty much gives me the capability to play back AND archive any widely distributed media (with the exception of Reel to Reel) from the last 50 years. The "knee-hole" houses one of those plastic drawer sets that you can buy at any Walmart (or Target) for about $15. It houses the variety of cables, adapters, batteries, drives and power supplies that comes with my hobbies. There's enough room left next to it for about 5 laptops (in various states of disrepair) awaiting my attention. On top is about 3 feet of space where projects get done. 

There are a few things that I didn't picture. So I'll go over them now. To the right of the glass and metal desk where the monitors reside is a rolling cabinet that should actually fit under the desk where the computers sit. It's more storage for tools, batteries and parts and the stand for an Epson Perfection V300 scanner. Farther to the right of that is our office file cabinet (horizontal type) that serves as a stand for our networked printers: an HP LaserJet 4100TN B&W laser, and Samsung CLX-3175FN Color laser All-In-One printer/copier/scanner. There's also a Kodak G610 photo printer as well as a Brother PT-1950 label printer.

Oh, I almost forgot the variety of ancillaries that silently work in the background making things go. There are 3 networking devices in this office space. The main one being the D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port Gigabit switch that's part of my Gigabit Ethernet backbone. Attached to it is a D-Link DI-624 B/G WiFi access point that services the back part of the house, but predominately the children's devices and 4-Port switch to computer I'm working on back here. This allows me to not only cover the house better, but to shut off their internet any time without effecting other areas. Also attached is a D-Link DSS-5+ switch that serves the printers. Although both of these devices are 10/100 instead of Gigabit, the speed of the what they serve makes it irrelevant. One of the "little guys" that I really enjoy using is the Logitech Z340 computer speakers. They are small and sound good. If I could figure out a way to use the Z640 5-speaker surround version instead without running wires all over the office, I would!

So, this is it. When I'm sitting in the now functioning Aeron chair, king of all that I survey.....and this is what I survey. It's my version of "NASA Mission Control", "NORAD Command Center" and the bridge of the "Starship Enterprise" all rolled into one. I'm sure I'll realize something important that was left out, but that's all for now.