PC Tech Thread

"Winprinters" took over the home space and most non-specialist office usage a long time ago. Cheaper to make and makes the customer more dependent. For a lot of personal uses, drivers have now even been replaced by a dependency on the manufacturer's online services.

Yeah, it reminds me of the years of crappy Winmodems when someone decided supporting proper Hayes commands was too hard.

I don't see what Apple can do about it, unless they either write the drivers themselves or run the Windows drivers inside an emulator.

They can declare printing archaic and get rid of it.

Indeed, I just had to print something out, sign it, scan it and then email it back.

All because the various people involved don't want to embrace doing exactly the same thing digitally and without involving any dead trees.

(I could have done it digitally myself but opted not to, at least I did print it out on the blank side of an already used sheet of paper.)

Paperless office this time? Or is it flying cars first?

I'm still waiting for my rocket pack. Bastards.

I hope to be retired before the end of a similar timeframe, but there will be a good few jobs between now and then, rather than just one more. I bet we'll have flying cars before truly paperless offices though.

Work laptop and phone wiped and boxed up ready to be sent back. That feels liberating.

Have also ordered a new battery (only £15) and an SSD (only £45) to make the 8 year old spare laptop (core i3 upgraded to 6GB RAM and just updated to Win 10) a bit more usable for MiniGB as I'll need my personal laptop back.

The true Futureshock turns out to be how much remains the same rather than how much is new.

I bought a 2 bay WD mybook duo from ebay (no drives) thinking it'd be great to plug into my nvidia shield pro. Unfortunately it only works with WD hdds. Anyone recommend a two bay enclosure?

Will I be able to get it back together again?

One of the headers disconnected not quite in the way the video described. Must remember to attach the small extra board that's bottom right, no idea what it is and why it needed to be separate.

Also rounded off one of the motherboard bolts, hence the need for the junior hacksaw blade to file a notch in it to remove it with a flathead.

If I've really messed it up then a bog standard non-upgraded replacement laptop can be had for under £100 from eBay and I can have another go...

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Are there any companies out there that do PC building as well as component sales? Nothing off the shelf fits my requirements and I know that if I buy the components they'll just be sat here for a month until I get the time to sort them out.

https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs

Never used them for a custom build but I've bought stuff from Scan for over 10 years and would definitely recommend them.

I should have said that I'd looked at Scan and they didn't really have what I wanted even in the custom section. It's a mini server so loads of drives in a small case.

I know @ExTra had some problems with them a while back but my 3xs custom PCs have all been great experiences even the one time something went wrong.

My only complaint about Scan at the moment is how their pricing seems to be all over the shop. Cheap for some things, eye watering for others.

All in all, my experience of 3xs has been extremely good build quality and customer support.

I should have said that I'd looked at Scan and they didn't really have what I wanted even in the custom section. It's a mini server so loads of drives in a small case.

I'm not sure anybody sells custom PCs to act as servers I'm afraid.

https://www.broadberry.co.uk/ ?

NAS and NUC?

I use PCSpecialist

The only issue I had with Scan was that they only had 1 person who was able to deal with custom builds that are not one of the configurations on their website, and that person was not the best in replying to requests etc. I waited patiently for about 3 weeks with multiple chase up calls/emails, but he never got back to me, so in the end, I gave up. Others wanted to help, but couldn't or something, I can't remember now,

I had mine built with overclockers, they were a little sloppy in places but overall, my experience was positive. Their prices also go up and down a lot and when I found out between my placing an order and before I received the machine, the prices had dropped, they did refund me the difference upon request.

Some of you might remember I had a dodgy motherboard and they initially refused to replace it as their tests said there was nothing wrong despite sending a video clearly showing the faults. In the end, I told them I will return the whole machine as it was still within 30 days and they then gave me a different motherboard.

So it was an OK experience but it wasn't without issues... I think I paid something like £150 for their to build the machine.

Cheers all. PCSpecialist look like a possibility as you can provide your own case. Broadberry look a bit too servery for my needs.

Six - eight bay NASs seem to cost a lot, building up a PC which can take that many drives seems like a cheaper option.

Can anyone recommend me a decent (reliable) NAS? New to this stuff.... Looking to get a 2 bay, mainly to stick a load of media/entertainment/music and what not on it. And is anyone reading this, or know someone, with one to sell? Cheers

Will I be able to get it back together again?

I did. OK, so the trackpad doesn't work, but that's because I didn't get the fiddly header connected properly, but everything else works and the laptop is so much faster with an SSD compared to the old HDD. MiniGB prefers a separate mouse anyway, so she's happy with it (and I get my laptop back).

The boot SSD on my work PC packed in last night. I'd been doing a lot of portfolio work recently, revisions of old images etc. and saved them in the documents folder stupidly. IT consultant recons he can't get anything copied from it. Assuming he's tried all the obvious stuff, it's gone isn't it.

Edit: spoke to the consultant, he reckons he could see the files but as soon as he tried accessing them the drive "falls over". Worth trying the previously mentioned $70 recover software when I get it back?

^ @Silly_Savage

@TW and @Acliff mentioned Zero Assumption Recovery on the prev page

Yeah, sounds like it might be worth a try.