Aghhhhhh

[DukeP]

And customers with laptops not bringing their powercord because "I was sure you had one, it must be a a standard one right?" despite the fact that that laptops seldom have the same power cord

But how stupid IS this?

At work we have 60 Lenovo/IBM thinkpads, all are the R60 series.

But.. Halfway through delivery - THEY CHANGED POWERCORD!!

So now we have to check if its the right ones, and we have to order spares of 2 different kind of cords (the way we use these machines, a powercord generally doesnt last more than a year and a half).

~~DukeP~~

[UtwigMU]

That's strange, all T60, Z60, X60 and R60 are supposed to have the thick power plug while 20-40 (+ i think R50 also) use the thin powerplug. Business HPs also only have two types of powerplugs. Consumer ones have a bit more.

I have A21p (i440BX, PIII 800) and T42p (Centrino 1.8GHz) and they use same power adapters and fit on same dock.

I fortunately don't deal with home users much, only corporate customers. I have one company owner customer (about 60y old) who calls me at least three times a week. Sometimes he's had a drink by 9am already.:
- My Outlook disappears (he has laptop + external LCD and he forgot to turn the LCD where Outlook was supposed to maximize to).
- All my Outlook messages go to Outbox (Explaining several times that when unhibernating laptop on different connection he should restart Outlook to work it's way to Exchange server and connect doesn't help)
- Once he got enthused about Skype, so he got USB headphones, USB webcam (with microphone). That's three soundcards, two of them USB, of course Skype got confused and he had problems with people hearing him because Skype always used the wrong inputs and outputs.

- Excecs who get fancy smartphones and then are utterly incapable of setting them up.

- One company who spend 10.000 Euros annually on 10 client and 2 server MS license subscriptions too-many, then they complain why notebook optical drive costs more than 100 Euros. They also don't want to spend couple 1000 Euros on tape backup and configuring.

- Another guy whose kids spilt liquid on the laptop, then wife used hairdryer and key just melted and fell off.

- Cheap USB or PCI wireless cards whose makers thought reinventing the Windows wireless service is of utmost importance. Of course without the shitty card provided program the card doesn't work.

- Cheap POS USB inkjets and MFPs that have 160MB drivers and which stop to work after plugging and unplugging couple of times. Especially in sub 200 Euros HPs there are lots of problems and DOAs.

[DukeP]

That's strange, all T60, Z60, X60 and R60 are supposed to have the thick power plug while 20-40 (+ i think R50 also) use the thin powerplug.

Well - the old half has got the thin powerplug, the new half has got the thick ones. The bricks appears to be identical.

~~DukeP~~

[Technoid]

uhm, I think I've showed a bit of stupidity myself

In the notebook example I was really talking about the powercord and powersuply as a "unit".

the cords we do have in stock

It's just that some "laptops" desktop replacements (evil evil idea) sometimes use 140w and the beefiest "generic" one we got only say it can output 120w

Anyway,

"But how can the battery be dead, I've been charging it for 4 years!"

[Nowhere]

...
- One company who spend 10.000 Euros annually on 10 client and 2 server MS license subscriptions too-many, then they complain why notebook optical drive costs more than 100 Euros. They also don't want to spend couple 1000 Euros on tape backup and configuring.
...

Does that mean MS won?... :/

...
- Cheap POS USB inkjets and MFPs that have 160MB drivers and which stop to work after plugging and unplugging couple of times. Especially in sub 200 Euros HPs there are lots of problems and DOAs.

BTW, I wonder...does that apply also to the cheapest Laserjets? (1005/1018/1020, such numbers; yeah all with USB)
I'm thinking sometimes about getting one...

[VJ]

Just encountered this one (via phone)

I have bought this new cell phone, it takes pictures etc, but how do I ge the photos on my computer?
There is a cable, and a cd labeled "Windows 2000/Windows XP". But I already have that on my computer, so there is no need for me to install the CD, right?

Jörg

[UtwigMU]

I have a mixed feeling about 10xx laserjets. On one case HP supplied USB cable that was incompatible with USB2.0 so printer never got detected by new windows XP boxes. Old PII running Win2k worked fine. The cable was in a bag with ROHS note so I didn't think it being older than USB2.0. I spend days troubleshooting that one, especially since 2nd printer behaved the same as the first one. There was a recent DOA also. They mostly work though. Don't plug it in before installing the drivers because then, you need to do a cleanup to make it work.

Personally I just bought old Laserjet 5 (old school green LED status message display) with two toners for 55 Euros with shipping. I have so far printed several thousand pages without problem on the first toner.

[Technoid]

You have had my computer for a day and a half!, it shouldent matter that I'm an hour early!

Sigh

[The PIT]

Easy

So people who enjoy unsafe hex can download more spyware. They want more so lets give em more says Billy Gates.

[Technoid]

I ran across (sometimes I'm tempted to do it literally) one of my neighbors who once again asked me if I could get him a job.

This guy gives the impression that he recently sniffed to much glue.

And once again I told him that even if I thought he would make a good coworker I have no way of making it happen, I also told him that we needed competent people.

At which he protests that he do know computers.

Later he knocks on my door and asks if I can look over a laptop that don't boot from the cd, and as you all know curiosity does kill cats, so I agreed to investigate the matter.

It's a dell latitude p3 650mhz.

The "cd" that won't boot is a pirated vista dvd.

And to make matters worse the hdd is a dying 6gb travel(death)star!

klick triktriktrik klik triktriktrik klik triktriktrik klunk

That sound comes at the same moment the laptop bluescreens and reboots.

Yup, he's the neighborhood expert!

[DukeP]

With the lack of employees here in Denmark, he would most likely have been highly treasured.

Its not that I dont want people to enjoy the comforts/normality connected to having a job... But with this low unemployment rate - you constantly encounter people who are really, really bad at their jobs. Really. Like Taxi drivers who doesnt know what various roadsigns means (I have never seen that before! Let me just call the central before we proceed).

Honestly - I would rather pay for their welfare than encounter them in a workbased enviroment.

Ah well. /steam.

~~DukeP~~

[Technoid]

The A to A USB cable

Today as I was preparing to go home from work (A.K.A fleeing the madness) I saw my former boss (now senior (dis)adviser) toting one of those USB cables that has 2 "A type" USB connectors.

The only reason we have those in stock is that he ordered a batch despite my very vocal opinion that having them in stock and selling them was a sure invitation to disaster.

I was tempted to just ignore it and let him take the resulting disaster, but nooo, I'm to damn curious for my own good

I pointed at the cable and gave him my best "curios look".

"oh, a customer wants it for his USB mp3 player" Will answered

An imaginary klaxon went of in my mind.

A moment later the customer walked in through the door.

After the ordinary pleasantries was over I asked him what he was going to use the cable with.

"It's so I can upload stuff to my new popcorn"

A Google search later and my suspicions where correct.

The unit in question is a NAS with a video processor capable of outputting pretty much everything to any kind of tv up to 1080p.

The Popcorn unit has 2 female A type usb connectors for hooking up USB sticks and harddrives.

"That thing don't use the USB to communicate with your pc, it uses the local lan, easiest is if you plug it into your router" I told him.

"but my router don't have any usb ports"

Suppressing a sigh I continued "you connect to it the same way that you connect to another networked computer, through an RJ45 Cat5e network cable" I added.

"Do that cable have an USB in the other end?"

"have you ever pulled a file from someone else computer over the network?"

"yeah, at work"

"The Popcorn unit work the same way"

"But my old MP3 player uses a USB cable"

ARGHHHHHH!!! "Sure, but it has a miniB usb connector like this?" I show him one and he nods approvingly.

So I print out the spec page and have a "show and tell" kinda discussion.

And at last it seemingly dawns upon him, I thought.

Not so since he phones his "computer" buddy and after roughly 10 minutes of listening to him repeatedly pleading "and that goes into the usb?"

"uhm...my buddy says he has a network cable" And he walks towards the exit.

"Great, good luck and have a nice day"

Those cables needs to go and we need a big large nice USB connector guide...

[UtwigMU]

Technoid, be happy you don't have to support Macs. Mac keyboard layout is screwed up to the point I had to switch to US layout and do shift+2 to produce an @. There is standard Slovenian way to produce the @ but it doesn't work in Console. The only thing worse to support than Macs are executive smart phones. So I have this ancient treo (whoose browser proxy is out of support for 2 years), can you make it work with Internet and my Exchange account?
Or my active-sync over internet is not working on recent Sony Ericcsson, can you look into it? I call the cell tech support and they tell me number is blocked from Internet use since last year.

[Technoid]

On Wednesday we had a "repeat offender" of indeterminable origin (think "around the india area")

First time around he had an unbelievably banged up system where the hdd was both literally and figuratively sideswiped
And the motherboard didn't have a single capacitor that was ok.
And he blamed his kids

This time he had a fairly new Fujitsu-Siemens fulltower.
the mobo had some dead caps but the main problem was that he had removed the cpu from the intel 775 socket and crushed a square area of pins (looked like he had taken a q-tip and "Van Helsing"'ed the socket).
He again blames his children.
So he asks me if I can repair it, and I tell him "No". ( the thought of de soldering the socket and re soldering a new one made my head spin)
He asks why, and I tell him that I neither have the tools nor the replacement parts and that if I had, I would most certainly charge more than the $60 a replacement board costs.

So he agrees on buying a replacement motherboard.

So why am I ranting about it?

Well afterwards he asks me if he can have the old motherboard, and makes it quite clear that he wants it because he thinks its valuable.

I say that, sure he can have it since its more or less junk.

at hearing this he states "In my country we can fix it, I'll use it to build my kids a new computer" in a low spooky voice as if he was telling me a secret.

[Nowhere]

And it'll be again their fault if it doesn't work out?...