Tales from the trenches: Brand New Computers

I had a client today who bought a new Compaq and wanted the old hard disk installed as a second drive. The machine had never even been turned on, and I was stunned by a couple of things:

  1. how long it took to start up the very first time (At least 10 minutes of various Please Wait… screens)
  2. The ridiculous number of shortcuts for various services and offers on the desktop: AOL, Yahoo, RealOne, and half a dozen other free-for-now, pay-us-later jobbers.

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From the Trenches: IBM Intellistation Pro M

Today’s entry is about an IBM Intellistation Pro M that won’t boot. Won’t even power on, no nothing. Tried replacing the power supply, but that didn’t seem to be the issue. IBM’s support docs suggest reseating all the cables; done and done. Most likely it’s the Power Switch; we’ve ordered a replacement from mdpparts.com and we’ll see if that does the trick….
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