Gateway Saga part X

My laptop had been running pretty decently for a bit there and now we're back at it again. I hate this hunko crap. For the last week it just completely shuts off at random. You can be using it or not and off it goes. Twice now I have not been able to restart it. You press power and nothing happens. 2 hours later, it decides it will boot up. Yesterday it would not start and I popped the battery out and put it back in and it booted up. Keep in mind that the PC is always plugged into the outlet. Last week it did the same thing and I unplugged it from one outlet and put it in another one and it booted up. Sometimes when it boots up I gotta go into SAFE mode. Sometimes it boots normally. I am definitely not sending it back to Gateway. Thinking about taking it Best Buy and letting the Geek Squad look at it. Or I might walk outside and heave it off the deck and watch it smash onto the pavement. Nah....I'll go the extra distance and head to the roof.

I'll talk to you all in a few minutes. Or later this evening. Might even be next week. I surf the net at my PC's disgression.

IBM/Lenovo T60, worth the money if you want good, thin and titanium case. It's also cool the way the hard drive shuts off and parks when you make any sudden moves with it..
Did you get the extended warranty with the gateway ? All the several hundred here have it, HP/Compaq and a few dells thrown in, the warranties get used alot..

riverfever said:

Or I might walk outside and heave it off the deck and watch it smash onto the pavement.

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Thats the best idea you've had yet.

Buy a Mac.

GSequoia said:

Buy a Mac.

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x2. Then dual boot it with linux. Or if you still want a PC put linux on it instead of windoze. Sounds like it's microshaft at work here and probobly not hardware.


p.s. Don't take it to geek squad. Don't bring it to any major retailer(best buy, compusa, circuit city, etc..) . Take that from somone who works in one. Find you're local repair shop and I guarentee it will be cheaper, and you will get a better service/repair.

GSequoia said:

Buy a Mac.

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That's actually what we're considering. I know enough to be dangerous with PC's but I've only used a Mac a few times. I hear they are extremely user friendly though. I've also heard that they can do stuff with cameras and the Ipod and loads of other stuff much easier than a PC. Can anyone confirm this?

riverfever said:

That's actually what we're considering. I know enough to be dangerous with PC's but I've only used a Mac a few times. I hear they are extremely user friendly though. I've also heard that they can do stuff with cameras and the Ipod and loads of other stuff much easier than a PC. Can anyone confirm this?

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Thats what they are geared for, first digital cameras were mac, B&W no less so it was a long time ago and considering who makes the ipod wonder why...

They are also more expensive up front but they seem to last alot longer for what they do than windows.

But bottom line is quality, everybody makes negative comments on IBM's Lenovo's, but they are high quality units, well made and well designed like the panasonic toughbook, thats another well built system but like everything else you pay for it.

One of the neat things on the mac laptops I really like is the magnetic power cord, no more broken plugs on the motherboard which when you break it costs almost as much as a new unit to get fixed. If you are not into having the newest games that require constant upgrading of expensive video cards and processors macs are a good thing.

I've heard great things about the Panasonics too. I haven't even had this laptop for 2 years yet. I don't think I should be having these problems with it. I have lots of research to do.

mdl said:

x2. Then dual boot it with linux. Or if you still want a PC put linux on it instead of windoze.

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The following is not meant as an attack but more as a reality check.

I chuckle whenever I see this kind of thing posted. The Apple adverts that talk about being able to run Windows XP/Vista are wrong headed in my opinion as well.

You are aware that Mac OS X is a UNIX microkernel (Mach) with a FreeBSD style userland, right? It runs all the OSS/FSF style user applications of any real consequence natively (err, sort a, X11 needs to be installed - free download from apple.com). Accessing the UNIX level on a Mac is as easy as opening a terminal from the Apps/Utilities folder. Throw it on the Dock if you are a geek like me.

WTF would you want to boot Linux (or Windows for that matter) on a Mac? Sure, let's lobotomize our Mac for a second (third?) rate desktop environment. Gentoo would probably wail on PPC or Intel Macs but then you are stuck with KDE or GNOME and all the inconsistencies and bad design (work flow and visuals) in those environments.

Just for an idea of where I'm coming from, I know Linux forwards and backwards. I'm a professional SysAdmin that has been running Linux since the 0.99 beta 13 days... and our pool of servers number in the triple digits. (Linux mostly, smattering of Windows and Solaris where commercial software is required). I've supported Linux in both server and desktop environments.

That said, my primary interface to our hosts is via a multiheaded Mac. My system at home is a Mac (Linux on the backend to serve ~user dirs). They run OS X. I've never bothered to investigate installing Linux on them. People ask me about buying PCs and I tell them to buy a Mac.

A Mac is more than "just" the hardware. The entire user experience from hardware to software is what makes a Mac a Mac - and it is what makes a Mac worth having versus some other platform.

I'm sure Riverfever does not want to be burdened with the admin overhead required of Linux; even the cheesy binary distros suck for a desktop and/or non technical person. Playing is one thing but most people want a computer to "just work" when they turn it on.

Besides, there is nothing cooler than scripting Photoshop and friends from the bash prompt. Well, maybe editing JPGs with awk/sed but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.

Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky but telling a non-techie to do anything other that to run OS X on a Mac is bad advice. Am I a candidate for the grumpy old farts wing?

Root Moose. I recognized my name in that response but....that's about it.

I feel like such a tard when it comes to computers. I want to be able to manage my music (with I Tunes) and surf the net. I got really fancy a few times last school year and prepared a few Powerpoint presentations for my students.

riverfever said:

I feel like such a tard when it comes to computers. I want to be able to manage my music (with I Tunes) and surf the net. I got really fancy a few times last school year and prepared a few Powerpoint presentations for my students.

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Don't feel that way. Computers are a PITA from a consumer's point of view.

FWIW:

Microsoft Office for Mac

I have this, works great. I have yet to use Powerpoint though. There is also "OpenOffice" for Mac (free, OSS) but I find the MS Office is much nicer and worth the money if you can afford it. Back in the stone age when I supported Windows I learned Office (corp standard) and none of the other suites stuck with me. Ooo, ahhh, Win 3.1 with a third party TCP/IP stack and running Office. Those were the days. :sure:

If you decide to buy a new Mac, don't "over buy". I did that when I switched from Intel/Linux to Mac/OSX. The new iMacs and notebooks with the new variant of the Intel CPU will be out this month. Make sure you get one of these new models or at least the second revision of the existing Intel CPU based products. Find a price point you can live with and be happy.

Rich made the point that the Apple gear is more expensive from a hardware perspective. That is true if you are comparing function to function in hardware and are discounting the software differences and quality of equipment. The concept of "software quality" is a hard sell to consumers.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make with what Rich said was that it is true that the Apple stuff lasts longer. In my case I over bought and spent roughly twice what an equivalent beige box would cost. But I haven't spent a penny since in three years. The box still rocks, probably will run it till it breaks. I'm expecting to have to go computer shopping in 3-4 years from now (knock on wood). Will likely be more due to Apple not porting the new versions of the operating system to the old PPC platform than anything.

Anyway, probably muddied things more than cleared up.

HTH

Edit: just occured to me: depending on your school board you may qualify for a heavily discounted price package from Apple. I know they used to do this back when Apple was the only game in town for educational discounts. Things might be different now. You may qualify regardless of whether you or the school board is purchasing the computer. I forget how it worked - it's been a long time. Worth looking into though.