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    #41
    Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

    I think you should drop the idea renting out VPS's for people, it sounds like a lot of out lay on something you won't make much money on, plus there is the ball ache of running the hardware. To put it another way, would you rent space from a guy who built the hosting solution in his basement when there are plenty of providers who can do it cheaper and better?

    Comment


      #42
      Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

      Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
      This is what makes it a little difficult. The use of the storage is going to change. At first, it will be used to deploy images, that was the idea, to bring cash in.
      Are you that far out in the boonies that this service isn't already offered by many other commodity brokers? I.e., if so, what "value" will you be adding to differentiate yourself from them?

      Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
      Using Windows Server 2012 R2 to properly deploy fully updated images of various Window operating systems. So if someone brings me a laptop with Windows 7, I don't have to spend three days running Windows update.
      Do offline updates. I built a Win7 laptop last night. Then installed the updates without connecting the laptop to The Internet. As such, I can "update" several machines (without setting up an update server) without taxing my outbound network connection.

      [You can also clone disks but that presents other problems]

      Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
      We'd have a few NASes and RAM and maybe CPUs lying around in case something goes bad. I think with the DL380 Gen 9, you can actually have these in the system, just as backup. (the RAM I mean). With the DL380 Gen 9, I think if I built it up enough, I could install some virtual machines, and maybe run Windows Server 2012 R2 in a virtual machine, and still use it for deployment.
      Again, what are you doing that your competitors aren't already doing? I swap entire machines in/out to keep my availability high (no "customers", just myself -- down time translates into lost working hours). So, all I need is space to keep the "cold spares".

      Make sure you aren't solving a problem that someone else has already solved... better!

      Comment


        #43
        Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

        Originally posted by jondoe View Post
        I think you should drop the idea renting out VPS's for people, it sounds like a lot of out lay on something you won't make much money on, plus there is the ball ache of running the hardware. To put it another way, would you rent space from a guy who built the hosting solution in his basement when there are plenty of providers who can do it cheaper and better?
        To tell you the truth, for all I know, Linode has their servers in the basement! You do make a valid point though. Honestly though, I do want to convert the den into a server room, get a rack, a large gigabit switch, have that the central location for all the wires in the house (coax, cat 6 ethernet, cat 5 for the telephone, etc). Even if I don't rent out the server, I can still use it to make money much quicker, by installing Windows Server 2012 R2, and using that to deploy images to customers computers. The longest part is doing the updates, but with the server, that shouldn't be an issue.

        I could also run my website off of it, and do away with the Linode. That'd save me 20$ a month. But then I have to rent cPanel for dedicated servers. That cost I think 45$ a month, if I go directly through cPanel. cPanel is something I'd want. I'll install CentOS 7 I think on the server, and maybe run Windows Server 2012 R2 in a VM. Right now, with the VPS I rent and the price I pay for cPanel, I'm paying around 40$ a month. 5$ bucks more for a dedicated server with lots of RAM and hard drive space might be worth it. I dunno.

        Got a lot to think about still.
        -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

        Comment


          #44
          Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

          Originally posted by Curious.George View Post
          Are you that far out in the boonies that this service isn't already offered by many other commodity brokers? I.e., if so, what "value" will you be adding to differentiate yourself from them?
          We're not out in the boonies. I'm trying to think of the word for our type of city. It's not a large city, like Rochester, Binghamton, NYC, but it's not the country side, like Caton. There's two PC repair companies in Corning, right now. One I think mainly deals with businesses now. Probably Corning, Inc and the small businesses on Market street. There's now two choices for high speed internet. Spectrum and Empire Access. There's no companies, to my knowledge, in Corning that even have any rack mount servers, except for Corning, Inc. I think the college might have some. For cell phone repairs, I think we're the only one who does them. For TV repair, we are the only ones. For tablets, again, I think it's just us. Southern Tier PC does do computer work, but they're expensive, from what my customers say.

          Originally posted by Curious.George View Post
          Do offline updates. I built a Win7 laptop last night. Then installed the updates without connecting the laptop to The Internet. As such, I can "update" several machines (without setting up an update server) without taxing my outbound network connection.

          [You can also clone disks but that presents other problems]
          Both those might work, but the proper way is to use something like Windows Server, and deploy images via the network, fully updated. I used to be able to fully update a PC, then use sysprep to remove drivers, etc, and then when I installed the OS (Windows XP, for instance), it'd be fully updated. But we can no longer do it this way. Microsoft says the proper way is with Windows Server.

          Originally posted by Curious.George View Post
          Again, what are you doing that your competitors aren't already doing? I swap entire machines in/out to keep my availability high (no "customers", just myself -- down time translates into lost working hours). So, all I need is space to keep the "cold spares".
          What competitors do I have besides the local PC repair companies? I mean, there's staples that offer hard drive data recovery now. But all they do is swap out the PCB, if it works, you have to pay them a couple hundred of dollars. If it don't, they put the original PCB back in and you don't pay a cent.

          Originally posted by Curious.George View Post
          Make sure you aren't solving a problem that someone else has already solved... better!
          That's the whole point. You're absolutely right, and I think there's a lot of opportunity here, that other people haven't taken advantage of for one reason or another. I think it might have something to do with the taxes. I believe my city has one of the highest property taxes in the state. We bought this house for 92,500$. We pay around 450$ for the mortgage payment, but our monthly bill was over 900$. The rest of the money actually goes into the escrow, for property taxes, school taxes, and house insurance. I think it's setup this way on purpose, to try and keep larger companies from moving into the area. We pay more than what's due, and now because it's a new year, thankfully, it's down to around 750$ because we over paid.

          We do get some small businesses that will pop up but tend to disappear real quick like. Those "vap" shops seem to be a new thing around here. We literally had three I think appear over night. But now there's two. Drove by one last night, the place was closed. The other one, my friend works at. I went in, the shops empty. There's a few of the liquids you can buy, but I guess they're struggling as well. Pawn shops setup business for a bit. They list their hours, next thing you know, they're open maybe once or twice a week. Then they're gone.

          By running the business out of my house, I can provide lower prices than places like Southern Tier PC. Southern Tier PC had trouble as well. So now, their business is actually in a house, the first floor. I suspect this was to save money on taxes. Food places are all over the place though. Fancy restuarants. A few with dress codes, etc. They seem to do well. Tony R's steak house, for example. But even those types of restaurants end up disappearing. We used to have a taco bell, and a KFC, a McDonals, and a Burger King. Now, we just got the McDonalds and Burger King. The other places moved to neighboring towns, I think because it's cheaper, taxwise and stuff.
          -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

          Comment


            #45
            Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

            To give you guys a better idea, here's the rates from the Comptrollers office, 2015. They've gone up a bit since then though:

            Code:
            Entity				Tax Rate	Government level	Rank in NY
            				(per $1,000
            				full value)
            ===================================================================================
            
            Corning City School 		$23.70		School district		170
              District	
            Corning				$10.46		City			39
            South Corning			$6.43		Village			244
            Corning				$4.69		Town			437
            Here, you can see the city, where I live, ranks 39. That means there's only 38 cities in NY that have higher tax rates, including NYC. The outskirts though, the poorer edge of town, South Corning, taxes are much lower. Then the Town (out in the country, like Caton, or in those smaller suburbs, like Gibson, which aren't really country, but don't have any businesses or anything like that, much, much, much cheaper to live. In those areas though, there's rules. For example, in the Town of Corning, in the part where my mum lives, you need a minimum of two acres per house. They tried putting a guest house up, but only had two acres. The town said it had to be torn down. They got some sort of hardship and was allowed it, so long as my wife and I lived there, helping them out. As soon as we left, it had to be torn down. Commercial businesses are not allowed. My parents live in the town of Corning, above Gibson. My dad wanted to set up storage sheds and rent them out. Town said no, residential zoning, not commercial. Can't do it! When they moved my Grandma's trailer up there, to take care of her, before she died, they had to get special approval from the government. They originally said no trailers, but they were to get around it with one of those hardships. But as soon as my grandmother passed away, the trailer had to go.

            I think with high taxes like this, most businesses say why would I setup business in Corning, when 50 miles away, I can get soooo much more business, and pay much, much cheaper prices?
            -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

            Comment


              #46
              Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

              Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
              To tell you the truth, for all I know, Linode has their servers in the basement! You do make a valid point though. Honestly though, I do want to convert the den into a server room, get a rack, a large gigabit switch, have that the central location for all the wires in the house (coax, cat 6 ethernet, cat 5 for the telephone, etc). Even if I don't rent out the server, I can still use it to make money much quicker, by installing Windows Server 2012 R2, and using that to deploy images to customers computers. The longest part is doing the updates, but with the server, that shouldn't be an issue.

              I could also run my website off of it, and do away with the Linode. That'd save me 20$ a month. But then I have to rent cPanel for dedicated servers. That cost I think 45$ a month, if I go directly through cPanel. cPanel is something I'd want. I'll install CentOS 7 I think on the server, and maybe run Windows Server 2012 R2 in a VM. Right now, with the VPS I rent and the price I pay for cPanel, I'm paying around 40$ a month. 5$ bucks more for a dedicated server with lots of RAM and hard drive space might be worth it. I dunno.

              Got a lot to think about still.
              I pay £50 for the reseller package. Websites are between £5 and £10 a month with few a little more. No need for a server or worry or any kind about having redundant power, hardware, storage and again at another site. No need for backups either.
              Being able to message them a website is down and them email back within 10 minutes telling me why and that it's fixed is worth more than £50 a month. That doesn't include any of the costs included above.

              If you are only have space to install Windows one at a time I could see being able to deploy/install Windows quicker than 3 days would be a benefit.
              It doesn't however take 3 days. 10-30 minutes to install Windows. Then there's drivers, software and updates. A couple more hours if that. I can't see how a server is going to make you money. I have space for multiple PCs so time isn't an issue anyway.
              Deploying is great if you have multiple PCs to reimage with identical hardware, they tend to have the same license key also.
              For home machines where the hardware and drivers are different every time it's more hassle than it's worth especially since there us wsus offline or the update patch and the unofficial sp2 which significantly speed things up.
              Last edited by diif; 08-16-2017, 02:37 PM.

              Comment


                #47
                Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
                We're not out in the boonies. I'm trying to think of the word for our type of city. It's not a large city, like Rochester, Binghamton, NYC, but it's not the country side, like Caton.
                Last time I was in Binghamton (40 years ago), I wouldn't have called it, big! OTOH, I was only there in transit to Owego which was even further from "big"!

                Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
                There's two PC repair companies in Corning, right now. One I think mainly deals with businesses now. Probably Corning, Inc and the small businesses on Market street. There's now two choices for high speed internet. Spectrum and Empire Access. There's no companies, to my knowledge, in Corning that even have any rack mount servers, except for Corning, Inc. I think the college might have some. For cell phone repairs, I think we're the only one who does them. For TV repair, we are the only ones. For tablets, again, I think it's just us. Southern Tier PC does do computer work, but they're expensive, from what my customers say.
                But PC repair and ISP require a local presence. Once you (i.e., your customer) have a network connection, "services" can be hosted anywhere on the planet! That's the reason "call centers" can be sited in places like India yet handle US customers.

                Folks trying to compete with you for tablet/phone repair have the added step of "shipping" between them and their customers -- something that you can avoid (if your customers are local). But, providing CPU cycles on the end of a wire can be done by anyone, at any time. How can you expect to compete? Do you plan on having folks working 3 shifts to cover those cases where a problem occurs "on the off hours"? Can you afford to have an offsite hot backup for your servers in case your house burns down, is flooded, loses power, etc.?

                Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
                By running the business out of my house, I can provide lower prices than places like Southern Tier PC. Southern Tier PC had trouble as well. So now, their business is actually in a house, the first floor. I suspect this was to save money on taxes.
                Here there be Dragons.

                Be sure you talk to your local muni gummit to see what constraints apply to businesses in residential areas (typically, can't increase traffic, noise, etc.)

                Also, be sure to check with your accountant as writing off any portion of a home for a business expense changes the tax treatment of the home (e.g., at resale).

                I'll confess to not having a clear idea of what you are trying to do -- but, fear it may lie too firmly in the "commodity" realm, leaving you wide open to competition and low margins.
                Last edited by Curious.George; 08-16-2017, 08:49 PM. Reason: spelling

                Comment


                  #48
                  Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                  Originally posted by diif View Post
                  I pay £50 for the reseller package. Websites are between £5 and £10 a month with few a little more. No need for a server or worry or any kind about having redundant power, hardware, storage and again at another site. No need for backups either.
                  Being able to message them a website is down and them email back within 10 minutes telling me why and that it's fixed is worth more than £50 a month. That doesn't include any of the costs included above.

                  If you are only have space to install Windows one at a time I could see being able to deploy/install Windows quicker than 3 days would be a benefit.
                  It doesn't however take 3 days. 10-30 minutes to install Windows. Then there's drivers, software and updates. A couple more hours if that. I can't see how a server is going to make you money. I have space for multiple PCs so time isn't an issue anyway.
                  Deploying is great if you have multiple PCs to reimage with identical hardware, they tend to have the same license key also.
                  For home machines where the hardware and drivers are different every time it's more hassle than it's worth especially since there us wsus offline or the update patch and the unofficial sp2 which significantly speed things up.
                  The time is the Windows updates. With 10, it's not a big deal, because there aren't many. With 7, it does seem to take quite a while. Once in a create while, I get an XP machine still. I hate those. They're getting really hard to update. I try convincing the owners to upgrade, but some insist. Not sure why. Any ways, just to get an XP machine to connect to Windows Update, I have to modify the registry and make it think it's a POS. Otherwise, on-line updates are impossible.

                  I have tried many ways to create an updated Windows 7 disc that included updates. A lot of these machines are slow. A lot came with something like Vista or 8, and they want 7 or 10. But they don't want to spend money to upgrade the hardware. It takes forever to install those updates. I get a lot of laptops now. Most I think are those 300$ walmart specials.

                  I get a laptop, I tear it apart and clean the fan. Then I remove the thermal paste, and apply new thermal paste. I put it back together. I backup their data, if they want it backed up. I format, I reinstall. I spend time trying to find drivers. I try to grab most of them from the manufacturer's website of the hardware, not the laptop, but there's certain drivers I grab from the manufacturer's website, because they're modified by the manufacturer. I'll check for BIOS updates as well, and if there's any available, I'll update the BIOS.

                  I do the Windows update. This takes forever. Sometimes, with 7, because there's an issue with the update program, it can take a good day just checking for updates. It appears to hang, but it doesn't.

                  There are programs / scripts that are supposed to be able to slipstream the updates to a 7 disc. They'll download them or you can manually copy them from a PC that was just recently updated. But only a few will succeed in the slipstream, because most depend on a newer version of .NET framework, that doesn't come with the 7 disc. I believe I'm using the latest official disc from Microsoft. I downloaded it from that Digital Rivers. Microsoft themselves where the ones who gave me the link.

                  So I looked at slipstreaming .NET framework (I think it's 3.5 or 4 that they require) onto the disc. I can't find away to slipstream it. So I tried sysprepping the machine and capturing an image. But activation always fails. I contact Microsoft and they say we cannot do it that way any more. We need to use Windows Server to capture images and deploy them, and this is why it fails. Same with 8. 8 is really a nightmare. It's soooooo buggy, it's crazy. But if I can actually get it to update, then it isn't so bad.

                  This I think is why it usually takes 3 days to do a laptop. Last customer brought me two and wanted them fixed as soon as possible. One was an Asus with an i3, which actually only took maybe a day, but with the baby, I couldn't work just on it. The other was an old Toshiba. It had 2GB of RAM and a dual core processor. They had gone for the "free" 10 upgrade. That was really hard and took a very long time. I did a clean install, but they wanted the Cyberlink programs that came with it originally. And of course, those programs weren't compatible with 10. With the HP, it came with 7 but again, they went for the free 10 upgrade. Cyberlink wasn't compatible but thankfully, HP had a fix. But I couldn't use the fix, because it required Cyberlink to be installed, which couldn't be installed with 10. But I found away around it. I downloaded the update from Cyberlinks page for the retail version. Then I used the setup program that came with that update from Cyberlinks page and replaced the one from HP's Cyberlink program.

                  In the basement, there's room, but I can usually only work in the basement while the baby is sleeping. Otherwise, if my wife's home, and the baby is awake, I need to work upstairs, so I can keep an eye on them. But upstairs, there isn't much room at all. I have a dinning room table I can work on. Usually, up there, it's only one PC at a time. I can't run ethernet cable to the machine, so I have to download the wireless drivers from another machine, and sometimes video drivers, then I can get wireless working.

                  These "free" 10 upgrades, I can't understand some of this stuff. For example, the two machines that had 10 on them, both had hardware without drivers. Microsoft says the hardware wasn't compatible with 10. I can't see how the owners could install the free upgrade without being told their wireless NIC wasn't going to work. But they do it anyways. And then I gotta spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to get wireless NIC drivers that do work. It's almost always possible. I find whatever chipset is on the wireless NIC and go from there. I know it isn't the most optimal solution, but it works. It might not work perfectly, but at least they have wireless access again. So, for example, the wireless NIC in one of these machines might not have Windows 10 drivers at all.

                  Just for an example, HP might have a driver for Windows 7 that says Broadcom Wireless LAN. But those drivers might not work at all with Windows 10. So I'll find the chipset might be something like the Broadcom BCM43225. Then I'll search for wireless NICs that have that same chipset. I'll find maybe a Linksys driver that's using the Broadcom BCM43225 that has Windows 10 drivers available. I'll download them, check to see if the inf file lists the ven and dev of the wireless NIC in the laptop, and if it does, I'll try to install. I almost always find a driver that works. I tell the customers. But they just don't like to spend money. That one Toshiba, that was upgradable a lot! Just a little more RAM would have helped. The CPU was upgradable too. The board actually supported a quad core. It was soooooooo slow with the CPU that was in there and the little bit of RAM. I'd click the start menu, and literally, five minutes later, it'd pop up. It's stuff like that, that makes it take three days to redo a PC.

                  That's what they want though. Windows 10 on a machine that came with XP or some shit. God knows why! God forbid they spend 40$ on a used CPU and 20$ on some RAM. They all seem to want miracles.
                  -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

                  Comment


                    #49
                    Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                    Originally posted by Curious.George View Post
                    Last time I was in Binghamton (40 years ago), I wouldn't have called it, big! OTOH, I was only there in transit to Owego which was even further from "big"!



                    But PC repair and ISP require a local presence. Once you (i.e., your customer) have a network connection, "services" can be hosted anywhere on the planet! That's the reason "call centers" can be sited in places like India yet handle US customers.

                    Folks trying to compete with you for tablet/phone repair have the added step of "shipping" between them and their customers -- something that you can avoid (if your customers are local). But, providing CPU cycles on the end of a wire can be done by anyone, at any time. How can you expect to compete? Do you plan on having folks working 3 shifts to cover those cases where a problem occurs "on the off hours"? Can you afford to have an offsite hot backup for your servers in case your house burns down, is flooded, loses power, etc.?



                    Here there be Dragons.

                    Be sure you talk to your local muni gummit to see what constraints apply to businesses in residential areas (typically, can't increase traffic, noise, etc.)

                    Also, be sure to check with your accountant as writing off any portion of a home for a business expense changes the tax treatment of the home (e.g., at resale).

                    I'll confess to not having a clear idea of what you are trying to do -- but, fear it may lie too firmly in the "commodity" realm, leaving you wide open to competition and low margins.
                    So far, the PC business has worked out fine. We work with the government, to give them their money. We do live in residential and there are rules they say we have to follow. Like I can put a small sign in my window, but I can't put a huge sign in my yard. Everything was working great, until the baby came. I just cannot afford to spend the time like I was working. I didn't count on that. We had planned I would watch the baby until my wife came home, then she'd take over and watch her while I worked on the PCs. But this is where the problem is. So something needs to change. I just cannot work on the PCs like I used to be able to. I can't leave her alone with the baby, not even for five minutes. I try getting her to get help, but she says there's nothing wrong. Now, the doctors, they talk to me and give me ideas on what to do to try and help. She refuses to see a doc now, so even though it probably breaks some hipa policy (or whatever they're called), they talk to me and I act as like a buffer. I listen to what they say and try to do what they suggest, and then I report back to them and let them know if it's helping or not. Right now, the last idea they gave me, that seems to help.

                    Instead of letting my wife do stuff alone with the baby, like feed her or play with her, I have to do it with her, at least until she learns how to do it. But I can't let her know I'm doing it to try and help. So for feeding time, I sit down and my wife sits down, and we feed the baby together. Two spoons, one jar of baby food. I make a game out of it. Now my wife seems to be copying me and that's good. The baby doesn't scream when I feed her, she screams when Jess feeds her. But Jess doesn't make it fun. You gotta make it fun. That seems to be the key. Now though, she's starting to make it fun and I think it's really helping. My wife's laughing, the baby seems to be finally bonding with her mother. Things are starting to change. Yesterday, I tried to work a bit down in the basement though, and it didn't work. I had to go back upstairs. When the baby's happy, my wife is good. It's just when the baby isn't happy. Now she's got some more teeth coming in. That means a lot of crying, and my wife just doesn't handle it for some reason. So I'm just going to continue doing what the doc said and maybe I just need to do it longer, you know?
                    -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

                    Comment


                      #50
                      Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                      Someone dropped an iPod off at my house with a note. We were sleeping. It was Alfred. It's not his iPod, it's his friend's iPod. They bought it, they said, but can't use it. No cable or anything, and it wants the original owners username and password to redo it. Is it stolen? I dunno. But it's stuff like this that I don't like! He should have called and asked if I could repair it, rather than just dropping it off!
                      -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

                      Comment


                        #51
                        Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                        Spork. My customers come to me as I am their computer man. The majority are on windows 7. A few have insisted on 10 but most come back to 7.
                        If an operating system change is required from the original I check with the manufacturer first. No need to make work. Slow crap is replaced with better. I don't sell where I don't need to though.
                        Installing an OS from an original disc takes tops 30 minutes. Whilst that's installing I find the drivers. Driver and updates take a couple of hours tops on and off whilst doing other things.
                        Every hard drive is backed up as a matter of course. Work done, rebuilds/new builds with updates can be done in less then 24 hours but I like to test depending on what work has been carried out.
                        I'd be passing the dodgy ipod right back. There's enough legit stuff be getting on with.

                        Comment


                          #52
                          Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                          Next laptop I get, I'll time it. I got a Macbook Pro I'm working on now. The owner spilled liquid on it originally, wine I think. That's taking some time. Now, the hard drive died. He went and bought a WD Blue for some reason, probably because it was available at Bestbuy. It seems the Blue has died though. I think they're crappy hard drives. I would have ordered a black. But he knows how to tear apart a laptop. He attempts repairs himself, and when something goes wrong, then he pays me money to fix it.

                          I don't know a lot about apple products. I put the two hard drives in my Linux machine, I can use dd to transfer the entire contents from the first hard drive to the second. I run fsck.hfsplus, it finds errors. That doesn't make since to me. Makes me think it's a filesystem problem, right? So I create a new file system on the new blue. I run fsck.hfsplus, finds errors.

                          I try it on the Mac, first, it starts creating partitions, then it errors out, saying it cannot fix the issue. Something with the b-tree node. Now, it don't even see the hard drive. I replaced the flex cable with a new one a few weeks back, maybe that's bad again.

                          The biggest problem is I just can't sit down and work. My wife comes home, i try to work, the baby starts screaming. I go upstairs, and my wife won't even be there! Yesterday, I came up, my wife decided to go up to bed and take a nap!!! She just left the baby down stairs, unattented. It was horrible! She was trying to climb up the baby gate, that goes to the upstairs. If she had fallen, with the fake hardware floors out there, she could have gotten hurt so bad. Or if she actually climbed over, she could have started working up the stairs and fell down. It's stuff like this that makes it nearly impossible to continue repairing PCs the way I've been doing it.

                          Even when I work in the dining room, if I'm there, my wife sometimes just ignores the baby. I can't do that, I gotta interact with her. So if I'm upstairs working and the baby's awake, no work gets done.

                          Some days, my wife's great. Yesterday, I thought everything was going good. It wasn't until I went downstairs and started working that we had issues. There was no warning or nothing. She was playing with the baby, having fun, we were laughing. I go downstairs to work, maybe 30 minutes later, I her the little one crying and not stopping. I come up to see what's wrong, and my wife's just gone! I'm having a real hard time dealing with that kind of stuff Diif. It's like the whole world is coming down on me. I gotta do everything and there just isn't enough time.
                          -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

                          Comment


                            #53
                            Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                            Why the need for a new hard drive ? Is the original having issues or does he just want bigger ? Is it new or one he had at home ?
                            Verify the Blue is good first, use a Hiren disc (or similar) or Windows diagnostic software.

                            The mother of my godchildren suffered from post natal depression. She was taking anti depressants for quite a while. Things will get better Spork, hang in there bud.

                            Comment


                              #54
                              Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                              Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
                              Next laptop I get, I'll time it.
                              The biggest time-sink in installing Windows is finding and downloading all of the required drivers. Some machines have different build options so you have to do the install before you can figure out the actual hardware in the machine (i.e., look at vendor codes)

                              Most manufacturer web sites don't have a simple "click this to get all downloads". So, you end up having to pull down individual files. And, if you are likely to encounter that machine, again, you probably also want the release notes for each download, etc.

                              [I keep the files for every machine I've had to build on one of my servers for future reference -- including other versions of Windows, etc. as I may need to change that in the future and don't want to worry that the site may be gone, by then. I regularly build computers for local non-profits and make a point of archiving the required files for each make/model/OS machine as I am likely to be asked to "make another one", sometime soon]

                              The biggest time sink comes in installing the various applications after the OS has been installed. I built a 7even laptop yesterday. It will take me most of today to install the various applications/utilities that it "needs" (getting licenses, downloading program updates, etc.)

                              My "engineering" workstations take about a week to "build". This, primarily due to the number and sizes of the applications installed on each. Plus, the time to configure each application to my particular needs/preferences. As a result, I am very slow to replace those systems -- wanting to avoid the time "lost" just getting back to "being productive".

                              [As my meatware is the slowest part of the development chain, it's silly to waste time upgrading to faster hardware -- that will spend even more CPU cycles twiddling its thumbs, waiting for me to type the next keystroke!]

                              8<

                              Originally posted by Spork Schivago View Post
                              I gotta do everything and there just isn't enough time.
                              There will be less with each passing year! When you make that realization, you will truly be depressed!

                              Comment


                                #55
                                Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                                I've just installed Windows 7 on a dual core PC with 4GB or DDR3.
                                3 hours from start to finish and that's with manually downloading the drivers and also the updates. Software installed too.
                                It shouldn't be taking you 3 days Spork.

                                Comment


                                  #56
                                  Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                                  Originally posted by diif View Post
                                  I've just installed Windows 7 on a dual core PC with 4GB or DDR3.
                                  3 hours from start to finish and that's with manually downloading the drivers and also the updates. Software installed too.
                                  It shouldn't be taking you 3 days Spork.
                                  Then you clearly don't have much (licensed) software to install! Just something simple, like "Office"?

                                  Installing just "core utilities" on a machine takes the better part of a day. E.g., this machine is primarily dedicated to email and web browsing (and "handling" the sorts of files/hosts I encounter, there):
                                  Firefox -- Web browser
                                  Tbird -- SMTP/NNTP
                                  Java -- Browser support
                                  Flash -- Browser plugin
                                  Shockwave -- Browser plugin
                                  PuTTY -- SSH/TELNET client
                                  RealVNC -- "Remote desktop"
                                  XManager -- X Windows server, FTP, etc.
                                  GhostScript -- PostScript rendering
                                  WinRAR -- Archiver
                                  WinZIP -- Archiver
                                  StuffIt -- Archiver
                                  7Zip -- Archiver
                                  UltraISO -- ISO support
                                  SysInternals Suite -- General OS utilities
                                  MP3tag -- MP3 tagging, cover art fetching, etc.
                                  Calibre -- eBook rendering, cover art, etc.
                                  Acrobat Reader -- PDF rendering
                                  SnagIt -- Screen capture
                                  Beyond Compare -- File/folder comparison
                                  Araxis merge -- File/folder comparison
                                  WinMD5 -- Compute/verify file hashes
                                  VirtuaWin -- Virtual desktop support

                                  There's no CAD, EDA, graphics, multimedia, games, word processor, spreadsheet, database, photo editing, "backup/recovery", etc. software, here.

                                  My CAD, EDA, Multimedia, Publishing and Software Development workstations each have "application lists" that dwarf this! (i.e., hundreds of gigabytes of "software" on each workstation before any "user files" get added to the mix).

                                  Comment


                                    #57
                                    Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                                    No java or flash required. Ninite for the rest.
                                    My users are mostly regular users.

                                    Comment


                                      #58
                                      Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                                      I always leave a little bit for the punter to do, if they have a working machine and they can get back on the internet with it, they can reinstall the basics, after all, why would they want to pay me to do that?
                                      Last edited by jondoe; 08-29-2017, 01:49 PM.

                                      Comment


                                        #59
                                        Re: Potential HP D2700 NAS purchase

                                        Originally posted by jondoe View Post
                                        I always leave a little bit for the punter to do, if they have a working machine and they can get back on the internet with it, they can reinstall the basics, after all, why would they want to pay me to do that?
                                        I build a lot of machines (> 100 annually) -- many of which are done pro bono (think: non-profits). The last thing I want is someone coming back to me claiming the machine is "broken".

                                        I create a restore partition with the contents of the system as I've delivered it. My "forward-going support" consists of:
                                        - reboot the machine; has problem disappeared?
                                        - copy your user files to a thumb drive; restore the system to it's "as delivered state"; has problem disappeared?

                                        I.e., if this "fixes" the machine, then the problem is obviously their fault. (I'm not an IT department)

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