A Drawer for your Desktop
erco
Posts: 20,256
DVD drives are so last millennium. Join the Kool Kidz, chuck yours to make way for this cool storage drawer for your fidget spinners. Coming soon, a cupholder/ashtray for your laptop!
http://www.frys.com/product/7961320?site=16web052517
http://www.frys.com/product/7961320?site=16web052517
Comments
I used to have a server case with 5 bays, and if you could motorize and control the drawers. Better than empty space.
No beige?
C'mon Andrew! You know very well what a desktop is!
I have two desktops, one at office and one at home-office, let OneDrive sync and don't have to lug around a laptop.
Can get a desktop for $200 with intel i5, slap in a 128gb boot ssd and upgrade to 8G (or select 8G only) and system fly.
https://www.dellrefurbished.com/desktop-computers?dir=asc&filter_brand=188&filter_processor_brand=356,357&order=price
Extra 40% Off Sitewide with Free Shipping using coupon code "PROUD40DELL". through May 30th.
Will pay for itself in increased productive if you value your time more than $7.50/hr.
Actually I do have a desktop of sorts, and on it is a small form factor PC with lots of USB ports but I'm considering downsizing and upgrading to a fanless PC like this.
BTW: I don't exspect an answer to that dumb question.
I bought the case for this VGA monitor:
https://www.amazon.com/thermaltake-a2413-7-inch-drive-monitor/dp/tech-data/b000ka7yja
I couldn't imagine being locked into parts I couldn't replace locally. I suppose you could always have a spare laptop...
Those fanless PCs are nice!
Traditionally PC's have been huge, heavy, ugly, noisy, power consuming monsters. The insides of which are mostly air.
I have been living with a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for one year now and can't imagine I'll be going back to my big old PC's. This thing is small, light, mobile, silent and performs well enough for my use, better than my last PC. Not to mention having much better graphics capability.
If it breaks down it will still be under guarantee and get fixed/replaced by the local PC super store or I just get the boss to shell another one
Meanwhile for industrial applications we use tiny ruggedized PC compatible machines.
BTW: I left out the most important item, the search for the perfect case. There may not be one though.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5965RC0553&ignorebbr=1
or something even cheaper:
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/150839/HP-Pro-6305-Refurbished-Desktop-PC/
Here's a nice boat anchor for you. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811352030
BTW: a good place for those extra refrigerator magnets.
I got my first practical laptop in 2003, because I needed a computer I could use on a few trips. It was miserable to use on its own but could use an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and it still had a real serial port which was a necessity in those days. It was the first time I had to evacuate for a hurricane when I simply unplugged all the cables, folded it up, and tossed it in the car that I realized I would never own another desktop case PC again.
The old laptop --not the 2003 one, the one that replaced it -- is still sitting under my new tablet; I bought that laptop in the final weeks of Windows XP availability. IIRC it cost around $900 back in the day. It's been quite serviceable, despite the cooling fan getting clogged with dust, and the LCD backlight inverter going out twice. It finally died the No Windows XP Updates Any More death and I bought the tablet.
The tablet cost $200. It has more RAM, more CPU cores, and is faster than the laptop. It doesn't have a hard drive and only has 32 Gb flash, while the laptop had an 80 Gb hard drive, but the tablet also has a Micro-SD socket. 64 Gb card installed it has more mass storage than the laptop. Windows 10 can move My Documents and Music and Pictures onto the external card, and if anything ever happens to the tablet I just pop the card and put it in the new one. The whole tablet with all accessories cost less than a hard drive did not that long ago.
In fact, I got this tablet because I got one at work first and I liked it so much. Unlike most solid-state netbook computers it has a 1080p 11.6 inch LCD, which means that with reading glasses on I can set it up in a hotel room and treat it like a full machine with a 1080p monitor. (Of course it came with big icons and big fonts and big everything assuming I was going to use it as a tablet, but it was easy to fix all that.) And while at home it's HDMI to an actual monitor, USB to actual peripherals, and it runs all my software -- even, since it's running the "crippleware" 32-bit version of Win 10, stuff that "won't run on Windows 10." That's a nice buffer between the old world and the new, since I have a couple of those old apps I will probably need to be able to run for at least five more years. Industry is different from consumerland.
The tablet runs the PropTool, SimpleIDE, and Brad's Spin Tool without trouble. All the USB-serial solutions work with it. Being a tablet it also has bluetooth, and I love my new bluetooth headphones not being tethered to the damn desk where the computer is as I move around the office. And oh yeah, the thing will also run over six hours on its battery.
It is, of course, most emphatically not upgradeable or repairable. And I don't care. The upgrade will be to a new tablet or solid-state laptop. I have decided I will never have a PC with moving parts to worry about ever again. Because it was built for battery life instead of cutting-edge performance it runs cool, despite being much faster than the hot-running machine it replaced.
I just had a funny conversation with my wife. Last year we replaced an old but perfectly good refrigerator with a newer model because she was just tired of it. This afternoon we were talking about how new appliances don't last and she wondered aloud if it was the refrigerator that was responsible for our electric bill going down so much. It had to be; there were no other changes. So yeah, we spent $700 to replace a perfectly good refrigerator, but the new one will pay for itself in reduced electric usage within two or three years. Even if we have to replace it in five years instead of twenty, it's a win.
Same with this tablet. It just works, in a form factor and on power sources I never thought might be practical. Building a computer from components is so 1990's when things like this are available.
Jim
I bet it's a Surface Pro with Win10.
I recently sold a small Samsung tablet, the only thing I was using it for was reading. Android doesn't do much for productivity, at least for me.
My wife has a Win10 Nextbook, with detachable keyboard. I do see it's advantages. But it suffers from a lack of USB ports though. And when you start plugging things in, you have lost portability.
I have a heck of a time with it in tablet mode, the real problem is how the OS is set up. I'm constantly minimizing - maximizing or some other thing, I don't want to do.
Frustrating, I guess I can get used to it. We did evolve from front panel switches, and look how long keyboards have been around.
It's a lot cheaper than a Surface :-) I rarely use it as a tablet, since the two USB-A ports are on the docking keyboard. The advantage it has over small netbooks like the HP Stream series is the 1080p display; this is the only thing near its price range I've found with that high a display resolution.
Find!
Did you get to play around with it? May have top secret info on it, and IBM wants to retrieve it at any cost.
I'm guessing, this is IBM's version of a Palm Pilot.
EDIT: 2007 and 5 grand doesn't seem right.
I'm going back to pad and pencil. Throw in some index tabs and I think we have something here.
Those are beautiful pads. IBM should be manufacturing them for us today!
Coincidentally, whilst at the Maker Faire I got chatting to a guy about some classroom robotics thing he was doing. Turned out his dad had worked for IBM for decades. He showed me a photo of his fathers IBM briefcase from 1951. A beautiful leather bound affair.
Thing is, in the photo it was open, showing that inside was a gorgeous selection of screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers and such. All the tools an IBMer needs to service an IBM card punch or card sorting machine!
Wish I'd though to ask him to post the picture online someplace.