[OT] Was: totally satisfied :D

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:03:13 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 08:36:26AM -0700, Sean Kelly wrote:
> > On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:48 AM, Walter Bright
> > <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> 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).