Ye Old Dell COmputer
 

this is a Dimension 8300 from about the turn of the millennium

it is a LOT heavier than the new one & part of that is the much higher quality case (it is a lot quieter also)

also note the "HVAC" ducting...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1296715157.jpg

Most Dell computers still use that style ducting.

They also have the quiet thing down.

and... they test the HDDs before shipping...

I've got a couple Compaqs from that time frame. The laptop still runs like a champ!

I still use Dell PowerEdge 400SC's from that time period. They are rock solid with a PC Power and Cooling power supply in them!

I don't have such great experience with them. In 2003 we ordered two or three pallets of Dells and a bunch of them had power supplies that went bad after a few months.

The latest batch of Dell laptops seems to have a very high failure rate for the graphics card too. We went through two of them last week alone.

Which model of Laptop? The video card portion of the MB on my E6400 died about 3 weeks ago. Dell was certainly fast on replacing it.

Haha, close. They're E6410s. I haven't been impressed with their durability so far since they've all been in use from under a week to three months. We have a stack of the things and none of the users had many (if any) files they needed so they've been issued another while the one they had went off for repair. To be fair, repairs have been quick but I'm surprised how many needed to be fixed.

x2, great machine. It's getting long in the tooth, but it works and quiet. No interest in a turbo prop under my desk.

Can you update it to new mobo etc, or have form factors changed too much?

Power supplies change. The case and the screw points are the same, but the back plate changes and sometimes the new ones don't fit right.

The issue with the noise is choosing fans and fans for the power supplies

Inside a MacPro.

Note the absence of "spaghetti".

No tools needed for basic, drive, RAM, PCI Card swaps.

You flip a latch on the back and the side panel opens up. It also unlocks the 4 HD sleds which have thumbscrews for attaching a drive.

Ram sits on trays that slide in/out.

PCI cards are not held by individual screws. There is a single plate with 2 thumbscrews that secures them.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec0...handson1_l.jpghttp://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec0...acinside_l.jpg

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec0...handson3_l.jpghttp://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec0...handson2_l.jpg

potentially useful info:

Langa Letter: Getting The Grunge Out Of Your PC -- PC Maintenance -- InformationWeek

The 400SC was a really nice box. We just retired one a few months ago. We also have a 420SC, 430SC and a 440SC. Out of the 4 boxes, I would vote for the 420 as the best. I just reloaded it with Server 2003, use it as a DC/GC and the Quickbooks workstation. Here is a somewhat interesting site with a lot of info on the older SC's. Obviously not much activity these days but perhaps a decent resource. Too bad Dell never thought ahead and built them for more than 4 GB of ram.

I had a Dell Dimension 43XX Pentium 4 I used for playing games. Upgraded to a slightly better graphics card and the power supply couldn't handle it; died and took out the motherboard. I went to an Optiplex from the same era with 2.8 GHz P4 and slapped in a 450 watt power supply and a midrange graphics card (not easy to find PCI cards these days). Works fine. Still running XP, which is the most stable Microsoft OS I've worked with -- seems to crash or hang only about once every 14-15 hours of use.

I make it a practice to replace the standard Dell power supply with a PC Power and Cooling power supply (now owned by OCZ and sold through Amazon.com) and I max out the RAM and use the PC's until the motherboard fails, which is rare. I've had some of these Dells for 8 years or more. As long as I can run Windows or Ubuntu on them, they are useful to me.

I just loaded Windows Web Server 2008 R2 on a Dell 537s with 4Gb of RAM and 3TB of hard drive with no issues or problems at all for a client.

They are beautifully crafted machines. I hadn't seen inside one until my Forensics instructor was showing me his. He says when you work them hard enough the fan kicks into a mode that can only be described as "liftoff". He is really who got me into the mac camp.

for the kind of cash Apple wants for a Mac Pro. i wouldn't expect anything less then such design... that, and a complementary blow job when i pay for the darn thing....

But since my kind of expectation level will never be met in the Apple store, i figure i can do better things with my money then to make the Apple share holders happier then they already are.