On Wednesday 01 March 2006 10:00, Tim wrote: > On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 08:53 +0000, Tony Dietrich wrote: > > 2. One fan failure (at 14months). > > Ones that run constantly or only now and then? Some PC fans have > surprising short lives, and that's not due to faults, but how long the > manufacturer expects them to work for. Constantly .. that machine just happened to be my own office system! And since I tend to use that to test stuff, AND it wasn't switched off over the entire 14 months (AFAIR) I wasn't too surprised .. leaving a system doing batch compiling and test runs for entire weekends does kinda send the fan wild. In the machine's defence, I think by that time it had had about 20 OS (re-)installs, was running vmware with about 3 different images installed .... you get the picture :p Seriously .. I suspect that one reason I (and James Wilkinson, see rest of thread) get good systems from 'local' builders is that in the UK ( I have no idea what its like in the rest of the world) we can walk into a local builder and spec exactly what we want built. I can tell my builder "I want ASUS mb, nVidia video, XXX memory, etc, etc" .. and if I don't get it, I don't pay, and I don't use that builder again. >From comments I see elsewhere, I suspect that different conventions exist elsewhere. I exchanged emails with a Thai gentleman who told me that if he goes to a system-builder, he can spec the broad requirements, but has no control over the exact components .. and he also (perhaps cynically) wondered whether, even if the mb *said* ASUS on it, it would actually *be* ASUS. :p -- Tony
