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Bombshell: HP pulls out. Of tablets and desktop PCs.

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 18, 2011November 3, 2025amiga, android, apple, Ars Technica, best buy, Dave Haynie, hp, IBM, intel, Intel Core, ipad, netbooks, web os

And speaking of duds, it looks like HP has one on their hands in their Web OS-based tablets.

Best Buy has about a quarter-million unsold tablets in their warehouse and has only managed to sell 25,000 of them. And when Woot ran a special on them, selling them for $120 off, they sold a whopping 612 of them.

And now it looks like HP is just going to discontinue Web OS altogether.
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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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DOS war stories

Dave Farquhar DOS, War Stories August 13, 2011February 3, 20223com, boot disk, compaq, hp, IBM, intel, ramdisk, windows 98

In honor of the IBM PC turning 30, I thought I’d tell some stories about my experiences with the operating system introduced with it, PC DOS (aka MS-DOS).
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Dave Farquhar

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Happy birthday, IBM PC!

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing August 12, 2011December 24, 20251980s, 1990s, amd, apple, apple ii, commodore, commodore 64, compaq, dell, Gary Kildall, hp, IBM, intel, lenovo, macintosh, Maxtor, pc magazine, Personal Computer, radio shack

The IBM PC 5150 turns 30 today.

IBM didn’t invent the personal computer, but if your computer has an Intel or AMD CPU in it, it’s the direct descendant of the beige box IBM unleashed on the world on August 12, 1981. Without a huge amount of effort, it’s even possible to run most of that old software on your shiny new PC. You probably wouldn’t want to, except out of curiosity, but you can do it.

I wasn’t one of the people who rushed out and got one. At the time, I was still watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. I had my first experience with a computer–a Radio Shack TRS-80–in 1982, and the first computer my family bought was a Commodore 64 in 1984. Even in 1984, there were still plenty of people who questioned why anyone needed a computer in their home. My introduction to the IBM PC and PC-DOS didn’t happen until 1987.
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Dave Farquhar

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Maybe this is the sales tactic computer stores use these days

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized August 8, 2011August 8, 2011asus, dell, hp, intel, pentium ii, samsung, Western Digital

So, Dr. A’s computer is going to get the full Farquhar treatment. I told him I’m pretty confident I can get it running better than it ever has.

He said one of the salesmen told him it’s overdue for a crash, because it’s a Dell.

I really don’t like that kind of a generalization. I told him yes, all other things being equal, I think HP has better engineers than Dell. But would I discard an old machine just because it’s a Dell? Well, I ran this web site on an old Dell computer from about 2003 until October 2010. Actions speak louder than words. But there are a lot more problems with that argument. So I think it’s a sales tactic. I think if he’d come in and said he had an HP and he thinks it’s due, the salesman would have said, “Oh, it’s overdue for a crash because it’s an HP. Here, let me show you this Dell….”

Here’s why.

Dave Farquhar

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Used dual-cores are coming! Used dual-cores are coming!

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 7, 2011October 4, 2018amd, atx power supply, COA, excel, intel, overclocking, windows 7, Windows XP

All this talk about new computers got me looking to see what’s out there in the channel. And it looks like the glut of Pentium 4s is finally clearing, making way for the 2-core revolution. Prices are low–I’m seeing dual-core systems, both Intel and AMD, with Windows licenses, for anywhere from $180 to $280 depending on configuration and some other factors that aren’t exactly clear to me.

Sound good? Here’s what to look for in an off-lease/refurbished computer.
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Dave Farquhar

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Be careful when buying previous-generation hardware

Dave Farquhar Hardware July 25, 2011April 21, 2017amd, asus, intel, pentium d, phenom

So I was hoping I could score a bargain on some older Socket 775 hardware, being previous generation and all. And sometimes you can. But sometimes you can just think you’re getting a bargain.

Here’s an example.

Dave Farquhar

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Upgrade diary: Compaq Presario C552US

Dave Farquhar Hardware July 9, 2011July 9, 2011apple, compaq, intel, spartan, toshiba, vista, Western Digital, windows 7, Windows Vista

The Presario C552US shipped from the factory with a 1.6 GHz Celeron M single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, and Windows Vista Home Basic.

It’s the most miserable computing experience I’ve seen in a very long time, if ever. I don’t know how they ever sold a single one of these machines, performing like that.

Fortunately, there’s room to improve it.

Dave Farquhar

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A snapshot in history of Gates and Microsoft, 1992

Dave Farquhar Software July 5, 2011March 25, 20251990s, altair, Andy Grove, apple, Apple Macintosh, Bill Gates, DEC, Digital Research, IBM, intel, macintosh, Microsoft Office, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, windows me, Windows XP

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire is a 1992 autobiography of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. It’s old. But it’s a compelling snapshot of what the industry thought of Gates and Microsoft before Windows 95, before Microsoft Office, and before Internet Explorer. Indeed, it gives an early glimpse into the struggle to bring Windows to market, some of the bad bets Microsoft cast on its early productivity software, and just how close Microsoft came to betting the company on the success of the Apple Macintosh.

If Microsoft’s history were written today, many of these stories would probably be forgotten.

Dave Farquhar

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How to clean an MBR and recover drive partitions

Dave Farquhar security July 4, 2011July 17, 2017antivirus, apple, Apple Macintosh, Bit Defender, intel, macintosh, malware, Maxtor, MBR, Parted Magic, Standalone System Sweeper, unix, vista

Sometimes it’s necessary to recover drive partitions because you accidentally repartitioned a drive you didn’t mean to, or because your MBR got infected or otherwise trashed. Here’s how to recover them, for free.

Infecting MBRs with malware is popular with virus writers again. And I fully expect chaos to ensue, because that’s what happened the last time there was more than one virus floating around that infected MBRs. They quit doing it for a good reason.

So here’s how to clean up the mess when an MBR gets infected, or when multiple infections blitzes the MBR and the hard drive loses the ability to boot, just displaying a message like Missing Operating System or Operating System Not Found.

We’ll be using the Gparted Live CD. Many Linux live CDs have the proper tools, but GParted works well and it’s a small download. You can try to use another Linux live CD, and it will work fine, but the icons might not all be where I say they are.

Dave Farquhar

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Using ATA Security eXtension BIOS to add hard drive password protection

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security July 3, 2011July 3, 2011AES, intel, ocz

Most desktop PCs don’t have the ability to set an ATA password in the BIOS, precluding you from enabling the onboard AES-128 encryption in a drive like the Intel 320 SSD.

If you’re willing to hack your BIOS or burn a boot ROM to put in a network card, Arne Fitzenreiter has ATA Security eXtension (ATASX, or ATA SX)–a way for you to add that support to computers that lack it. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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