Worst computer hardware feature you have seen?

blackbird9 said:
Talking of batteries... I saw a review of the latest macbook M4 air a few days ago. The battery is GLUED IN with double sided adhesive pads. If you want to replace the battery, back to the shop it goes, and you pay 169 UK pounds to replace a 10 dollar part. Ker-ching!:oops:
Click to expand...

The small macbooks are very hard to take apart anyway. I once broke a ribbon cable on my 12". Macbooks go to the shop with me.
 
I'm living in hope, a dream, that one day lenovo will bring out a new model with the old style ergonomics, old type keyboard, up to date cpu (maybe an arm) and a 4K screen. It's a dream... :)

Sadly their designers seem to be slavishly copying the apple formula...
 
RetroComputingCollector said:
I feel like the notion that the ME is a backdoor is a conspiracy theory. Many people (including me) screen their internet connection with whatever they have like a firewall or something, and have not noticed weird connections. I think it id a terrible design, which combined with RMS and his tinfoil-hat-brigade, has spooked people. That said, I think it is a security vulnerability, but not a secret NSA plot
Click to expand...
Sometimes I wonder though. It appears the NSA got intel to give them a facillity to disable the ME. I don't think we will ever know for sure.

www.csoonline.com

Now you, too, can disable Intel ME ‘backdoor’ thanks to the NSA

Researchers discovered an undocumented configuration setting that can used to disable the Intel ME master controller that has been likened to a backdoor.
www.csoonline.com www.csoonline.com
 
I think the real reason is that apple have found the recipe for maximum profit. No servicability. Sell it on looks, not function. A much lower BOM - build cost. Chuck it away after a couple of years and buy another one; essentially, disposable hardware. Other companies have spotted that apple is making a lot of money and have followed suit, to varying degrees.

The classic thinkpads last far too long, are too repairable, too upgradable. In the case of the one I'm using for example, the company got just one sale out of it, about 12 years ago. I got it a few years later on ebay for peanuts. It's still working absolutely fine, nothing has broken, all I've done is replace the cpu heatsink paste, and upgraded the memory to 8GB, and put an ssd in.

In that same 12 year period, they could have sold me perhaps 3 or 4 thin/light/unservicable/non-uprgradable laptops. Much more profitable, and much better for their cashflow.
 
RetroComputingCollector said:
What laptop is this? I NEED IT!!!
Click to expand...
Any of the classic thinkpads are like that. I didn't even show you it mounted on the ultrabase. That particular one is a W520 which is a big workstation class machine, but they all have the same vast (comparatively) array of ports.

If you want a decent one for running freebsd, I would recommend any of the X200 through X220 series. The W520 is also very nice for freebsd, but it's physically a lot larger. We used to call them a 'desktop replacement' as opposed to a true laptop.

Check out vermaden's excellent write-up on running freebsd on the W520 here

vermaden.wordpress.com

FreeBSD 13.1 on ThinkPad W520

I created whole FreeBSD Desktop series … but I never created an article describing how I run FreeBSD on my own daily driver – the Lenovo ThinkPad W520 from 2011 – the last one wit…
vermaden.wordpress.com vermaden.wordpress.com

It's a nice piece of kit. Very cheap on ebay now, but its worth paying a little more to get one in mint condition. I <<think>> (I may be wrong) that you can put 32GB RAM in that machine. But read his article, he tells you.
 
blackbird9 said:
I think the real reason is that apple have found the recipe for maximum profit. No servicability. Sell it on looks, not function. A much lower BOM - build cost. Chuck it away after a couple of years and buy another one; essentially, disposable hardware. Other companies have spotted that apple is making a lot of money and have followed suit, to varying degrees.

The classic thinkpads last far too long, are too repairable, too upgradable. In the case of the one I'm using for example, the company got just one sale out of it, about 12 years ago. I got it a few years later on ebay for peanuts. It's still working absolutely fine, nothing has broken, all I've done is replace the cpu heatsink paste, and upgraded the memory to 8GB, and put an ssd in.

In that same 12 year period, they could have sold me perhaps 3 or 4 thin/light/unservicable/non-uprgradable laptops. Much more profitable, and much better for their cashflow.
Click to expand...
Screw Apple. If you have experience of the macs of yore, then you will see the magic of replacable parts and PCI slots! My prised mac is a Beige G3 233 Rev.2. I would call it "the last good mac".
 
I recently upgraded a generation to the Lenovo Thinkpad T440p which is a haswell. I was suprised by how much of the bios is for configuring features that are supposed to lock me out of my own computer. There's even a whole 'Security Chip' which's sole purpose appears to be supporting Intel TXT. It needed to be disabled just to get suspend/resume working.
 
HP brand new keyboard I received at work.

On the num pad, just above the minus key, there is a "lock session" key.
I am an accountant so I use the num pad a lot and can't tell you how many times I lock my session during the day by mistake.
On every keyboard I had the minus key was the last right key on the num pad. It was easy easy to reach without watching it.
Now every time a reach it, it lock my session 😂

Ended up switching back to the previous keyboard.
 
Maturin said:
Besides Apple's already mentioned touchbar - was it really worth the effort to pimp the keyboard with some colorful blinking toy for to have an extra complicated key just for volume adjustment, only? (yet I have not found any other useful thing to do with it, nor knowing anybody else using it for something else), I have no use for touchpads on laptops at all (always have a trackball with my laptops). I really disliked HP's non-standard-conform connectors (at least within their "Elite" towers) To me it's another reason added to my list not to buy HP. (If some one opens a HP flame thread, I'm in 😁 - let's start with their printers... 😅)

But if I should name my #1 hated hardware features in the last 40 years it was the Windows key on keyboards.
I actually took a screwdriver, or glue to deactivate it ultimately. 😲 - yes. I did.
Today using FreeBSD only the key doesn't bother me much anymore. To me it's just dead weight I yet have no use for. But I hated it when I was working under Windows, accidently touched it, then this menu appeared offering functions I had absolutely no use for, especially not at the very moment. But you couldn't just quickly close the menu again by just pressing this key again. No! You have to grab for and then move the mouse to do that. I hated that! 😤 To me that's a design error.
(Maybe content and function changed after 7; but since I don't use no Windows at all anymore, I don't give a...)
#2 on my list was discussions about how stupid I was, that I just don't get this fantastic, great Windows key...
screwdriver, *clack*, end of story.


Really cool was those (old) docking stations the IBM Thinkpads came with (~20y ago?)
One and the same workspace, doesn't matter if you was at your desk, or out.
When getting back, simply placed it on its dock, no fumbling with cable heaps like other "docking stations", and then use a full solid and cleanly cabled machine, with real monitors, real keyboard, real ethernet with capicity...
Click to expand...
Only problem with the Thinkpad docking stations, IIRC, is that they were incredibly expensive.
 
blackhole said:
Before you denounce its critics as "tinfoil hat", consider well what place this kind of tech has on a personal computer.
Click to expand...
Intel ME provides power initialization/details for laptops on later versions I heard. I've HAP bit gracefully disabled it for years no problem, but apparently outright removing it (above version 6?) or deleting partitions preventing ME's initialization (leaving it there but non-functional) might cause issues.

I'd prefer the concept not to exist, but at least Intel has HAP bit for governments/serious entities; does AMD PSP have anything like that?
 
lgrant said:
Only problem with the Thinkpad docking stations, IIRC, is that they were incredibly expensive.
Click to expand...
at least they worked... forever.
We have 6 or 7 identical laptops from clevo (various branding on top) and the docking stations for those are really cheap, but I have to keep 2-3 in spare because on average every 3 months one will fail. They don't completely go dark though - usually the USB gets wonky and e.g. Keys from an attached keyboard seem sticky or won't work or the mouse will jump around the screen until the devices start to completely disconnect for a few seconds... the HDMI port also at random times fails to switch on the connected monitor at times.

"Luckily" I have a Thinkpad T16 and don't have to deal with that myself - I get to fiddle around with one of those pesky USB-C docks that loosely fly around your desk and get ripped out at the most inconvenient time due to some other USB-cable putting just a little too much strain on the "dock" (let's face it - those are glorified and overpriced USB-hubs)
 
I guess I was lucky to get this one for 15 UK pounds on ebay. It adds a whole bunch of ports including DP and it has the optical DVD drive installed too.
I expect if you bought this brand new along with the laptop at the time it was released, it would have been pricey though.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20250416_120003.jpg
    IMG_20250416_120003.jpg
    1.6 MB · Views: 22
  • IMG_20250416_115954.jpg
    IMG_20250416_115954.jpg
    985.8 KB · Views: 25
  • IMG_20250416_115940.jpg
    IMG_20250416_115940.jpg
    1.8 MB · Views: 25
It's worth looking at some of the other types in addition to the premium grade X-series that most people like to buy. The T and R series were very good too. For example this R400 is a very nice piece of kit, built like a tank, if you can live with the maximum 4GB RAM; as usual it has a huge number of ports and like all thinkpads totally user servicable, you can find the hardware service manuals on the lenovo website. The T61 is another classic that is similar to this one. They are very nice machines for something like freebsd, especially if you run one of the older window managers, although it will happily run xfce, kde or gnome. I just had a quick look on ebay and spotted 3 of them straight away for 100 UK pounds, that's about $130. It's really a bargain price for what you get. Of course you are getting an older generation CPU on these, and the 4GB max RAM is starting to look a bit limited, it's probably not the right machine to run multiple VM's on for example. But you get RJ45 wired ethernet, top quality keyboard, huge array of ports and expansion options... and it will last forever. :)

1744801912240.png
 
Certain versions of HP firmware ("bios") don't allow disabling stupid, stupid "feature" of function keys (F1,F2..) keys being just plain function key. One has to press the combination of Fn+F-key to let system behave as if one pressed F-key. Supposedly it simplifies "user experience" in Windows when one can easily control volume, brightness and others.
 
_martin said:
Certain versions of HP firmware ("bios") don't allow disabling stupid, stupid "feature" of function keys (F1,F2..) keys being just plain function key. One has to press the combination of Fn+F-key to let system behave as if one pressed F-key. Supposedly it simplifies "user experience" in Windows when one can easily control volume, brightness and others.
Click to expand...
Awful. Just awful. I hate PCs that do that.
 
At least for "newer" thinkpads the BIOS allows you to switch the Fn and Ctrl keys in that left corner, making the outer key the Ctrl key and also define the default behavior of the Fn function key (i.e. making the F-keys the default as it should be and those retarded multimedia-functions nobody asked for need Fn+<key> to be pressed)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top