Computer Jargon

[Pepsinator]

have you seen the new gt5 weather trailer

great graphics

but serouisly the rain and stuff look so bad

still a forza fan though

[Madaz]

na

im a PC

[Pepsinator]

havnt played my xbox for like 2 months

TDU2 was planned to come out tomorrow

and i would of played that

but now its like next year

gonna get it for xbox

and dl it for pc when its available

my g25 shifter is broken

so its kinda pointless getting it for pc now

[Madaz]

the wheel work? just a broken shifter??

its probably fixable

i have a G27

[Pepsinator]

yeah its fixable

but

A. i need a soldering iron

B. CBF OPENING IT FOR THE 300000TH time

wheel and pedals work fine

[Aberax]

For those of you who have me on Facebook, may have heard about my rather awesome pick up (I think its awesome anyway)...so here's the story.

About 3 months ago, a customer comes in with a laptop that has an issue. The issue was "Laptop keyboard was punched, and system turns on, and then doesn’t work correctly. Please quote on repair"

So we look at it, and the quote for repairs and labour comes to ~$350, we tell the customer, they think about it... don't hear back for 2-3 months. We ring the customer to say either come and pay the diagnostics fee, or we bin it. Customer comes in the other day, pays the diagnostic fee, and says to bin it anyway.

All this thing needs is a new Keyboard and a Hard Drive, already spoken to the Manufacturer, a new keyboard is ~$75, and a hard drive is whatever I want to spend. System comes with a Windows 7 HP CD Key, so isn't too badly spec'd either, so I am rather stoked .

CPU Configuration

Support Type

Intel® Pentium® Dual-core/Celeron Processor

Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium

Chipset Intel GL40 + ICH9M

LCD Resolution 15.4" 1280 x 800 WXGA

VGA Controller GMA 4500M

VRAM share with system memory

Memory Type DDR2 667 MHz

Configuration DDR2 SO-DIMMx2 slot

Maximum 4GB(2048MBx2)

Audio Internal Microphone Yes

Speaker 2

Communication 56K Fax/Modem Yes

LAN Gigabit LAN

Bluetooth Optional

Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g/n

Expansion Express Card 1

I/O IEEE 1394 N/A

E-SATA(USB combo) N/A

Cardreader 3 in 1

D-sub 1

HDMI N/A

USB

4

Audio Jack Mic-in/Headphone out 1/1

line-in/Line-out 1/0

Webcam 1.3M

TV Tuner Optional

Security Fingerprint reader N/A

Storage HDD 160/250/320 GB

Optical Drive Super-Multi

Battery 6 / 9 cells

Keyboard 103 keys

Power AC Adaptor 65W

Dimension (WxDxH) 358 x 259x 27-31mm

Full System weight 2.7Kg(W/Battery)

[Krishy]

hahaha nice pick up there Abe.....dont bother with getting the keyboard redone....if your going to be just using it on the desk all you gotta do is plug in an external normal usb keyboard and presto you have a awesome laptop for nothing....

[Nightcrawler]

Not bad at all Abe.

I got a decent pickup the other week too - an old customer rings me and says he just got some laptops (as payment for a tiling job he did for one of his clients) and needs them configured. I tell him no worries and they will cost $150 each to do a full wipe, and everything reinstall. He drops off 3 as new Dell 1420 Laptops (dual core, 2Gb ram, 160Gb HDDs etc). I do the 3 install/configures and when he comes to pick them up he offers me to keep one of them in lieu of payment. Of course I say yes.

I have already sold it for $820 (they cost $2100 new around 2 years ago). So effectively I was paid $820 cash in hand for around 15 hours labour

[Madaz]

so $150 is the going rate for a full system install + software they want done also

[Aberax]

hahaha nice pick up there Abe.....dont bother with getting the keyboard redone....if your going to be just using it on the desk all you gotta do is plug in an external normal usb keyboard and presto you have a awesome laptop for nothing....

I'll be using it in Japan, and maybe on my in/out of Japan...so I think having the keyboard would be good.

so $150 is the going rate for a full system install + software they want done also

$99 at my work

[Madaz]

yeah thats what i charge $100 and its usually with a system build

[Nightcrawler]

I used to charge $100 but put it up recently. It takes 5 hours or more work to do my install. Standard programs I install include:

Win7

Office 2007

PSP9

Nero7

Zoom Player

Symantec Antivirus

SpyBot Search & Destroy

AdAware 2008

Quicktime/ITunes

Firefox

Thunderbird

CCC Codecs

DivX Plus

DVDRegionFree

CloneDVD5

TuneUp2010

PowerDVD9

and a few other things.

All shareware/trial versions unless the owner has license details of course.

As you can see, this is not a 5 minute job and even charging $150 is quite insane imho given this will get you less then 1.5 hours work done on your car.

Also, it is worth noting $150 is for my existing clients and new clients I charge $200 until I build a relationship with them or they have bought decent hardware off me.

[Madaz]

yeah that's a good call Andrew

not to forget windows update which is time and data

[Dunc]

I used to charge $100 but put it up recently. It takes 5 hours or more work to do my install. Standard programs I install include:

Win7

Office 2007

PSP9

Nero7

Zoom Player

Symantec Antivirus

SpyBot Search & Destroy

AdAware 2008

Quicktime/ITunes

Firefox

Thunderbird

CCC Codecs

DivX Plus

DVDRegionFree

CloneDVD5

TuneUp2010

PowerDVD9

and a few other things.

All shareware/trial versions unless the owner has license details of course.

As you can see, this is not a 5 minute job and even charging $150 is quite insane imho given this will get you less then 1.5 hours work done on your car.

Also, it is worth noting $150 is for my existing clients and new clients I charge $200 until I build a relationship with them or they have bought decent hardware off me.

I hope you use http://ninite.com/ for half of that

[Madaz]

looks good Dunc looking into now

[TALBO]

As you can see, this is not a 5 minute job and even charging $150 is quite insane imho given this will get you less then 1.5 hours work done on your car.

Also, it is worth noting $150 is for my existing clients and new clients I charge $200 until I build a relationship with them or they have bought decent hardware off me.

And then when you add the phone support most require also it's just not worth it imo, which is why I generally only do it for family now!

[Aberax]

So i just turn my new laptop on, and it loads windows ...just need to remove the password with TRK...so it looks like I am just up for a new keyboard atm

[Nightcrawler]

I used to have a slipstreamed NLite install for Vista/XP, but haven't kept up with it due to how often programs update and change - I was having to build one just about every time I did a software install DVD so I canned it. I now just dump all the install programs to the desktop after install and do them one by one. I keep that DVDRW updated with all my latest software and it does the job. I have just downloaded ninite - but I assume you have to fresh download each piece of software every time you use it - that sucks. Is there any way to cache all the programs into one bit batch file?

Yeah Steve all the Windows updates (with reboots and re-scans inbetween) take time - as does the Symantec Antivirus I use - over 100Mb of updates every install! I have tried the developer update installs but they never work for some reason.

[Dohmar]

I used to have a slipstreamed NLite install for Vista/XP, but haven't kept up with it due to how often programs update and change - I was having to build one just about every time I did a software install DVD so I canned it. I now just dump all the install programs to the desktop after install and do them one by one. I keep that DVDRW updated with all my latest software and it does the job. I have just downloaded ninite - but I assume you have to fresh download each piece of software every time you use it - that sucks. Is there any way to cache all the programs into one bit batch file?

Do you mean sysprep or a post SOE script?

make a batch file and use MS sysinternals. can install anything automatically

-D

[Dunc]

. I have just downloaded ninite - but I assume you have to fresh download each piece of software every time you use it - that sucks. Is there any way to cache all the programs into one bit batch file?

You could potentially configure a squid proxy to cache it all. There appears to be a pro version of ninite which is designed to allow you to easily cache the install data, $20 per month though so unless youre doing quite a number of installs its a bit of a financial outlay to just save you some data.