Vendor-Tech

Operational Excellence with Technology

InfoComm 2008

InfoComm is a trade show about audio/visual (A/V).

For years it has been the place to see projectors.  They were famous for their projector shootouts back when projectors were $10,000+ and put out a famous 400 lumens (maybe).

By CES (Consumer Electronics Show) standards it is a relatively small show, which makes it large by most other show's standards.

No Joy...

So about half way through the process of PC Mover loading the "moving van" file, Desktop 4 took its final nosedive. This time the drive failure is total and absolute.

Alternative attempts to recover the drive using copies of the files made into the network didn't work either, along the way I think I fried a second drive making me think the problem is in Desktop 4's power supply. So Desktop 4 is headed to complete and total retirement.

The data was backed up. It was the programs (A LOT of programs) I was trying to avoid re-installing.

HP Notebook #2

Last November, CompUSA had a 17" HP notebook on sale for $449 on Black Friday (the big sales the day after Thanksgiving). So I switched from the notebook I had in the Family room to it.

It's called BigHP on the network.

The timing was good, because son Chris' notebook failed in December so he got the old notebook. By pulling the drive from his old notebook we recovered everything he had.

HP Tablet Notebook

Switching to one of the notebooks (to keep the order of failures correct), my new HP tablet "failed" (aka had its LCD screen cracked) when I dropped it onto the pavement in Bangkok. I wasn't worried since I had an extended warranty that included accidental damage. Since the system was still working (albeit with a distracting crack across the screen), I wasn't in a huge hurry to get it fixed. On the 20th of May, having backed it up, I got authorization to return the tablet back to the service center. UPS confirmed they delivered it on the 22nd.

Desktop 3

Actually Desktop 3 failed back in April. It is one of 4 desktop computers that sit under my desk connected to a keyboard, video, mouse switcher that let me use them for dedicated purposes.

Hardware Headaches

May has proven to be a hard month for hardware here. I've had two desktops (their future is uncertain) and two notebooks (one permanently) go out of service.

I have to confess they weren't as well backed up as I should have, proving my theorem from college "back up religion is inversely proportional to the time since the last crash."

The good news is, many of the other systems in the network are being backed up daily or weekly, I think it was karma that the two systems with the weakest backups failed.

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