Alex Scoble's IT Notes - An Information Technology Blog

Dell Doesn't Ship Windows CD For Inspiron Laptops Either

A few weeks back, I wrote this post on vendor websites where I also mentioned how I disliked that Gateway didn't ship a Windows CD with my girlfriend's PC and that Dell does ship that CD.

Well, her brother just bought a Dell Inspiron 9300 and guess what it didn't come with. You guessed it! A Windows CD.

Why don't computer companies ship systems with this CD anymore? It's just ridiculous. The Windows CD isn't just for doing a fresh install, it can also be used to do a "repair" install which fixes a lot of problems that can't be fixed any other way. And a XP "repair" install is non-destructive so applications ,other than Windows service packs, hot fixes and updates, don't need to be reinstalled.

Dell does provide the Windows CD for Latitude customers (although they can opt not to have it sent), and it's not like they are paying that much of a premium as most Latitude customers are businesses that get a hefty discount.

Perhaps companies stopped shipping CDs to customers after doing studies that showed that most of them throw them away, or that most customers don't know how to use them. Whatever. I guess they also assume that a computer tech will have the CD with them if they are called to fix someone's PC.

Hey PC box pushers (you know who you are...Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.) do us all a favor and start shipping PCs (all PCs) with support media. At least give the customer a choice to have the system shipped with them.

You are doing a HUGE disservice to your customers when you don't ship the support CDs with the system.

And no, a refresh CD that destructively puts the PC back in shipping condition does not count. In fact, shipping PCs with these CDs is worse, in my mind, than not shipping anything at all!

With a Windows CD, it's difficult for a customer to unintentionally wipe out their whole drive. With a "refresh" CD, it's easy for it to happen, since that is what it's designed to do.

So just include the frickin Windows and driver CDs for all PCs (notebooks and desktops) that you sell! Enough said.

Note on Silenx Case Fans

I recently posted that my new system was running a bit too hot for my tastes, especially when the weather is warm.

I've resolved this somewhat by adding another 92mm case fan as an intake fan at the front of the case. I also removed the covers for the two card slots below the graphics card.

This keeps the system at a reasonably cool temp when the ambient temperature isn't super hot. I'm still not satisfied with how things are when the weather gets really warm.

I talked a little before about the Silenx case fans that I've been using. I have a 120mm and a 92mm Silenx fan (the 14db models) in my new case and a 120mm and 2 x 80mm models in my old (now my girlfriend's) PC. They are indeed quiet, but don't push much air (not sure that they push the cubic feet per minute that is listed on the website - sure doesn't seem like it to me, particularly for the 120mm fan) and lack the RPM monitor wire. For as much as they cost, I would rather that they offer them as high speed models with a controller as that would be much more useful.

I'm pretty sure that they use Adda fans to OEM as Adda owns the patent for hypro bearing fans. As such, they are certainly high quality fans, but I would personally get a lot more use out of them if they were sold at their top rated speed and included the RPM tach wire.

Anyhow, I'm still on the lookout for a 120x120x25mm fan that is high speed (around 80 to 115 cfm), has the RPM monitor wire and has good noise characteristics at all speed levels. If anyone knows of a supplier of such and a good fan controller rig to use, let me know.

At any rate, I won't be buying Silenx fans again for a normal PC as there's just not enough value add to justify the cost. You are better off buying high quality high speed fans and a multi-fan controller as you can still run your PC in silent mode if you have air conditioning in your PC room or when the weather is cool, but crank up the RPMs if needed. Flexibility is pretty important in my view. I would, however, purchase Silenx fans if I were putting together a home theater PC.

By the way, yes the system is fast. Runs all the games I have at 1680x1050 (native resolution of the Dell 2005FPW wide screen LCD) without any problems with 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering turned on, which to me is pretty damn good.

HL 2 Stress Test showed that I averaged 95FPS with those settings and everything turned to High.

New PC Running Hot - Case Fan Research

Took a bit more time than it should have, but I got my new PC together. So far everything seems to be working.

Had to make some extra cutouts in the Acoustipack foam fixed to the inside of the main panel because some of the quick release drive tabs were sticking into the foam making it very difficult to put the panel on the case. As an aside one thing I should mention about the case is that the "tool-less" PCI card slot retaining bracket is a bit flimsy and very difficult to unlatch with a 120mm fan mounted in the back of the case.

Should also mention that the case fans are indeed pretty quiet, as is the power supply fan, but the graphics card fan and motherboard fan are not. The Zalman northbridge cooler won't fit with the graphics card in place and I don't particularly want to risk damaging a $525 graphics card, while negating the warranty in the process, by putting in a different cooling system for the graphics card. By the way, if I were going to do this, Zalman, reportedly, makes a good graphics cooler kit, the VF700-CU.

Back to the point at hand. I have everything working, with the 120mm Silenx fan at the back of the case pulling hot air out, 92mm CPU fan (kept the fan that came with the ThermalRight XP90 as it's supposed to be higher CFM than the 92mm Silenx fan) pushing air onto the XP90 heatsink, and 92 mm Silenx fan in the front pushing cold air into the case. With all this, the CPU temp and case temp during the current warm spell are pretty high. Something like 50-55d C for both CPU and motherboard.

I've been thinking about what to do about this and about the only solution that I can come up with is to get one or more high speed fans in the case and a fan controller (such as Zalman ZM-MFC1, although I don't particularly like the style of the face-plate of that particular model). Problem is finding a high quality high speed, high air volume, fan that has good sound characteristics at high and low speed and that is commercially available with the proper 3 pin connector.

Panasonic has their Panaflo series which is supposed to be good, but their high speed fans are a bit deep at 38mm.

Papst is supposed to make very high quality fans, but I'm having a heck of a time finding somewhere that sells the high speed versions with the proper connector.

Adda is another company that is said to make high quality high speed fans. Dell uses these for their cases and judging from the fact that Adda has the patent on Hypro Bearing fans, Silenx uses their fans as well (too bad they don't sell high speed fans as well, but then I guess they wouldn't be "silent").

So I'm in a bit of a quandary. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. Keep in mind, however, that Delta fans and the Vantec Tornado apparently don't have very good sound characteristics and are right out.

If I find a good solution, I'll let you know.

Musings on Why Apple Switched to Intel

Woke up at around 3am last night and while trying to get back to sleep, I started thinking about the Apple/Intel affair that's been going around the net lately.

It occurred to me that I haven't seen a lot of people asking if it was IBM's choice instead of Apple's and I was also struck with reasons why IBM would want to say bye to Apple. 120 million of them.

Read my post on Computerworld at http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/313 to find out what those 120 million reasons are.

PC Saga Ends - The Game's Afoot

I finally did it. Made up my mind. Completed my research. Purchased my parts.

That's right, I decided to go the self-built route because as much as I like those clamshell cases that Dell uses, there just wasn't enough value add for me to pay $1200 extra.

At any rate, I purchased pretty much what I listed a few days ago. Got the Dell 2005FPW flat screen on sale for less than $500 after shipping and tax.

Grand total of parts purchased from Newegg came to $1938.35.

Still have to purchase the power supply and case fans from Silenx, but I'm done for the day and headed off to bed.

No Luck in Haggling With Dell

I've heard other people tell stories of calling up Dell and getting killer deals on systems, similar to how some people are able to get great deals from car dealers.

Been talking to a woman and she's just not giving me an inch.

One interesting thing that I saw in one of my Pubsub feeds is blog called cheapstingybargains.com which tells you of coupons and deals to get deep discounts for stuff.

For instance they have details on a deal from Dell to get 40% off of the 2005FPW 20" flat screen when you buy as a small business customer.  So I'm definitely getting that.

Oh and don't get me started on the terms they offered me for their Dell preferred account. 25% anual interest and $2000 max...Say what?

Anyhow, Dell would have had to bring their price on the XPS 4 down to about $3000 including monitor, shipping and tax.

I just can't see spending $4050 for something when I can build it BETTER for $2850.

Can you say "dude, you're not getting a Dell!"

Some More Info on the Dell Desktops

By the way, attentive readers might have noticed that between Monday morning and Monday evening, that I went from wanting a Dell with a Pentium D to wanting a single core Pentium 4. I've seen benchmarks for current games such as Doom and the Pentium D is a non-performer. Well behind in benchmarks of games, which will be the main purpose of this system.

Also, in reference to difference of power supplies between the Dells and my specs for Scobleized system, the Silenx power supply that I spec'ed out is rated at 600 watts, the PS for the Dimension 8400 is rated at 350 watts and the PS for the XPS 4 is rated at 450 watts.

I did pricing on the XPS 4 and it comes out to be about the same as the 8400 and since it has a nicer looking chassis and larger power supply, I'd rather go with that.

Having said all that, I'm still leaning towards building my own Scobleized PC. Since I've used that term so much in the past few days, I wonder if I will receive a Cease and Desist order from my brother's high-powered attorneys.

Difference In Corporate Consumer PC Sales Websites

Sorry for the complicated title.

Been looking for a gaming laptop so that my girlfriend and I can play online games together while in the same room.

Looked on all the usual places, HP, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, AlienWare, and others.

Amazing how bad HP's site is when it comes to finding specs of the laptops. I had to download the maintenance guide to find out that their DDR memory is running at 333mhz. Dell, Toshiba, Alienware and others clearly label the specs for their parts.

Must say that Gateway's site was not very fun to use when customizing a laptop. They seem to have taken a bad page out of Microsoft's book by hiding options and making the specs link hard to find. Also, my girlfriend has a Gateway and they didn't ship a Windows or Software CD (they ship blanks for the software and expect you to make them on your own, ugh). So you can't do a repair of Windows if something happens, you have to do a complete scrub. Very lame...By comparison, Dell ships all their systems that I've ever seen with the software CDs.

Anyhow, still not sure what I'm going to buy yet. I was looking at AMD Mobile 64 systems, but I saw benchmarks that puts them quite down on power against the Pentium Ms.

On a very funny note, I took a page out of my brother's product research book and searched on Google for "laptop sucks". I saw just about every major brand (lots of Toshiba and HP hits, some Sony and some Dell) but not any of IBM in the top 25-50 hits. Not buying an IBM though because I have no idea what their support is going to be like when they completely switch to the Chinese company, Lenovo, that now owns them.

Dead Pixel on Dell 1901FP

Ruh, roh, Raggy...Just noticed that I have a dead pixel now on my Dell FP1901 flat panel here at work. First one after a year's worth of use, and it's near the top edge of the screen so not totally catastrophic, but I did think it's worth mentioning.

Then again, I've seen LCD panels that ship with dead pixels and this is the first that I've noticed on a FP1901, of which we have like 40.

Did have another failure early on where an entire column of pixels of one of the FP1901s was dead.

All in all not a bad track record, but not entirely satisfactory either as I expect to have zero dead pixels for the first 3 years of a quality LCD panel.

According to this, Dell Dead Pixel Policy, Dell won't replace the LCD panel unless it has at least 6 dead pixels. So before you buy an LCD panel, I suggest you find out what the vendor's dead pixel replacement policy is.

BTW, the pixel is actually what is called a lit pixel in that it stays a constant light blue color, but the effect is the same none the less.

Why Are PCs Slow During Heavy Disk Access?

Here's a question for all of the Computer Engineers out there. Why do PCs become slow almost to the point of unusable when the PC's drive buses are in heavy use?

What am I talking about? Copy a CD to a CD or perform a disk intensive process like copying a lot of data from one PC to another and see what happens to your nice 3.2Ghz P4 with 512MB of DDR RAM. It slows to a crawl! At least it does in Windows.

Why is that? You'd think that with all of the myriad of changes that Intel has made to it's motherboard designs that they would have found a way to separate the drive bus from the memory bus. It's like we have all of these nice highways leading to a two lane residential street, under construction. Oops sorry, we are only letting brown cars through right now. You're car is blue, so you'll have to wait.

Servers (also built on Intel's architecture) do not have this same problem. You can be totally hammering a RAID array on a server and still log in to the console and everything works just fine.

What's my point? That it's virtually meaningless to have CPUs, memory, graphics cards and hard drives that are as fast as they are if you can't effectively perform multiple dissimilar tasks on your PC...at the SAME time. I'd say that if Intel or AMD want to make improvements for workplace PCs, that bus systems are the place to look at. CPUs are well above the speed that they need to be to effectively use most desktop applications. Memory is the same.

You want to really increase the effectiveness of new computers to the point that IT Managers like me can make a good case for upgrading every three years, well then you had better show me something. Show me that a user can be working on a Word document while burning a CD while listening to an MP3 while printing a PDF while browsing the web while talking on MSN, Yahoo IM, AOL IM, while their RSS reader is culling feeds in the background, while their administrator is connected to their PC remotely showing them how to do something.

Yeah, that might be an extreme example, but you get my point. Making the PC work faster is no longer going to help the average worker. Making the PC do more things at once will. And no they aren't the same thing. Speed does not equal efficiency. Efficiency is getting the most out of all parts of a system. Synergy. Maximizing throughput, etc.

Besides, since both Intel and AMD seem to be hitting a big brickwall on speed, going sideways and increasing what a PC can do with all of it's parts seems to be the most logical place to make improvements.