blog.thomaspan.com

Year by year, computer hardware becomes cheaper with more features, and more capacity. However, it hasn’t prevented users from buying lemons, even including famous brands, such as Apple, and IBM. I have written a blog talking about harddrive failure of my just-over-one-year Apple powerbook.

Last month, I encountered another lemon. The computer that I have assembled early this year had a motherboard failure. Yes, it is true that everything becomes cheaper and cheaper. Thus, it wouldn’t cost you a fortune. However, you have to sacrifice part of your valuable leisure time, which might remind us how hard we could enjoy TV during old days. Now TV could easily last more than 5 years. There is still a long way for computers to play a catch-up game.

So, how could we deal with yet short-lived computers? It is always worth paying extra attention. For example, I have bought an iCurve stand plus a desktop fan for my Apple powerbook after its harddrive bust. It is also important not to jump into new innovative products if one wants to avoid hassle. I am enjoying my 4th generation iPod a lot. In the mean time, I regret the purchase of the fancy lemon motherboard.

Finally, I list symptoms for various hardware failures as the following to conclude this blog:

• CPU: There would be a beep from motherboard during reboot. Video display would have further hints.
• Motherboard: The machine cannot reboot. There is no video display neither. However, there could be beeps.
• Harddrive: There would be strange sounds. Sometimes, it sounds like failure of CPU fans. Though, reboot is impossible.
• Video Card: Motherboard would definitely beep without video display.

The last week was the most shocking week in my life. Every night, I watched TV starting from the night when Katrina became category 5. It was a disaster in the sense that although we could easily grab historical data on-line about how bad a category 5 hurricane could be, the government – local or federal – could be so ignorant to let New Orleans tragedy happen. Worse, Louisiana is NOT the state that Katrina hit directly. Check out satellite pictures.

One of my hobbies is photography. So, I visit dpreview.com a lot. People there would start threads talking about Katrina. There are good pictures. There are talks about gas price. Locally in Silicon Valley, the gas price has gone up from $2.73 to $3.00. Price was stabilized after the government and other foreign governments release reserves to help the whole country. Governments are more powerful. This is a perfect example to show that once governements are moving towards the right direction, things would be improved dramatically.

But, what if people in charge are clueless? A lot of catastrophes have happened in the last century and historically through the whole human civilization. It is also important to be prepared in some degree, mentally and physically. It would be good for ourselves and for others who live around us.