[Tfug] USB bugaboo on Thinkpads

[John Karns]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Andrew Ayre <andy at britishideas.com> wrote:

> All companies have lemons/bad designs at some point, but I'm still using

Lord knows I've seen my share:

1st laptop (a TI branded Acer) had great specs for the time: P1 / 133,
w/ CDR and 1.4 GB.  SNAFU: used a TI PCMCIA chip that was incompatible
with just about any card I tried, with very few exceptions.  Very
short production run.  Then TI came out with version two of the chip.
Acer support called the issue an "anomaly".

2nd machine: Compaq 1080 - no major defects.  My only complaint was
that it had no cache memory, which made it a sluggish performer.

3rd - Compaq Presario 1684.  Major design flaw in the ventilation.
Plate under kybd trapped the heat.  CDR placed directly over
processor, which cooked it within the first few months.

4th - Dell Inspiron 8000.  Broken ACPI BIOS support.  With certain
combos of chars displayed on the screen (both text console and
graphics, OS independent), LCD would flash at about 1 or 2 hz.
Covered under warranty, but they fixed it by replacing the mobo with a
Latitude mobo, which has differences in the BIOS fan support.
Ventilation problems - see next paragraph.

5th - Dell Inspiron 8100. Inadaquate ventilation.  To run the machine
at reasonable temps (BIOS turns on fans at 75 deg C - 167 deg F),
necessary to run an app to monitor CPU temp and control the fans
according to user temp settings.

6th - TP42p.  Can't suspend machine with USB devices connected w/o
high risk of damaging USB port subsystem.


> my five year old Dell Latitude C640 as my main machine and it works
> fine.

I still use the Dells too.  Clunky but functional.


> Plenty of desktops are not flawless also.

I've had a lot less problems with them than the laptops!

-- 
John