Mark77

There's 2 ways of looking at things: 1) Computers are lasting so long these days that its not a lot of extra money to buy an i7 versus an i5, especially if you're going to get 6-10 years of good use out of it (6-year-old i7-2600's are still very competitive). 2) Bank the $$ you save, and 3-4 years from now, buy the i7 and replace your i5 with it. Sell the i5 to some Celeron or i3 user, or find an old mobo. CPU's really don't cost much. Computer hardware doesn't cost much. For how cheap things are these days, worrying about the difference between an i5 and an i7, at least on the LGA11xx platforms, is much ado about nothing. The real fun is when you start considering options on a LGA2011 platform upgrade, like going to dual Xeon E5's, lol.

The thing about Vancouver is that almost everyone there lives above their income level. And you can live in a million dollar house without having a lot of income. The 'problem' that some of the wealthier online reviewers have run into is that they stop caring about lower-end 'consumer' stuff because they personally have the wealth to never need to consider them. So far, LTT has done, in my view, a great job of avoiding that and remaining relevant to its audience. But quite frankly, the computer hardware industry is a real disaster of slowing sales and compressing margins at the moment, and product flow has been slow. I suspect the net worth isn't that high as selling the equipment that makes LTT a 'going concern' probably wouldn't net them much. Combine that with falling Vancouver real estate prices, and LTT is a nice gig, but its proprietor(s) aren't getting filthy rich (or filthy either!).

I don't think I've ever. Only RMA's I've had to do were of HDDs and LCDs over the years. Doesn't hurt to do it if such is offered, but in reality, it mostly just puts you on a email list to get spammed informed of new product offerings.

Some of those Dells have some pretty sophisticated options and charging profiles in the BIOS. I know my Latitude E6440 does, and surely the XPS would have substantially replicated those features. Have you go into the BIOS/firmware and checked to ensure that you aren't on a particular mode for battery saving?

Never thought Google was ethical or not evil. This just adds to my suspicions.

You should be able to, however there might be some issues with 'auto-discovery' or similar because computers in your 2nd 'network' sitting behind that NAT wouldn't be part of the same broadcast domain as the first network. The issue you're going to run into with a NAS is performance. Most consumer routers simply aren't very fast. And since the router has to do full NAT (as opposed to Ethernet switching), your performance may be significantly limited as most consumer-level 'routers' are not designed for more than a few tens of megabits of traffic. Personally I'd prefer to do something with VLANs, a proper routing/firewall framework (either in Cisco, or just something running off of a Linux or BSD* machine) and setting up proper firewall rules. But in a pinch, what you suggest should work. Think of it as a learning experience!

VGA has a number of problems. First of all, the analog signals are carried over independent paths. So even subtle phase differences or impedance mismatches can result in optical artifacts. Secondly, there is no clock signal with VGA, so displays, usually called "multiscan", have to come up with a reasonable approximation of the clock rate, and then sample accordingly -- this inevitably causes jitter. Thirdly, as another poster pointed out, the connectors are not very robust and pins can easily break. Fourthly, it basically forces a digital to analog conversion inside the computer itself, and then an analog to digital conversion at the LCD panel. Requiring more electronics. VGA hung on a lot longer than it really should have, but I suppose there were people who had their reasons for keeping VGA functionality. Thankfully VGA is now pretty much relegated to the connector scrap-bin of history, with very few new build systems, video cards, or screens even supporting the standard.

^^^ This. Not only will the PC be fresh and clean, but you don't need to worry about the other person discovering or using your former data, browsing or download history, cookies, etc.

Hmmm, let's see where do I start. First you'd need a completely custom kernel for your device with the md RAID compiled in. As certainly the stock kernels do not incorporate RAID as there's no need for it on a mobile device. Of course, it goes without saying that you'd need root access to your device to accomplish this. Once you've built a kernel with the RAID, you'd also need to incorporate the RAID management tools into the android distribution. This would probably mean figuring out the framework for cross-compilation. Then, and only then, would you be able to get into a shell, and actually create this RAID volume. Impossible? Nope. But you have to have a decent understanding of Android architecture, Linux kernel compilation, and how to work with all of the associated debugging and recovery steps.

I run CyanogenMod on a LG V410 tablet which wasn't too snappy to begin with. It is significantly faster than its predecessors. Try to get the update if you can. It is well worth your while.

If fuses blow, you need to find and correct the fault. The role of a fuse is basically to prevent the device from starting a fire due to its electrical fault. You need to call an electrician if this is for mains electrical wiring, or take the device/equipment in question to a qualified repairman.

Personally I'd get/build a second machine, and teach yourself how to work with iSCSI and NAS's. This appears to be a popular option in "the real world" with VMware.

Fire resistant/retardant materials are a must. Sheet metal or appropriately rated plastics. Wood, or heaven forbid, other combustibles are not acceptable materials.

Does it really matter? The latest "core" i7's are dramatically different chips than the first "core" chips 10+ years ago. If Intel changes their branding, I'm sure they'll come up with something else that accentuates their brand, and markets it appropriately. Its just a name people.

You really don't know what's been done to an ES chip before you buy it. If you had a friend who worked for a manufacturer of computer equipment or a software developer and had an ES CPU to sell that was the same as a release stepping, and said chip wasn't abused during the 'engineering' process -- then I'd be perfectly comfortable with such a chip from a technical point of view (although there are certainly some who may argue that such chips are 'stolen' property!). But some random ES chip salvaged out of some Chinese electronics recycling dump? Lol.

Can you sell the mobo + CPU + RAM as a kit? Or not? If you can unload the mobo + CPU + RAM as one item, for a reasonable price, then by all means, go for new stuff. But if not, then just doing the Haswell (or even 5th gen Broadwell i7) can be a reasonable option.

Maybe consult with the manufacturer to see if the Ethernet capability could be added/retrofitted? On expensive enough equipment, that might be an option.

There are ways of making a computer emulate a USB stick, if USB is truly the only input option available. The CNC machine may or may not be tolerant of the filesystem changing on the USB stick while its "inserted" and presented to the machine as a USB stick through a USB interface in a sort of "host mode" with a double-ended USB cable. As the posters above have stated, I'd look into the official/proprietary way of doing things, before trying to resort to something like this. If there's an 'option' for better networking, for example, one might need to compare the cost of doing so, versus the gains in productivity and workflow achieved.

I live in Northern Canada, and my laptop has sat in the extreme cold overnight. The issue with a cold laptop is mostly the battery. Running a very cold Li-Ion battery causes extreme drain on it very quickly, and will damage the battery in relatively short order. My suggestion, if your laptop is allowed to get that cold, is to use it plugged-in. If you try to use it on battery when it is cold, the battery's life will be degraded quite severely. When I was doing this (before I smartened up), batteries which should have lasted a year and a half or so, were only good for maybe 3-5 months.

Business class laptops all the way. Not only are they typically solid, more highly engineered hardware. But if something breaks, its not hard to get them fixed. The last thing you want when you're studying is to have some Razer Blade laptop that might take you a week to get a replacement part for. I'd be looking at something like the Dell Latitude E7470, for example.

Well even within a manufacturer's product line, there can be duds. Seagates have had a bad rep over the past few years, but I have a few Seagates pushing close to 80,000 hours.

Yeah they run on Linux, in RAID.

Wow, just a baby that drive...

The HGST/Hitachi drives are some of the most reliable on the market. I have a number of the 2Tb 7K2000/7K3000 models installed here. Over 60,000 hours on the 5-platter 2Tb 7K2000s. Model Family: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 Device Model: Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 Serial Number: <redacted> LU WWN Device Id: 5 000cca 221c555ab Firmware Version: JKAOA3MA User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB] Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm Form Factor: 3.5 inches Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4 SATA Version is: SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s Local Time is: Thu Dec 15 22:58:34 2016 CST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x84) Offline data collection activity was suspended by an interrupting command from host. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run. Total time to complete Offline data collection: (23359) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off supp ort. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. No Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. General Purpose Logging supported. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 389) minutes. SCT capabilities: (0x003d) SCT Status supported. SCT Error Recovery Control supported. SCT Feature Control supported. SCT Data Table supported. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_ FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 099 099 016 Pre-fail Always - 2 2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 132 132 054 Pre-fail Offline - 104 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 145 145 024 Pre-fail Always - 458 (Average 538) 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 302 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0 8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 123 123 020 Pre-fail Offline - 34 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 092 092 000 Old_age Always - 61783 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 300 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1407 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1407 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 181 181 000 Old_age Always - 33 (Min/Max 21/52) 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 6 SMART Error Log Version: 1 ATA Error Count: 6 (device log contains only the most recent five errors) CR = Command Register [HEX] FR = Features Register [HEX] SC = Sector Count Register [HEX] SN = Sector Number Register [HEX] CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX] CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX] DH = Device/Head Register [HEX] DC = Device Command Register [HEX] ER = Error register [HEX] ST = Status register [HEX] Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes, SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.

Industrial control system. Don't. Seriously. Don't. Virtualbox, VMware, etc., they're all fine and dandy, but if it goes down, there's going to be hell to pay. You may not even be able to 'legally' do it without certification of the engineer who originally designed/installed the hardware/software. You certainly can buy new(er) hardware and migrate the system to Windows 2000, ECC RAM, enterprise-quality SSDs, RAID, redundant power supplies, etc. I don't know if you can still run Windows 2000 on the latest/greatest Dell servers, but you certainly should be able to on a couple generations back. But I would not tinker with the software at all.