Hardware Insights Forum

This may seem redundant with the Badcaps.net thread but as I found out the hard way, the administration there isn't that nice. Anyway, my entries are...

• Abusive forum moderators (which can end up as what breaks a forum).
• The self-selecting popular news.
• The scare campaigns that ultimately end up desensitising people.
• Exaggerating and/or lying to children (which I actually consider an insult to their intelligence). There ought to be a law against it...
• Overprotection (for similar reasons).
• The all-too-common consumer behaviour of buying on price alone. (And people who upgrade without an actual need to do so.)
• Products that aren't actually what they are advertised as (most notably food products).

I don't mean to offend anyone, I don't expect everyone to learn a new language and I'm not even saying any other language is better, but...

I'm starting to despise the English language, and that's not even about how people use it.

There are multiple problems with it but the biggest one is that there is no textual representation of "tone-of-voice".

You can't just expect people to "be extra nice" because the writer can't actually determine how the reader will respond.

This makes it all the more important to assume good intent.

I don't want to sound menacing or anything but if you dismiss this post, I'm going home. I've already had too much of this mess.

OFF-TOPIC: I didn't mean to attack Badcaps.net. The problems were (A) this and (B) Topcat's assertion that only a f****** could make a particular mistake.

It can be very hard to tell someone's "tone of voice" over text, especially if you've never talked to the person in real life

It isn't actually conveyed at all - the reader is left to guess about it. (Then again, I suppose targeted swearing would give it away...)

I do kind of agree. At least with some other languages, one english word might have couple of equivalents, depending on the exact meaning.

One thing that really annoys me is deceptive advertising (Over-rated PSUs for instance)

LongRunner wrote:OFF-TOPIC: I didn't mean to attack Badcaps.net.

Understood. It's probably best that everyone puts the whole thing behind them. I don't think anyone meant unwell. =)

I'm in agreeance with a number of the annoyances listed in this thread, but I'm not really "driven crazy" so much as frustrated and annoyed, like anyone else. I don't think it's really healthy to be driven to such states of unstable reaction towards things, or for that matter to harbor long term grudges or whatever else.

Wester547 wrote:I'm in agreeance with a number of the annoyances listed in this thread, but I'm not really "driven crazy" so much as frustrated and annoyed, like anyone else. I don't think it's really healthy to be driven to such states of unstable reaction towards things, or for that matter to harbor long term grudges or whatever else.

I agree with that, but then again, with the succession of misinterpretations, for a bit there I wasn't far off...

This stupid UPS that I've had for months now frequently enters voltage-reduction mode, which I don't think is justified for ≈255VAC (as it reports) - which is pretty mundane as far as a SMPS is concerned (it may even run better at that voltage - unless it has 350VDC primary caps*, but they've known better than to use those for a long time).

To make it worse, the fan in that thing sounds like a freaking jet engine, and the air isn't even warm. I think any device with a simple on/off fan controller qualifies for this thread.

*This may have been prompted by the larger case sizes of old capacitor series, but there hasn't been an excuse for quite a while. You may want to consider replacing old 350VDC capacitors with modern 400VDC units to be safe - they may well be worse for wear anyway. Though even recent series like Chemi-con KXJ have 350V models...

Why can't XP take active sound output as an indication that it shouldn't go into power-saving mode??? I'm left to "screw it" and disable power management. Also, if you try to select a different PM scheme (or save your own), it auto-switches back to what it thinks is best for your computer, so you have to actually save changes to the scheme it chose "for" you. Talk about idiot-proofing.

In newer versions of Windows they removed the option to "ask me what to do" when pressing one of the case buttons. Don't ask me why they did that. With the default setup it's easy to lose unsaved data.

The motherboard I'm using appears to repeatably corrupt certain RAM addresses, regardless of what RAM I try in it.

Then there's those crap caps with no series marked on them...and people like mariushm who disregard research (!) that doesn't support their view and attack people who continue to disagree.

LongRunner wrote:To make it worse, the fan in that thing sounds like a freaking jet engine...

It doesn't sound like a conventional fan.

My only guess is that it's a "dual-fan" (two separate impellers in series, in the same casing) like Delta GFB series.

Although my PC could probably be made quieter with little or no effort, I presently see little value in doing so. Not just because of the silly UPS, but because there are so many other noise sources that I have no control over - such as lawnmowers.

You know someone's pinching pennies when you discover that some A/V cables have no shielding. Yes, I've actually cut them open and seen inside. On that topic, analog video and S/PDIF cables are supposed to use 75Ω coaxial cables (the same type of cable used for TV antennas, but with different connectors), but they often don't.

There's a lot of crap going around about speaker cables. Ultimately it's the wire size that makes the difference. Some of the bullshit artists even sell overpriced power cables - and even needing a shielded mains lead is most likely wrong.