Flaming heck. Dell adaptors

[There is currently no room in our mailbox for the number of letters about Verizon that winged our way as a result of Wendy M. Grossman's article, here. So on to Dell's recall without any delay. Ed.]

Dell notebook adaptor fault: Not many dead

After enduring a numbing amount of phone wait and transfers, I requested a replacement Dell adapter when the original Inq article was published - since then, I've not heard a single word, or seen a single bit of documentation (let alone a replacement adapter) from Dell.

Tom

Gigabyte: Good stuff

Mike

Dr Jim here in Darkest Ballard where two boxes of shiny, new computer pooh just got dropped on our Lab's doorstep.

Eagerly I buzzed through masses of peanuts to grab out my nifty Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard, which came packed in a rather splab two-part case with integrated carry handles - a nice touch here, the carry handles are also the pull-straps which allow you to extract the inner boxes without having to savage the packaging.

Just as I was reaching to tear open the inner box, my eye caught on the message printed across the boxes' top:

"Gigabyte Mini Setup Platform"

"Huh?"

I quickly scanned the list of six 'setup' instructions, and then began to chortle and laugh. Gigabyte had pierced the box with pushouts, so that you could insert your hard disk, floppy, and "optical device" to use the inner box as a temporary test bed with the motherboard on top and your drives neatly stowed below.

Very clever, very original, and very useful - I've bread-boarded all of my new computers on top of the manufacturers boxes for years, with the motherboard safely sitting on the some anti-static foam, and my drives all scattered higgledy-piggeldy across the desk in dire danger of shorting out or taking a death-dive to the floor.

Well done, Gigabyte - it takes some special thought and appreciation to grab this jaded uber-geeks attention, reward the clever person who thought this sweet little idea up, they're on the same page as the rest of the hardcore hardware hackers.

Cheers
Jim Mitchell

Vendors should be licensed

I subscribe entirely to the idea that vendors must acquire a license to sell for each product.

Said license should be evaluated by an independant panel of quality experts, who would supervise two test groups : one comprised of monkeys, the other of clueless users.

If, in either group, the application breaks in any way, or produces incoherent or damaging results and/or effects, then the license would not be delivered.

Unfortunately, any economist will tell you that such an environment already exists. It's called a market. Too bad there are no supervisors for the monkeys.

Pascal

Mac Mini: Revolution or flash in the pan?

Apple took the SFF idea and made it look better. Simplicity is chic.

Allen

Dear Sir,

In the article mentioned in my subject line, the author states....

"But the real question is how can the Mac Mini sell in large volumes if people have to buy keyboard, mouse, monitor and speakers, and be stuck with a 4X burner on DVDs without a real upgrade path?"

The Mac Mini will sell in large volumes to people that ALREADY have theose peripherals. The Mini is not targeted (nor being marketeded) to people as a "first computer".

The Mini will sell in LARGE volume to people that are:

a) computer literate
b) have always wanted to try out the Mac OS and can now do so at an extremley low price.
c) have enough comuputer knowledge to know what a KVM switch is (unlike, obvioulsy, the author).
d) can apreciate the value in the software that comes with the Mini.

Cheers,

Chris McLaughlin

i honestly do not think that apple are trying to compete with the windows world onprice, but bring the mac price lower, may be tempting PC users who have been drowned with problem (virus's, adware, spyware, trojans and a weekly security update) an affordable alternatve.

so yes you might get an LCD dimension, but then you will also have to get antivirus software which also removes spyware and adware, which more than likely unless you get pirate software will top the price of the mac mini.

AtalB01

Do I HAVE to flame you? OK, I've sent a mental flame your way.

Why do you insist on comparing apples to oranges and then neglect things like "one doesn't leak"? The Mac mini happens to be amazingly small, and a price has been paid for that "feature" - a slow and expensive HD. The size is not its raison d'etre, though, it is just something to get attention. And processing power is not a real issue any more than graphics capability - if those are valid concerns for a would-be purchaser then they should look elsewhere. The Mac mini has more than enough power for what 90% of non-gaming home users want to do: surf, email, tunes, videos, re-touching photos, doing their taxes, word processing/lite DTP, and the like. Oh, and NOT cleaning up after the latest mal-ware. And NOT having to worry about the SYSTEM crashing on us. It ain't all about Quake.

Is there a DELL service center near you?

Anonymous

Yellow Journalism [Er, we're red. Ed.]

That was the worst yellow journalism I have ever seen. You compare the Mac Mini to another computer and don't bother to mention the price of the computer. If you compare the Mac Mini with the Stealth Computer option for option there is a ridiculous price difference. The Mac is $499 without a keyboard/mouse/monitor. The Stealth starts at $1495 for a fan less model. Even at your $1495 you are missing a few things like the hard drive is only 30 gig add $50, a CD RW/DVD is another $75, wait no operating system add another $195. So you are talking about a computer for over $1800 that still lacks the Apple software. Which is a better deal? Then you have the guts to compare the Mac to a Dell computer for $399 why don't you compare the Stealth Computer to the Dell $1800 vs $399 obviously the Stealth is a piece of crap and no one on the planet would ever buy one. Why don't you do an honest comparison of the 3 computers. By the way the Dell is not upgradeable. Try and buy a new motherboard and replace the existing one. You can't they are Dell only motherboards. The fit and finish on the Dells suck and they are commodity junk. You would actually want a Dell in your living room? A big black box that can't connect to your TV, is full of spyware, viruses, and adware. You might but I don't.

You are a PC fanatic

i have checked out the small pcs too. I like them, but i hate windows xp. I think the whole problem is comparing systems, because there are alot of great pc systems. The problem is that windows xp sucks. If Microsoft came out with a solid rock unix operationing system, one in I can run office, explorer, and all my apps. I would buy a pc, until then I would use a solid unix systems like os x. I bought a mac mini too try it out. I added 512mb of memory too it, and haven't had any problems. I runs fast, my Dell with twice the processor speed runs like a turtle. I don't think you can compare the both properly without at least trying them out together. You can look at specs all day, but until you do a real world test on them, then you really can't tell the difference, and there is a big difference! I opened up microsoft office , itunes, my email, and watch a video clip with no slow down. My Dell froze up on me when I did that. So try turning both computers on and trying them out first, you might see a big difference too.

Anonymous

Hi there,

I think you forgot to take into account the most important thing of all ... Mac OS X.

rgds
bk

Everywhere Girl

This time Everywhere girl is circulating the popular ad network Burst...and shes working for H&R block..

I noticed her on GamingHorizon.com ... http://www.burstnet.com/gifs/hr_block_y_01_120x600_g_20k_lo_020405.gif

Name supplied

[We are told that some journalists in the US have been sent coasters advertising Sun Microsystem wares and using the now very familiar image of the Everywhere Girl. But so far we have no evidence of this. Ed.]