Computer Talk

Red___Sword said:

I believe reliability reputation held by WDD or Seagate, for normal personal / commercial HDDs; Hitachi may have a good reputation on high end HDD, but didn't stands out at normal ones.

Knowing you are from Southeast Asia, I would say "Made in China" products would have an edge to "Assemble in Thailand" ones, that may also be a factor to your cases. (Singapore don't do the "Made in Singapore" things any more)

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So far as I know, there are five big brands of HDD; Western (Did you mean Western by WDD?), Hitachi, Toshiba, Seagate and Samsung. But the problem is that they must be original ones. There are too many fake things here. Sometime I even doubt that if the above producers make different quality standards for different markets (higher standard for European markets and lower one for Asia, and those "Made in China" products for example). I don't know but what's in my mind is that "do not expect the HDD to last longer than two years".

In fact, I've never changed HDD on my computer while others (in my company) have bad HDD within one or two years. I buy the same products for all. So, what I can explain is that we use our computers in different environment (I'm in air-con office while they're in hot/dusty workshop) and with different manner.

SteelBird said:

So far as I know, there are five big brands of HDD; Western (Did you mean Western by WDD?), Hitachi, Toshiba, Seagate and Samsung. But the problem is that they must be original ones. There are too many fake things here. Sometime I even doubt that if the above producers make different quality standards for different markets (higher standard for European markets and lower one for Asia, and those "Made in China" products for example). I don't know but what's in my mind is that "do not expect the HDD to last longer than two years".

In fact, I've never changed HDD on my computer while others (in my company) have bad HDD within one or two years. I buy the same products for all. So, what I can explain is that we use our computers in different environment (I'm in air-con office while they're in hot/dusty workshop) and with different manner.

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Is there really imitation (fake) HDD around. It's already quite an anchievement if they can produce an imitation of HDD.

I don't get all these upgrades... Don't your computers in SE Asia come ready to go? All we did to our computers is plug it in and add Norton anti virus...simple.

I once built one myself, buying the components, I have bought a couple new and later added bigger hard discs, optical drives, sometimes added memory, installed Linux of several different distributions, nowadays Arch Linux, &c.
I'm now looking at buying or building a new one that is really silent.

bd popeye said:

I don't get all these upgrades... Don't your computers in SE Asia come ready to go? All we did to our computers is plug it in and add Norton anti virus...simple.

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Yes, computers there do come ready to go, no difference at all in that respect. Upgrades usually come when there's a breakdown and your computer is still new enough to reuse some of the still working components. Of course, there are also those, the more loaded ones, who would prefer to buy a complete new set of computer every 2 years or so, just to catch up with the latest tech.

I see.. this is our third computer since I moved to Iowa 7+ years ago.. By the way we've never had one break down yet.

Things I don't do on the computer.
1) I don't play any sort of games.
2) I don't write programs.
3) I don't store anything..all our zillions of photos/music/videos are on disc.
4) I seldom have the sound up. Except for videos.
5) I don't "chat"
6) I don't do Facebook or any other girly social network sites.

I keep it simple. Surf the web. Look at photos & news.. and videos. That's all I do.

bd popeye said:

I don't get all these upgrades... Don't your computers in SE Asia come ready to go? All we did to our computers is plug it in and add Norton anti virus...simple.

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In my city, people usually don't buy brand name computers due to low specs and high price. Neither we build our own computers. In fact we buy clone computers which were customized and built by suppliers. Today, brand computers is getting cheaper and cheaper, and come with 3 years warranty but people still buy clone ones.

Is there really imitation (fake) HDD around. It's already quite an anchievement if they can produce an imitation of HDD.

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I'm afraid this is true. Some of the HDDs I've ever seen have brand name that I never heard such as MDT (Magnetic Data Technologies) and labeled "Product of Singapore". The HDD is half price of a normal Hitachi that I bought. Some are bad or undetectable even before use. (Of course I ceased buying those HDD after a few purchases). Even some Seagate malfunction very quickly too. Sometime I think that they don't really imitate the product but they might collect defective product and make them work. However, this is just my own opinion.

Red___Sword said:

Oh you completely mis-understand my point. No bash here, I was saying, "how a developed country looks like", compare to China. The sense of "something took x% of one ordinary people's income" - In China, though computer is not a luxury thing, people don't buy it if not planed (as far as I know), the sense of affordability. In compare, the ordinary "Emporor's right hand", Lord Vader, do not have THAT MUCH of pressure, for affordability, to buy computers.

Ordinary Zhangs save 3 month to buy a new computer, ordinary Joes maybe took only less than one month's saving? That's the whole point.

And my bad, "not-bad" in Chinese mostly refer to not bad at all, or good enough.

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it all works out the same R_S.. while the avg Joe may not have to save months of his salary to buy a PC his counterpart can probably do repairs on his car w/o serious dent to his savings while the avg Joe would be in big trouble if something major happens to his car. Labor is extremely expensive in western nations compared to many Asian countries.
As a real life example, a plumber just charged me $120 to do something pretty simple in my house (10 minutes work tops!) that someone of similar skillset in China will probably do for $5 maybe less.

As a real life example, a plumber just charged me $120 to do something pretty simple in my house (10 minutes work tops!) that someone of similar skillset in China will probably do for $5 maybe less.

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So true! Recently one of my co-workers spent $1400 for auto repairs. I bought a newer car that we saved for for about 4 years. Why? my older car was costing me so much in repairs.

bd popeye said:

So true! Recently one of my co-workers spent $1400 for auto repairs. I bought a newer car that we saved for for about 4 years. Why? my older car was costing me so much in repairs.

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This explain why so many US second hand and junk cars come to Cambodia. You know a Toyota Camry XLE series 2002 can sell at $18,000 after repair in Cambodia. Some even upgrade them to 2005 standard.