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HP has a brilliant idea

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 16, 20121990s, acer, apple, asus, corsair, dell, hp, IBM, Micro Center, pc magazine, pc world, Super Bowl

After last year’s flip-flopping on getting rid of its not-quite-as-profitable-as-they’d-like PC business, and the resulting self sabotage, HP needed a good idea to try to undo the damage.

Their idea is completely unoriginal, but it’s tried and true and more likely to work than anything else they could possibly do: Bundle their premium PCs with premium-level customer service and charge a little more.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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New Order, Joy Division, surviving and moving on

Dave Farquhar Music February 15, 2012March 6, 20251990s, computer security

I couldn’t tell you the last time I thought about Joy Division, and then one of my college classmates posted a story about a stash of Joy Division and early New Order master tapes showing up in the basement of a former bank, along with guns and gold (but presumably, no butter). Yes, the jokes write themselves.

Instead of talking about the contents of the tapes, the story talked about New Order going on tour. I was vaguely aware that Peter Hook quit the band, and another story on the site discussed that: New Order is back together without Peter Hook, and Peter Hook is planning on touring as himself and playing Joy Division songs. And he’s writing a book about his time in Joy Division.

As a guy who spent way too much time listening to Joy Division in college, and who for a time ran the largest Joy Division tribute site on the Web, yeah, I have some opinions on all that.

Dave Farquhar

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And now Intel’s teamed up with Sandforce

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 7, 2012April 3, 20251990s, anandtech, apple, intel, kingston, micron, ocz, samsung

Intel’s new SSD 520 uses a Sandforce controller. Very interesting. Both Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech have reviews posted.

So you’ll have Sandforce performance, hopefully coupled with Intel reliability. That’s the theory. They aren’t shipping yet, and you’ll pay a premium for the Intel name.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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My first experience with data recovery

Dave Farquhar data recovery, War Stories February 2, 2012March 23, 20221990s, data recovery, firewall, IBM, ontrack

It was 1997. I was working my first full-time job, and my phone rang with my first crisis.

“What happened to the K drive?” the caller asked.

I glanced over at my network drive cheat sheet, which listed all of our shares and what server they were on. In those days, most of our servers still had 300-400 megabyte drives and that meant every file server hosted, at most, a couple of shares. There was no K drive on our list. I was afraid this was about to get interesting. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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My Socket 775 adventures, Chapter 1

Dave Farquhar Hardware January 27, 2012January 28, 20211990s, amd, asus, Asus Socket, corsair, hp, intel, kingston, Micro Center, pentium d, power button

So I bought an Intel Socket 775 board to support a crash webserver rebuild project. I present the story in hopes that it might be useful, or entertaining, or both. I don’t know the ultimate outcome of it yet, but all of the decisions made sense at the time.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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An excellent story about collectors of old signs

Dave Farquhar St. Louis January 15, 2012April 18, 20171990s, Big Boy, CVS, train layout

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch profiled three local sign collectors this weekend. Bill Christman, Greg Rhomberg, and Jim May go around buying old storefront signage, particularly enamel-painted metal signs with neon lights.

“Most businesses are branded franchises, so you see the same signs over and over, repeating every few miles,” said Tod Swormstedt, who operates a sign museum in Cincinnati. “But the old signs — the hand-carved shoe or the gold-leaf lettering on a window — were iconic and what made each neighborhood unique. People miss that.”

So I guess I’m not the only one who misses that, but it sure seems like we’re a minority.

Dave Farquhar

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Best Buy has one foot in the grave?

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized January 7, 20121990s, best buy, christmas, Circuit City, home improvement, kmart, Micro Center, Missouri, sears

In a highly publicized article, Forbes argues that Best Buy is not long for this world.

I can’t disagree with any individual point in the article. Some of the problems Larry Downes identifies existed when I worked there in the early 1990s–I’d spare you the joke about being young, naive, and needing the money, but it’s too late now–but in the 1990s they could get away with that, sort of, because there were competitors who tried to get away with worse.

Sears/Kmart is a favorite whipping boy, but they have one very big thing up on the land of the blue shirts. I can make a five-minute trip to Sears or Kmart–particularly Sears Hardware–to pick up a couple of things, and I do so fairly frequently. I tried a couple of weeks ago to do that at Best Buy, and, like the author said, calling it a miserable experience is putting it mildly. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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Happy 30th birthday, Commodore 64

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing January 6, 2012July 15, 20171980s, 1990s, apple, CES, commodore, commodore 64, Dave Haynie, emachine, IBM

The C-64 sort of turns 30 this week. It was introduced 30 years ago this week, though it wasn’t until August or so that you could actually buy one. It took that long for memory prices to come down to reach the target price, and if memory serves, the machine they displayed at CES in January wasn’t quite production-ready anyway.

I remember the machine well. It was my first computer. It seems like just yesterday the thing turned 25. And not all that long ago that I still used one on a regular basis.

Dave Farquhar

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I think this is the secret of Amazon’s success

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized December 19, 2011April 15, 20251980s, 1990s, apple, compaq, IBM, intel, Jeff Bezos, Personal Computer

When talking about e-books Friday, I mentioned that Amazon is making deals with authors directly, cutting traditional publishers out of the loop. And then my wife asked a good question: How does Amazon think of stuff like that?

I think it’s because Amazon isn’t hung up about last year. Let me explain.
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Dave Farquhar

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The worst test I ever took

Dave Farquhar Personal December 17, 20111990s, certifications, cissp, firewall, marathon, mizzou, walter johnson

I’m gearing up (finally) to take the CISSP, a 250-question marathon of an exam that covers everything from firewalls and intrusion detection systems to how tall the fence or wall around a building should be and what kind of lights to use in a parking garage. And everything in between. Three of my colleagues have had CISSP certifications for several years, and on Friday two of them were telling me what to expect.

And the worst test I’ve ever taken came to mind. No, it wasn’t Security+. I had a pretty good idea I was going to pass that one, which I did. The worst test I ever took was Dr. Walter Johnson‘s Fundamental Macroeconomics (Economics 1) makeup final at Mizzou, circa Winter 1994.

Dave Farquhar

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