Ready Player One -
Ernest Cline wants you to remember the 80s.
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Monday, 2 February 2015
quote [ Another former employee, Joe Bois, remembers being required report for work at a mall outpost at 4:30 am on Black Friday in 2004, only to sit idle for hours waiting for customers who never arrived. Bois, now a writer for the sports website SB Nation, wrote a piece in November arguing that searching for coherence in RadioShack?s strategic decisions was futile. ?It?s like retracing the steps and doings of a drunk person,? he wrote. ?Okay, here?s where he keyed the cop car. Wait, why?d he do that? I don?t know, but his pants are lying here, so this is before he stripped naked and tried to rob the library.? ]
When I was in the 7th grade, I spent four hours at a RadioShack for career day. It felt very much like Purgatory.
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cb361 said @ 9:15am GMT on 4th February
I don't know what suppliers there are who buy up old stock and re-sell it in the US, but even in Britain I usually just find a supplier on eBay nowadays. The competition between eBay sellers ensures that most prices are very competitive, and likewise most sellers jealously guard their positive feedback.
I must have sourced (several) hundred computers from different places over the past fifteen years, and probably the best advice I can think of you want something reliable is to buy a PC designed for business/office use. In the past we've tried to use PCs aimed at home users because they were a bit cheaper, but they really don't last as long. We once bought a load of Fujitsu computers, and every single one was dead within 18 months. Whereas we still have ten-year old Dells working.
In fact I'd say go with a business-oriented Dell for boring but reliable Windows computing. Reconditioned equipment in particular can be a real bargain, and computing power and memory are so overpowered and cheap nowadays that there's little advantage in a buying a state-of-the-art computer unless you're a power gamer or want to compute prime numbers.
My work computer is a Dell Optiplex 745, which has survived me treating it like shit for about four years. I'm currently putting the Small Form Factor version into our stores, to replace rock-solid but ancient Compaqs, and modern-but-unreliable Thinkcentres. The Thinkcentres should have been pretty good, but they seem to run too hot and components keep failing.
I don't know how the prices stacks up nowadays. I'd guess that a reconditioned business PC is still slightly more expensive than a home brew PC, but you're paying for something professionally designed. I've come to associate the big empty spaces inside generic cases with constant problems.
cb361 said @ 4:17am GMT on 4th February
I don't know what suppliers there are who buy up old stock and re-sell it in the US, but even in Britain I usually just find a supplier on eBay nowadays. The competition between eBay sellers ensures that most prices are very competitive, and likewise most sellers jealously guard their positive feedback.
I must have sourced (several) hundred computers from different places over the past fifteen years, and probably the best advice I can think of you want something reliable is to buy a PC designed for business/office use. In the past we've tried to use PCs aimed at home users because they were a bit cheaper, but they really don't last as long. We once bought a load of Fujitsu computers, and every single one was dead within 18 months. Whereas we still have ten-year old Dells working.
In fact I'd say go with a business-oriented Dell for boring but reliable Windows computing. Reconditioned equipment in particular can be a real bargain, and computing power and memory are so overpowered and cheap nowadays that there's little advantage in a buying a state-of-the-art computer unless you're a power gamer or want to compute prime numbers.
My work computer is a Dell Optiplex 745, which has survived me treating it like shit for about four years. I'm currently putting the Small Form Factor version into our stores, to replace rock-solid but ancient Compaqs, and modern-but-unreliable Thinkcentres. The Thinkcentres should have been pretty good, but they seem to run too hot and components keep failing.
I don't know how the prices stacks up nowadays. I'd guess that a reconditioned business PC is still slightly more expensive than a home brew PC, but you're paying for something professionally designed. I've come to associate the big empty spaces inside generic cases with constant problems and the cost of replacing failed components.
<-- Entry / Current Comment
cb361 said @ 9:15am GMT on 4th February [Score:1 Informative]
I don't know what suppliers there are who buy up old stock and re-sell it in the US, but even in Britain I usually just find a supplier on eBay nowadays. The competition between eBay sellers ensures that most prices are very competitive, and likewise most sellers jealously guard their positive feedback.
I must have sourced (several) hundred computers from different places over the past fifteen years, and probably the best advice I can think of you want something reliable is to buy a PC designed for business/office use. In the past we've tried to use PCs aimed at home users because they were a bit cheaper, but they really don't last as long. We once bought a load of Fujitsu computers, and every single one was dead within 18 months. Whereas we still have ten-year old Dells working.
In fact I'd say go with a business-oriented Dell for boring but reliable Windows computing. Reconditioned equipment in particular can be a real bargain, and computing power and memory are so overpowered and cheap nowadays that there's little advantage in a buying a state-of-the-art computer unless you're a power gamer or want to compute prime numbers.
My work computer is a Dell Optiplex 745, which has survived me treating it like shit for about four years. I'm currently putting the Small Form Factor version into our stores, to replace rock-solid but ancient Compaqs, and modern-but-unreliable Thinkcentres. The Thinkcentres should have been pretty good, but they seem to run too hot and components keep failing.
I don't know how the prices stacks up nowadays. I'd guess that a reconditioned business PC is still slightly more expensive than a home brew PC, but you're paying for something professionally designed. I've come to associate the big empty spaces inside generic cases with constant problems and the cost of replacing failed components.
