A Few Musings About "Custom" Computer Vendors..
Over the last several years, I have
gone from custom building my own computer systems from bare-bones
kits to getting the custom-built systems available from many vendors.
I have two systems from Velocity
Computers – one desktop and one laptop. The desktop is a pretty
heavy duty unit with two processors and 64 GB of RAM. Most of the
time it runs acceptably well. It is used mainly for Photoshop, and
occasionally for Poser Pro 2014. I had Poser on the laptop as well as
Photoshop, but as of this writing the laptop is not working.
I also have a laptop from Origin
Computers, which I use mainly for DAZ Studio. I have a desktop unit
from Titan computers, which I use pretty much exclusively for Poser
Pro 2014.
Right now, as I mentioned above, the
Velocity laptop is pretty much a doorstop. I have a support ticket
going with Velocity right now, and I am waiting for a response from
them with our last email exchange.
Just last week, the Titan computer
arrived back home after being sent to their service department for
issues I was experiencing with it. One of the main problems I had
with it was the fact that if I left my external USB drives plugged in
when I booted it up, it would try to reinstall Windows. I did not
have this issue at all with the old HP computer that I previously had
in this spot. It would boot up just fine with all three USB drives
connected.
Naturally, the technicians at Titan
could not duplicate this problem. They updated some drivers, and put
the system in a brand-new case as FedEx had apparently damaged the
old case on the trip to their service facility.
Regarding the USB drives, I have two
Hitachi drives, and had a Seagate drive on which I kept my master
runtimes for Poser. The two Hitachi drives are rock solid, but the
Seagate drive would continuously drop out, then pop back in, then
drop out again, then pop back in again. With it dropping out every
few seconds, it was completely useless. However, if I plugged another
drive in, it worked fine. Similarly, if I plugged the Seagate drive
into my oldest system (which was the last system that I built myself
from a bare-bones kit), the drive works fine. So I now have two
Seagate drives attached to my old computer, along with two Hitachi
drives, and all four drives work fine. So I am basically using this
system as a backup server. Why do the Seagate drives act so flaky on
the Titan system? I have no idea...
Anyway, after taking a week to
reconfigure everything, move my Poser files around, move my master
runtimes to one of the Hitachi drives, I finally got everything
working relatively smoothly.
No sooner did I get everything squared
away with the Titan computer, then the Origin laptop began throwing
boot up errors. It would throw up a message "your computer
encountered a problem and has to restart" when it was booted up.
The first time this happened, it took about five reboots to finally
get it to boot into Windows properly. It will kick this message up
about every fourth or fifth time I boot it up.
I just opened a ticket with Origin, and
just got a response from them. In a nutshell, they said in order to
rule out the problem being software-based, I would need to insert the
recovery USB stick they included, and basically wipe the drive and
reinstall everything factory fresh. Of course, this means that I
would have to reinstall DAZ Studio, and a few other apps that I have
running on the system. It's kind of a pain in the ass, but then again
if it was a hardware problem I'd have to do the same thing after they
replaced the drive.
So… At the moment I have tickets open
with both Origin and Velocity. I don't even want to think about the
total price I've paid over the years for all of these 'custom'
systems, but let me just say that none of them were under $2300.
When the Velocity laptop decided to lay
down on me, I went to Micro Center, and paid a little over $1200 for
a Powerspec laptop with a 17 inch screen to use for Poser Pro 2014
and Photoshop. I haven't had it very long, so time will tell how well
it continues to work. But at the moment it runs poser smoothly, as
well as Photoshop and a couple other apps I have installed.
The upshot of all of this rambling is
just this: why in the hell should I continue to spend inflated prices
for these custom-built systems, when I can go to Micro Center and for
half the price get a system that works just as well if not better?
Next time I need a powerful system for 3-D rendering, I will be
giving very deep consideration on whether to get a custom-built
system or just simply go to Micro Center and bring one home the same
day for half the price.
I too am having problems with my computer so I symphsize with you. I have to reinstall everything which is so annoying and time consuming. Hope all your solutions work for you for ages 😀
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear of the issues. Really sucks. the computer I'm typing on right now is an old (read ancient) HP that I got back in 2008 and it is chugging long just fine - of course the max memory is only 8 gigs. The one I'm using for rendering is the gaming computer I bought and it currently has 16 gigs but I plan on upgrading it to 32 gigs. The only issue I had with it was the power supply dying and having to get an adapter for the HDMI port. I agree that paying those extra bucks just doesn't sound like a good investment if all you're going to do is ship it back to get some issue resolved.
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