We have five computers. (well six...there's a little 8" laptop that the kid plays with too)
Three desktops- two laptops.
An Alienware laptop that is suppose to be a demon...I know the price was...$4,500.00 +
My wife uses it for facebook. *&()(*&- and I like to play chess on it. We've probably used it for about
48 hrs in the year we've had it. The rest of the time it's been sitting broke or in transit. For months was phone support with techs that were suppose to come to the house and fix it that never showed up...the parts did but then we had to send them back because the techs that didn't show up didn't use them.
A Dell laptop for the grand daughter. New and she's happy.
 
My music PC. -XPS 64 bit- Win7
My internet PC.-XPS 32 bit. Win XP
A desktip -XPS 32 bit- for wife and daughter- games, misc...stuff they do.
 
The Alienware has been returned to Dell 2 times and they have it now...everything has gone wrong with - hard drive failure this time- about 3 3d movies have benn watched on it and facebook use...nothing else.
 
The music computer - well I guess it won't run X2 so it's for Vegas Pro 12 and that's all.
The internet computer- It's used to for mail and internet. Internet use is for this forum mostly and it doesn't work....so it checks the mail.
The desktop for wife and kid to play games works half the time and they get mad at it and shut it down.
 
I know why I spend my time in my shop building guitars and pickups.
After 21 years of trying to use them to record and do basic functions....I think I'm just about done.
 
At work I have one....security stops just about everything except this and this is without pictures or music.
 
So....out of six computers in my life none of them except the one that's a week old for the grand kid works or does what it's suppose to do. I imagine it'll only be a few weeks before she is having trouble
with hers. ( well the work one I don't care about...there problem)
 
And the solution to run X2 is get another one. ?....
 
I woke up today thinking....I could buy a table saw with that auto flesh sensing stop feature for less than the price of another headache. And it'll work.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

All that junk to do something as easy as talking to people, reading the news and recording. What has the world come to??!

This weekend I'll be throwing out A LOT of crap I have stashed up over the years, get rid of old harddrives and computers, broken wifi routersm junk etc.

Sorry to hear about all those problems you have with your gear. Must be great to pick up a piece of wood and create something real in stead

That auto stop stuff freaks me out.

:-)

mike_mccue


That auto stop stuff freaks me out.

:-)

Why? That has to be the coolest safety feature ever invented. If it's triggered once it's possibly worth
more than one can put a price on.

ProjectM


All that junk to do something as easy as talking to people, reading the news and recording. What has the world come to??!

This weekend I'll be throwing out A LOT of crap I have stashed up over the years, get rid of old harddrives and computers, broken wifi routersm junk etc.

Sorry to hear about all those problems you have with your gear. Must be great to pick up a piece of wood and create something real in stead

LOL....it does sound bad, doesn't it.

You said the magic word though....junk...and the truth off it is that it's really not a problem.
I told my wife last night I was fine with throwing it all out in trash because it's not a problem for me to do without them. I'm a guitarist and don't need them to play....or build for that matter. And really...doesn't take much of one to surf for guitar parts and check mail.
 
Time for me to do some soul searching.

I guess my personal philosophy is that personal safety needs to be managed at a meta level that is much higher than a near instantaneous reaction to an incident. 

I never switch the saw on until my assistant and I have confirmed our plan to move the wood through and called fingers safe.

I ripped a 12' 2" x 10" yellow pine plank into 2" x 1/4" quarter sawn lathe last weekend on a contractor saw.... yikes... gotta plan and do it right or don't even try. :-)

There's also the fact that my cell phone doesn't effectively use it's capacitance sensor all the time... and I don't trust the saw blade to work much better than my phone's touch screen.

And... some wood worker industry pundits have pointed out that the mere existence of this patented featured has created a climate of increased liability for the vendors who do not (or can not) offer the licensed safety feature and so the entire homesumer and contractor saw market reacted by simply removing a lot of product from the field... competition for production of table saws ranging from $500 to $2k became less contested and buyers have less options than 10 years ago.

I had a long conversation with a Woodcraft franchise owner about why I couldn't actually order many of the saws in their catalog... he showed me the new safety saw and gave me the hot dog demo... and then he explained how the whole sale supply chain had shifted so rapidly that the catalogs couldn't keep up. He also explained how many name plates simply took the option to leave the price point.

It seemed like he was showing me a saw with a cheap fence I would never use. :-) A lot has changed since then and Sawstop has a full range of products... so that wouldn't apply as it did then.

Anyways...  they freak me out.

Every one of those "finger save" stories seems like evidence that we don't have effective wood shop programs in our middle and high schools anymore. I'm glad everyone still has their fingers.

In my college sculpture lab we had a student that refused to take the work tool safety intro class seriously. She lodged a formal complaint about my Professor claiming hat he spoke to her disrespectfully in the shop. It hurt my Professors career... and all he was doing was yelling "stop" in an effort to keep her from killing herself.

The day she got her hair caught in the drill press it scalped her... but not before it smashed her nose in the cast iron table.

We called 911 immediately and tried to help the best we could. It was pretty awful.

The incident hurt my professor's career as well.

Wood tools are dangerous... I don't think anything should distract people from focusing on that.

Not pretending to have any answers...  it just freaks me out that's all. :-)

When you buy yours I'm gonna say "congrats" for doing something you want to do! :-)



all the best,
mike

Mike no matter what you may think of safety features it doesn't
change the fact that I awoke this morning thinking what I did.

If I put $1,300.00 + in my hand and ask what would I like to purchase today?

A computer just drops on the list and I've given some pretty good reasons of why.

So ya don't like seat belts lol.

I wear a seat belt.

I even put some in my 1967 VW Beetles.

I helped take shifts spoon feeding yogurt to a surf and skate tribe friend who went through a wind shield back in '83... I've been wearing seat belts ever since.

:-)


all the best,
mike

Spacey.

IMO, the only decent computers are ones you build yourself (or by a pro) or a Mac.
They work and continue to work. Sorry you've had so many computer problems.

Back to tablesaws.
Do you know what saw in the $300-500 range has the best fence and widest rip (at least 25")  ??

How about this?


I think a country populated by people who learned something about the real world in a middle school wood shop wouldn't accept the current computer system business model... they'd say it is a house of cards.

A country populated by people who eagerly spend their formative years learning how to shop $240 sneakers at the 1/2 price sale is well prepared to support the current business model nicely.




In my next life I'm gonna aspire to own a few MacDonalds and just sit back and watch. :-)





Years ago I formed the opinion that we don't actually buy computers... we just lease the potential to use it as vigorously as we can until it's useless.


Heck, I'll bet I can sell my table saw for $10 more than I bought it for... but if I want to throw away my useless computer legally I'm supposed to pay an extra hazardous waste fee.

That's why I refer to my next DAW as a "plan".... I keep finding things I value much more that I can enjoy and spend my time with.



all the best,
mike