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You all do recognize that my laptop is being delivered to me in a box, right? Whatever website I use, I'm getting a cardboard box. Also there's no "WALMART LAPTOP FACTORY" somewhere next to the "NORMAL LAPTOP FACTORY". Walmart runs an online store. They have good deals there, usually things are cheaper than Amazon or elsewhere. Buying something from them doesn't give you some sort of ritual pollution.
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Jul 5, 2016 21:59
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cheerfullydrab posted:You all do recognize that my laptop is being delivered to me in a box, right? Whatever website I use, I'm getting a cardboard box. Also there's no "WALMART LAPTOP FACTORY" somewhere next to the "NORMAL LAPTOP FACTORY". Walmart runs an online store. They have good deals there, usually things are cheaper than Amazon or elsewhere. Buying something from them doesn't give you some sort of ritual pollution. Uhh Walmart DOES get special stripped down extra lovely versions of electronics sometimes to cut the costs even lower. Enjoy your lovely low-rent laptop.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:18
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AlternateAccount posted:Uhh Walmart DOES get special stripped down extra lovely versions of electronics sometimes to cut the costs even lower. A LOT of shops do that so they have something to shove out the door on Black Friday or for other radical market segmentation reasons or to confound price comparisons or any of a hundred other client-hostile reasons. Always check the entire model number, and if they won't let you, you walk. Hell, check the serial number if they'll let you.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:23
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cheerfullydrab posted:You all do recognize that my laptop is being delivered to me in a box, right? Whatever website I use, I'm getting a cardboard box. Also there's no "WALMART LAPTOP FACTORY" somewhere next to the "NORMAL LAPTOP FACTORY". Walmart runs an online store. They have good deals there, usually things are cheaper than Amazon or elsewhere. Buying something from them doesn't give you some sort of ritual pollution. Most of walmart's products - even normal branded stuff - is actually made to different specifications in MANY cases. It's not just walmart though - compare models of appliances at Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy and you'll find they don't even carry the same models. Each is specified for the store it's sold in. Even the tires - Walmart sells Goodyear Viva tires. These are exclusively sold at Walmart - you can't buy vivas anywhere else.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:23
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Walmart puts less pickles in my pickle jar 
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Jul 5, 2016 22:27
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blugu64 posted:Walmart puts less pickles in my pickle jar Also possibly true; most pickle jars are listed by total agricultural mass, and when you buy one the brine may take up more and the pickled cucumbers inside correspondingly fewer in number and smaller in mass and volume compared to the same product from the same supplier at another store even within the same chain (and upscale shops may also pay for or otherwise secure preferential choice among which batches they receive from the manufacturer with regard to quality). dont be mean to me has a new favorite as of 22:33 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 22:30
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blugu64 posted:Walmart puts less pickles in my pickle jar My local grocery stores don't put any pickles in my pickle jar, I have to keep buying full ones 
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Jul 5, 2016 22:35
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cheerfullydrab posted:That's exactly what I'm buying! A decent, refurbished, 5 year old business laptop. Did Walmart do something to you? I didn't know they sold refurbished laptops; I'm just using where I work as an example.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:35
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Sir Unimaginative posted:Also possibly true; most pickle jars are listed by total agricultural mass, and when you buy one the brine may take up more and the pickled cucumbers inside correspondingly fewer in number and smaller in mass and volume compared to the same product from the same supplier at another store even within the same chain (and upscale shops may also pay for or otherwise secure preferential choice among which batches they receive from the manufacturer with regard to quality). Also packaged food companies will vary the quantity of food inside the bags based on food prices at the time to keep the sticker price the same. So while a bag of potato chips will cost you $.99, the amount of potato chips in the bag will vary with food prices.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:42
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Sir Unimaginative posted:A LOT of shops do that so they have something to shove out the door on Black Friday or for other radical market segmentation reasons or to confound price comparisons or any of a hundred other client-hostile reasons. I was working for HMV back when Blu-Ray was starting to really take off and we were selling some Blu-Ray player at a ridiculously cheap price for the time (something like £100) for the January sales. Seemingly every unit was returned to the store a faulty.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:42
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Instant Sunrise posted:Also packaged food companies will vary the quantity of food inside the bags based on food prices at the time to keep the sticker price the same. Yeah, doesn't the USDA or whoever regulates food where someone's reading this allow some pretty huge variance from the sticker (up to 10% in cases)? This also makes the nutrition statistics label kind of lol. v v v Timing!
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Jul 5, 2016 22:45
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Instant Sunrise posted:Also packaged food companies will vary the quantity of food inside the bags based on food prices at the time to keep the sticker price the same. Isn't everything sold by weight, though? Your scenario doesn't seem very realistic
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Jul 5, 2016 22:45
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Sir Unimaginative posted:A LOT of shops do that so they have something to shove out the door on Black Friday or for other radical market segmentation reasons or to confound price comparisons or any of a hundred other client-hostile reasons. Those bait and switch crap electronics are everywhere, yes. Avoiding them is just a normal part of shopping.
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Jul 5, 2016 22:50
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A video about this very thing just was circulating around youtube. Huffy gives Walmart a cheaper version of thier mountain bike and claims its Trail Rated. So a biker decides to take down a trail. The results are pretty much what you'd expect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkMnk_eCDQU
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Jul 5, 2016 23:30
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"Parts of the bike came loose as soon as I set off, I was afraid something might just snap, and halfway down the brakes stopped working at all. Verdict: Surprisingly good!"
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Jul 6, 2016 08:48
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Obsolete tech: My Thinkpad T42 that I bought for $2200(!) 12 years ago. It served me well for many years, going through school and countless train rides across the country. I recently dug it out again and tried to install the most minimal Linux distro I could find, but it's just so goddamn slow running any kind of GUI, never mind trying to run Firefox or Chrome or any other piece of modern software really, even with the 1.5GB RAM upgrade I installed when I got it. And forget about playing anything kind of video encoded with h264 or similar modern codecs. It'll just about play back straight DVD rips, but that's about it. It's such a shame, because the hardware itself is still pristine, the keyboard is as good as ever and the hinges are still nice and tight. Such a great piece of engineering, left behind by the steady march of technology. KozmoNaut has a new favorite as of 08:56 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 08:53
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Wasabi the J posted:I did this poo poo to myself; I know how to do some things, but I don't have the tools and the knowledge for a lot of the more involved tasks -- ended up loving around with half my cooling system hanging out, at 11 pm trying to figure out where my steady leak was coming from (it was a cross threaded connection) and sweating because I had to be up for work in a few hours. That's pretty much how it goes for the shadetree mechanic. If you have the guts to jack up your car and start spinning wrenches you gotta be prepared for the inevitable fuckups. I've missed a few days of work from ripping something apart and not being able to get it back together properly. Luckily, Ive always been able to get a friend with more knowledge than I to help me or worst case, limp the poor beast to the shop and let the pros finish the job. No matter what I always come away from the experience with some knowledge. I encourage anyone that's even a tiny bit mechanically inclined to get a jack, some jackstands and a decent tool kit and at the very least learn to change your own oil and brakes. I feel alot more confident that I could figure out how to get a car driving again in an emergency situation with just a little bit of rudimentary knowledge. To contribute, planned obsolescence needs to be obsolete. I see mobile devices are going to move towards a more modular approach. That is refreshing to see. It sucks that the lifetime of a phone only amounts to a few years considering the initial cost and the amount of resources that go into them. Can't play the newest game? Snap on some more memory or and a new processor! New camera came out that's way better than yours? Pop on the newest camera module! I'm really optimistic about that tech. Automotive planned obsolescence is a bad problem though. Cars just aren't built to last like they once were. Look at Cuba. They've been keeping those old 50's relics running all this time. They didn't have much choice and most of those cars are running with a Toyota diesel under the hood but still the skeleton of the car is driving. Let's say all those cars are scrapped, replaced with modern cars and then forced to work for another 60 years. I'm sure a bunch of them will keep going for a long time but eventually all the electronic and plastic poo poo is going to fail or turn to dust. Then there'll be a few Hyundai Elantra and Toyota Corolla shells rolling around with lawn tractor running gear but for the most part once the electronics break that'll be it for those cars. My last car was a 2004. It was impeccably maintained. It hit 10 years old and about 100k miles and pretty much went to poo poo. It was all the hard to diagnose electronic sensors and other horseshit that went out first. The most expensive stuff. The sort of things that compell a person to say gently caress it, time for a new one. Even if it still runs. I'd love to see a car manufacturer emerge that could produce a safe, cheap, reliable car that's built to last and easy to fix. Performance and luxury be damned. Its got to be possible.
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Jul 6, 2016 09:04
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KozmoNaut posted:Obsolete tech: My Thinkpad T42 that I bought for $2200(!) 12 years ago. It served me well for many years, going through school and countless train rides across the country. I recently dug it out again and tried to install the most minimal Linux distro I could find, but it's just so goddamn slow running any kind of GUI, never mind trying to run Firefox or Chrome or any other piece of modern software really, even with the 1.5GB RAM upgrade I installed when I got it. And forget about playing anything kind of video encoded with h264 or similar modern codecs. It'll just about play back straight DVD rips, but that's about it. Come to think of it I think there's actually some obscure software she has that genuinely doesn't run under Windows 7 but that's where "you haven't used this in years" comes in.
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Jul 6, 2016 09:09
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My Lovely Horse posted:Come to think of it I think there's actually some obscure software she has that genuinely doesn't run under Windows 7 but that's where "you haven't used this in years" comes in. If it's not talking to hardware, then just run it in a virtual machine, walla! 
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Jul 6, 2016 09:28
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Buttcoin purse posted:walla! Voilà. Correct spelling: An obsolete technology.
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Jul 6, 2016 09:36
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In addition to that helpful tip, eating food off of the floor is actually unsanitary and a bad idea
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Jul 6, 2016 10:16
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Grumbletron 4000 posted:I'd love to see a car manufacturer emerge that could produce a safe, cheap, reliable car that's built to last and easy to fix. Performance and luxury be damned. Its got to be possible. The mechanical stuff probably does last longer than it used to (and the examples you cite are confirmation bias, since the busted cars have probably been recycled into other steel constructs now, maybe even other cars, therefore you don't see tons of busted cars around). But yes, proprietary connections rendering perfectly functional hardware (and nowhere near just cars the gently caress a fridge or an air conditioner need a Tizen interface built into it for) practically useless, in an age that looks dangerously close to peak everything, is a straight-up call-the-ICJ atrocity.
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Jul 6, 2016 10:20
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Grumbletron 4000 posted:I'd love to see a car manufacturer emerge that could produce a safe, cheap, reliable car that's built to last and easy to fix. Performance and luxury be damned. Its got to be possible. - Fuel economy & emissions: Requires advanced and expensive electronics, sensors, jets, oxygen sensors, catalytic converter, etc. - Safety: ABS, airbags, brake assist, etc. - Equipment: Pretty much all non-essential equipment, even as simple as power windows or central locking, is a point of failure and can be expensive to fix No modern consumer would be interested, and the price would be high because of low demand. Just buy a simple 30-year-old car if that's what you want. You'll get caught up by scarcity of spare parts at some point, though.
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Jul 6, 2016 10:37
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Sir Unimaginative posted:The mechanical stuff probably does last longer than it used to (and the examples you cite are confirmation bias, since the busted cars have probably been recycled into other steel constructs now, maybe even other cars, therefore you don't see tons of busted cars around). But yes, proprietary connections rendering perfectly functional hardware (and nowhere near just cars the gently caress a fridge or an air conditioner need a Tizen interface built into it for) practically useless, in an age that looks dangerously close to peak everything, is a straight-up call-the-ICJ atrocity. The sad thing about modern cars is that the metallurgy and tolerances within the engines of the cheapest of cars is far beyond that of those mid century beasts. If they were engineered to run with carburetors and mechanical ignition they would pretty much run forever. Especially with synthetic lubricants and coolant. Cars would be a lot more finicky and less efficient but it can be argued that keeping an old car on the road is less harmful environmentally than producing a new one. I'm an big fan of old cars so my opinion is definitely biased. I also drive a fairly new car with all the luxuries and complexities that comes with it. If I had the space to work on a '53 Chevy with a simple modern drivetrain that's definitely what I'd be driving.
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Jul 6, 2016 10:41
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AlternateAccount posted:Uhh Walmart DOES get special stripped down extra lovely versions of electronics sometimes to cut the costs even lower. OEM's definitely do make different SKUs for Walmart. Check if the SKU has a "W" at the end. They're not made purposely bad, they're just not made purposely good.
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Jul 6, 2016 11:01
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Pilsner posted:Of course that's possible, but it'd be at the expense of: You're absolutely right on all of those points. What I see in my head is a car a lot like the original VW beetle. Something that can meet all of the safety regulations mandated by law. But over engineered mechanically, produced in great quantities and with a long production run. Only hosed with mechanically to improve upon weaknesses of the original design. Cosmetically the same so parts are interchangeable and easily user serviceable. I am basically talking about a new Beetle. Definitely not that stupid thing that VW calls a Beetle now. Imagine if a late 90's Corolla hosed a late 60's Beetle. That's what I'm thinking of. A car that isn't aggressively horrible to live with or work on.
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Jul 6, 2016 11:04
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KozmoNaut posted:Voilà. I should have put #lifehacks on the end to make it obvious I did that intentionally, I'm not actually illiterate You're right though, spelling is not something that people seem to bother with on computers, I remember that even back in the BBS days. I don't know if these people were also that bad at spelling things in assignments at school or if it was something they just saved for their PC? And I guess twitter encourages people to stick to short words, so that's great.
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Jul 6, 2016 11:17
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KozmoNaut posted:Obsolete tech: My Thinkpad T42 that I bought for $2200(!) 12 years ago. It served me well for many years, going through school and countless train rides across the country. I recently dug it out again and tried to install the most minimal Linux distro I could find, but it's just so goddamn slow running any kind of GUI, never mind trying to run Firefox or Chrome or any other piece of modern software really, even with the 1.5GB RAM upgrade I installed when I got it. And forget about playing anything kind of video encoded with h264 or similar modern codecs. It'll just about play back straight DVD rips, but that's about it. Try this on it: http://www.neverware.com/installation
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Jul 6, 2016 12:29
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Thanks, I'll give it a shot, although I'm not sure how an ancient 1.7GHz Pentium M with 1.5GB RAM and a shittastic Radeon 7500 is going to handle it 
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Jul 6, 2016 12:33
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My ThinkPad X32, with a single core Pentium M, used to be perfectly usable running XP until my dad spilled wine on it a year or two ago (no drain holes on that model ). The main challenge for older machines nowadays are web browsing, as pages have a ton of javascript bullshit on them and take up hundred of megabytes of ram per tab. As for cars, the modern ones are absolutely more reliable in every way. The reason old cars are still being used in Cuba is because labor is super cheap compared to a new car, so it's easier to have Pedro spend a week swapping a Lada engine into a Chevy than it is to buy a poverty spec econobox. Edit: HP had several models like these back then, I think some came with Atom CPUs. I think I considered getting one of them as they were by far the best of the netbooks and had 768px tall screen. In the end I ended up getting the above-mentioned refurbished ThinkPad, which I think was a very good choice since it performed well and survived all the abuse without issues. mobby_6kl has a new favorite as of 14:01 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 12:46
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I won an HP 2133 mini-note PC for writing a computer review some years ago, and man was that ever only a piece of crap. 1.6GHz VIA C7-M processor, Windows Vista Business, 90 minutes of battery life and pretty heavy for the size. I mean, I wasn't complaining as it was essentially free, but you couldn't really do anything with it. I think it has unix on it at this point - I haven't turned it on in years. It looks pretty neat, though, and has a decent-sized keyboard. It's just that it was so under-powered that doing anything on it was really annoying. I put Ubuntu or something on it just to eke out a bit more performance.
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Jul 6, 2016 13:30
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We have a stack of eight HP Mini's here that we don't know what to do with. Windows 7 Home Premium x32, 2 gigs of RAM. They were used by our outside sales reps until we got Elitebooks.
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Jul 6, 2016 14:03
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Gromit posted:I won an HP 2133 mini-note PC for writing a computer review some years ago, and man was that ever only a piece of crap. 1.6GHz VIA C7-M processor, Windows Vista Business, 90 minutes of battery life and pretty heavy for the size. I mean, I wasn't complaining as it was essentially free, but you couldn't really do anything with it. I think it has unix on it at this point - I haven't turned it on in years. I picked up one of these from a yard sale a while back for a few bucks. With a beefy el-cheapo aftermarket battery, it'll run for just over two hours. It's a shame these were so anemic, because I absolutely love the overall design. They're hefty, rugged little things that still manage to look sleek and modern. The screen is bright, crisp, and clear, and the speakers actually sound pretty good for laptop speakers. Its Wi-Fi adapter has sick range, too, outperforming most of the more recent gadgets I own. Also, it has one of the best laptop keyboards I've ever used. I so wish it could do more than light office applications and very light web browsing. The "HD" flavor of HP Mini line had an HDMI port and claimed to be able to stream HD video, but if you'd ever powered one of these things up, you'd be skeptical about its ability to open the video player without choking. Also, that vent on the left side? See how there's a wholly separate grille behind the grille there? You gotta take the whole thing apart and yank that fucker out unless you want a portable kiln on your lap. It cuts the airflow from "will probably keep things cool enough" to "asthmatic infant exhaling softly."
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Jul 6, 2016 14:25
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Gromit posted:I won an HP 2133 mini-note PC for writing a computer review some years ago, and man was that ever only a piece of crap. 1.6GHz VIA C7-M processor, Windows Vista Business, 90 minutes of battery life and pretty heavy for the size. I mean, I wasn't complaining as it was essentially free, but you couldn't really do anything with it. I think it has unix on it at this point - I haven't turned it on in years. It looks like poo poo
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Jul 6, 2016 16:18
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Gromit posted:I won an HP 2133 mini-note PC for writing a computer review some years ago, and man was that ever only a piece of crap. 1.6GHz VIA C7-M processor, Windows Vista Business, 90 minutes of battery life and pretty heavy for the size. I mean, I wasn't complaining as it was essentially free, but you couldn't really do anything with it. I think it has unix on it at this point - I haven't turned it on in years. I seriously considered it as a portable PC when netbooks were A Thing, but 90mins battery life was just silly when all the competition were offering ones with 3hrs on standard batteries, with the option of bigger ones for 6hrs use.
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Jul 6, 2016 16:31
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It feels like measuring your battery life in minutes is starting to become obsolete as well. I know el cheapo laptops probably still have short battery lives but I'm able to go most of a day on my macbook pro with light use. I used it at work one day to do music listening/light web browsing on breaks and ended the day with 30% since I forgot my charger.
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Jul 6, 2016 16:43
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robodex posted:It feels like measuring your battery life in minutes is starting to become obsolete as well. I know el cheapo laptops probably still have short battery lives but I'm able to go most of a day on my macbook pro with light use. I used it at work one day to do music listening/light web browsing on breaks and ended the day with 30% since I forgot my charger. ~12 hours on my Acer Chromebook 13 
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Jul 6, 2016 16:50
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Sometimes when a G4 Powerbook and a Samsung Galaxy really, really love one another...
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Jul 6, 2016 19:43
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Pilsner posted:You'll get caught up by scarcity of spare parts at some point, though. The existence of 3D metal printing makes this sentence obsolete.
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Jul 7, 2016 02:13
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Buttcoin purse posted:And I guess twitter encourages people to stick to short words, so that's great. Melvil Dewey may yet be vindicated by the Twitter generation. (There have been several attempts to make English spelling make more sense, but Dewey, as you can see from how he chose to spell his first name, was a bit of an extremist. I guess that counts for the thread, since English is still a mess.)
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Jul 7, 2016 02:46
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Bad Angus! Bad!