OT Tablets are cheap!

"BillW50" BillW50 aol.kom wrote:

Michael Black typed:
John Doe wrote:

Shipping was extremely fast (two days). The shipping packaging
was minimal and risky. There was a 1/4 inch crunch on one side
of the sturdy "refurbished" box. Fortunately it wasn't on the
side where the device is right up against the cardboard cover.
There is a tiny almost unnoticeable scratch/dent on one of the
device corners. It obviously was hit or dropped by a user or
worker. Zero scratches anywhere else, pristine. Not all of the
clingy plastic was removed, some of the thin plastic strips
along the edge and the large piece on the back were in place.
No Google apps $10 certificate. I sense nothing wrong with how
it works. It's a a very good deal IMO if that turns out to be
correct.

They say a lot of refurbished stuff is simply stuff that got
sent back when the buyer changed their mind. I'm not sure if
that reflects reality, but it does make sense. The
refurbishing just being a minor act of making sure it's all
there, and clean.

When I got a netbook, it was refurbished, though sadly it
didn't mean a lower price, just the regular price with an
extended warranty tossed in.

Wow! Extended warranty on refurbished is truly rare. Usually it
is just the opposite and you end up with just a very limit
warranty, i.e. 30, 60, and 90 days are very common. And the
reason refurbished sells for less is because the warranty is so
much shorter.

Most electronics either a fail shortly or work for a very long
time, especially something that is 99% solid-state.

John Doe wrote:
"BillW50" BillW50 aol.kom wrote:

Michael Black typed:
John Doe wrote:

Shipping was extremely fast (two days). The shipping packaging
was minimal and risky. There was a 1/4 inch crunch on one side
of the sturdy "refurbished" box. Fortunately it wasn't on the
side where the device is right up against the cardboard cover.
There is a tiny almost unnoticeable scratch/dent on one of the
device corners. It obviously was hit or dropped by a user or
worker. Zero scratches anywhere else, pristine. Not all of the
clingy plastic was removed, some of the thin plastic strips
along the edge and the large piece on the back were in place.
No Google apps $10 certificate. I sense nothing wrong with how
it works. It's a a very good deal IMO if that turns out to be
correct.

They say a lot of refurbished stuff is simply stuff that got
sent back when the buyer changed their mind. I'm not sure if
that reflects reality, but it does make sense. The
refurbishing just being a minor act of making sure it's all
there, and clean.

When I got a netbook, it was refurbished, though sadly it
didn't mean a lower price, just the regular price with an
extended warranty tossed in.
Wow! Extended warranty on refurbished is truly rare. Usually it
is just the opposite and you end up with just a very limit
warranty, i.e. 30, 60, and 90 days are very common. And the
reason refurbished sells for less is because the warranty is so
much shorter.

Most electronics either a fail shortly or work for a very long
time, especially something that is 99% solid-state.

The failure statistics are actually all over the place.

Solid state does last for a long time, if the manufacturing
process is good. It's the innocent things, that endanger
the life of the chips. IBM in their journal, chronicled
the hunt for something that was killing their chips, and
it turned out to be marker pens used to mark bad
silicon die on a wafer. Manufacturing is a combination
of high tech stuff (done in a vacuum or at high temperature).
As well as extremely low tech (stupid) stuff, done in
other parts of the plant.

Some Asus motherboards have had high failure rates on
NICs, in the one month of usage range.

Memory chips, the floor sweeping kind, fail a year or
two after you buy them.

These are not normal events. And hint that the chip
may not have been handled properly at some point.

My first example of stress related failure, was when
I was doing my first job after graduation. Another
engineer said "come over and look at this". He'd built
up a circuit, and after a number of days, a certain
chip (Open collector driver) would fail. Turned out,
after we had a look at what he was doing, he was making
an output transistor sink three times the rated current :-)
And just like clockwork, every time a new chip was put in,
it would last roughly the same number of days, before dying.
What I found neat about the whole experience, is there
didn't seem to be much "spread" in the chip life. It
always died after about the same amount of time.

If your solid state device was designed by that guy,
then you could see why it might not last forever. I've
only known one engineer who didn't make mistakes. And
he was promoted to management, so his skills could be
wasted doing unimportant things (scheduling). Leaving
the rest of us to make the mistakes :-)

Paul

Paul nospam needed.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:

Most electronics either a fail shortly or work for a very long
time, especially something that is 99% solid-state.

The failure statistics are actually all over the place.

Some "floor sweepings" is another subject.

What I'm referring to is commonly known as the "bathtub curve".

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handb...on1/apr124.htm

The first result for "bathtub curve" is from wiki****, in case you're
interested.

On 05/06/2014 12:20 PM, John Doe wrote:
"BillW50" BillW50 aol.kom wrote:

Michael Black typed:
John Doe wrote:

Shipping was extremely fast (two days). The shipping packaging
was minimal and risky. There was a 1/4 inch crunch on one side
of the sturdy "refurbished" box. Fortunately it wasn't on the
side where the device is right up against the cardboard cover.
There is a tiny almost unnoticeable scratch/dent on one of the
device corners. It obviously was hit or dropped by a user or
worker. Zero scratches anywhere else, pristine. Not all of the
clingy plastic was removed, some of the thin plastic strips
along the edge and the large piece on the back were in place.
No Google apps $10 certificate. I sense nothing wrong with how
it works. It's a a very good deal IMO if that turns out to be
correct.

They say a lot of refurbished stuff is simply stuff that got
sent back when the buyer changed their mind. I'm not sure if
that reflects reality, but it does make sense. The
refurbishing just being a minor act of making sure it's all
there, and clean.

When I got a netbook, it was refurbished, though sadly it
didn't mean a lower price, just the regular price with an
extended warranty tossed in.

Wow! Extended warranty on refurbished is truly rare. Usually it
is just the opposite and you end up with just a very limit
warranty, i.e. 30, 60, and 90 days are very common. And the
reason refurbished sells for less is because the warranty is so
much shorter.

Most electronics either a fail shortly or work for a very long
time, especially something that is 99% solid-state.

Well kind of. Gaming laptops for example (yes, I have five Alienware
ones), pump out enough heat to bake cookies from the exhaust. Worse, all
of mine supports dual video cards. And if one little thing goes wrong
and they will fry. $800+ plus labour right there.

Lately I got interested in trackballs once again. After doing some
research, I wanted to try a Logitech M570 trackball. Lots of comments
about how they die after 6 to 12 months later. Two theories pop up in
all of those comments.

1) Some say the switches fail.

2) Logitech and some others say that it is static electricity that
causes the intermittent switch (button) problems. The fix is bleeding
off of the static charge.

I have no idea what is the real problem as I ordered one online and
found a second one at a store before the first one arrived (I didn't
want to wait). Now I have both. They both function just as advertised so
far. But I am ready for problems 6 to 12 months later. Although so far I
rather use a mouse or a touchpad.

I remember back in the XT/286 days with RAM. Those things some would
quit a few months later. Beginning around the 486 days, they had got
more solid and pretty much so since then.

Currently there are lots of reports about some models of hard drives and
some SSD that fails drastically well before their time.

While there are exceptions to the rule, but you are generally right.
Most electronics are that way.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Ubuntu 12.04.1
Centrino Core Duo T2300 1.66GHz - 1GB - Thunderbird v24.5.0

John Doe wrote:
Paul nospam needed.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:

Most electronics either a fail shortly or work for a very long
time, especially something that is 99% solid-state.
The failure statistics are actually all over the place.

Some "floor sweepings" is another subject.

What I'm referring to is commonly known as the "bathtub curve".

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handb...on1/apr124.htm

The first result for "bathtub curve" is from wiki****, in case you're
interested.

It's all about modeling.

You collect field failure data, to determine how a thing fails.
Then, you fit the appropriate statistical model to it. And
try to justify what you're seeing.

For example, the Seagate page has an MTBF calculation. It
assumes a bathtub curve. The calculation would only be
valid, if the actual failures follow that curve. In fact,
the reports I've seen, show hard drives follow a "wearout curve"
and not a classical bathtub. Which means the modeling is wrong,
and the MTBF is meaningless. (The MTBF is used to predict
how many spare hard drives to buy and keep in your
stockroom.) If you've been buying spare hard drives
using the Seagate info, you'll have too few in your
stock room.

Now, what curve does memory follow ? It might be
a bathtub, in an ideal world, but when other issues
are taken into account, the curve might be something
entirely different. And thus, your ability to predict
failures, is compromised.

I never had any memory failures, back in the FPM/EDO
days. (Typical machines here, had eight sticks.)
I've seen more failures in the succeeding generations.
And I'm not seeing anything to suggest there is a bathtub
waiting for me. The failures have been with generic RAM,
and always in the 1.5 year range (1.5 years of daily use).
For branded RAM purchased in the same generation, it's
still working.

I can give you other, non-statistical examples. I
bought 8 sticks of 512MB RAM, generic, without any
markings on the chips. I got the memory for "half price".
I insert three of the eight sticks, in a P4 motherboard.
I test the memory thoroughly. No errors.

I put the motherboard in storage for several years, with the
RAM sitting in the socket.

Later, I pull the PC out of storage (cool and dry locale,
not the garage, not the basement). I test. All three sticks
are showing errors. I take the other five sticks out of their
anti-static tray and I test them. All five sticks
pass error free.

Yes, the event is not statistically significant. But,
look at the symptoms. What are the odds, that all
three sticks just randomly decided to fail while
in storage (not under bias) ? It's a very puzzling
set of circumstances. And fitting a bathtub to crap
like that, would be pointless. This isn't classical
failure behavior at all, and is indicative of corrosion
or electrochemical processes.

Paul

Paul wrote:
John Doe wrote:

Paul nospam needed.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:


Most electronics either a fail shortly or work for a very long time,
especially something that is 99% solid-state.

The failure statistics are actually all over the place.


Some "floor sweepings" is another subject.
What I'm referring to is commonly known as the "bathtub curve".
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handb...on1/apr124.htm
The first result for "bathtub curve" is from wiki****, in case you're
interested.


It's all about modeling.

You collect field failure data, to determine how a thing fails.
Then, you fit the appropriate statistical model to it. And
try to justify what you're seeing.

For example, the Seagate page has an MTBF calculation. It
assumes a bathtub curve. The calculation would only be
valid, if the actual failures follow that curve. In fact,
the reports I've seen, show hard drives follow a "wearout curve"
and not a classical bathtub. Which means the modeling is wrong,
and the MTBF is meaningless. (The MTBF is used to predict
how many spare hard drives to buy and keep in your
stockroom.) If you've been buying spare hard drives
using the Seagate info, you'll have too few in your
stock room.

Now, what curve does memory follow ? It might be
a bathtub, in an ideal world, but when other issues
are taken into account, the curve might be something
entirely different. And thus, your ability to predict
failures, is compromised.

I never had any memory failures, back in the FPM/EDO
days. (Typical machines here, had eight sticks.)
I've seen more failures in the succeeding generations.
And I'm not seeing anything to suggest there is a bathtub
waiting for me. The failures have been with generic RAM,
and always in the 1.5 year range (1.5 years of daily use).
For branded RAM purchased in the same generation, it's
still working.

I can give you other, non-statistical examples. I
bought 8 sticks of 512MB RAM, generic, without any
markings on the chips. I got the memory for "half price".
I insert three of the eight sticks, in a P4 motherboard.
I test the memory thoroughly. No errors.

I put the motherboard in storage for several years, with the
RAM sitting in the socket.

Later, I pull the PC out of storage (cool and dry locale,
not the garage, not the basement). I test. All three sticks
are showing errors. I take the other five sticks out of their
anti-static tray and I test them. All five sticks
pass error free.

Yes, the event is not statistically significant. But,
look at the symptoms. What are the odds, that all
three sticks just randomly decided to fail while
in storage (not under bias) ? It's a very puzzling
set of circumstances. And fitting a bathtub to crap
like that, would be pointless. This isn't classical
failure behavior at all, and is indicative of corrosion
or electrochemical processes.

Paul
You should have tried the original three sticks again. Many times, just
reseting the sticks will take care of problems. They need to be moved in the
soctkes.

Henry

Henry wrote:
Paul wrote:
John Doe wrote:

Paul nospam needed.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:


Most electronics either a fail shortly or work for a very long
time, especially something that is 99% solid-state.

The failure statistics are actually all over the place.


Some "floor sweepings" is another subject.
What I'm referring to is commonly known as the "bathtub curve".
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handb...on1/apr124.htm
The first result for "bathtub curve" is from wiki****, in case you're
interested.


It's all about modeling.

You collect field failure data, to determine how a thing fails.
Then, you fit the appropriate statistical model to it. And
try to justify what you're seeing.

For example, the Seagate page has an MTBF calculation. It
assumes a bathtub curve. The calculation would only be
valid, if the actual failures follow that curve. In fact,
the reports I've seen, show hard drives follow a "wearout curve"
and not a classical bathtub. Which means the modeling is wrong,
and the MTBF is meaningless. (The MTBF is used to predict
how many spare hard drives to buy and keep in your
stockroom.) If you've been buying spare hard drives
using the Seagate info, you'll have too few in your
stock room.

Now, what curve does memory follow ? It might be
a bathtub, in an ideal world, but when other issues
are taken into account, the curve might be something
entirely different. And thus, your ability to predict
failures, is compromised.

I never had any memory failures, back in the FPM/EDO
days. (Typical machines here, had eight sticks.)
I've seen more failures in the succeeding generations.
And I'm not seeing anything to suggest there is a bathtub
waiting for me. The failures have been with generic RAM,
and always in the 1.5 year range (1.5 years of daily use).
For branded RAM purchased in the same generation, it's
still working.

I can give you other, non-statistical examples. I
bought 8 sticks of 512MB RAM, generic, without any
markings on the chips. I got the memory for "half price".
I insert three of the eight sticks, in a P4 motherboard.
I test the memory thoroughly. No errors.

I put the motherboard in storage for several years, with the
RAM sitting in the socket.

Later, I pull the PC out of storage (cool and dry locale,
not the garage, not the basement). I test. All three sticks
are showing errors. I take the other five sticks out of their
anti-static tray and I test them. All five sticks
pass error free.

Yes, the event is not statistically significant. But,
look at the symptoms. What are the odds, that all
three sticks just randomly decided to fail while
in storage (not under bias) ? It's a very puzzling
set of circumstances. And fitting a bathtub to crap
like that, would be pointless. This isn't classical
failure behavior at all, and is indicative of corrosion
or electrochemical processes.

Paul
You should have tried the original three sticks again. Many times, just
reseting the sticks will take care of problems. They need to be moved
in the soctkes.

Henry

Done and done.

Paul

Fortunately I might be wrong. I'm getting some good vibes on the
subject.



Most fun would be setting up a system of speech activated
scripting like on my PC. It probably wouldn't take much more
than what's already there, but I suppose it's unlikely.

In fact, speech activated scripting is significantly easier on this
tablet than on my PC.



Fortunately I might be wrong. I'm getting some good vibes on the
subject.



Most fun would be setting up a system of speech activated
scripting like on my PC. It probably wouldn't take much more
than what's already there, but I suppose it's unlikely.