You must not work in the retail/service computer space. I do. They don't understand that. Most don't understand what a hard drive is. Most still think "memory" and "disk space" are interchangeable. I'm not being sarcastic, this is really what goes on. As much as I'd like a "modular laptop," I'm under no illusion that it will happen anytime soon. People just don't care. The laptop is just their window to itunes/facebook/whatever. As long as it gets them there, then they are fine. As soon it doesn't, they gravitate toward something new. Most of the time we can upgrade it for them, but a substantial number just want a new one.

The difference there is, people make money with AutoCad, they don't with RB/GH/Music Games in General

I am a local company, and if one of my guys did a 1/4 of a job as bad as this, I'd fire him so fast his head would spin, then I'd give the customer all kinds of free stuff and hope to god that 1.) they don't flame me to everyone they know and 2.) that I don't suck it up in the next hiring process :)

Strange, we build computers all day long for sale, and have primarily used LG and ASUS drives. I can count on one hand how many I've had fail in the past 3 years, and those were almost all due to someone putting in some off-balance disc that exploded and damaged the drive internally. Never had an issue with PIO burning a motor. (and we've fixed plenty of PIO issues over the years)

Then go take a shower? With other guys?

Without regulation, your monopolies and cartels wouldn't 'succumb' to anything, as they would exert whatever pressure (monetary, deadly force, whatever) in order to retain the control they have.

The walmart super centers are half super market, and half standard walmart. the bullets are in the standard walmart side.

They put up with it because it is convenient. Anything that the masses don't have to "think" about is one less "worry" for them. Sometimes this is good. Most of the time it is not.

I tested that this morning, and I found as I typed m-i-l, the searches continued to refine. If I typed the 'f', then NO searches came up, and it said "press ENTER to search". If I backspaced the "f" and added a "k", then instant search started working again. Seems they have some cool catches in there. FYI, I just tried the same thing with the word "porn". once I typed the "n", I got no instant searches. BTW, I have safesearch OFF and instant ON.

What if I'm from Climax Springs, MO 65324?

I would say see if anyone around wants to 'get into' computers, teching, and networks. Older hardware like this is a great way to start learning things like MAC addresses, DHCP, Wifi Encryption (albeit older) and the like.

Wwow, I feel sorry for your ignorance.

I run a shop where this is a major part of our business and I totally agree with parent :)

sounds like they used the services of a MSCE to calculate the space requirements. Its probably a AD setup using multiple computers for redundancy and availability, each serving exactly one part of the AD stack of services (so one do not loose the whole thing when a single box goes down). And then left enough room for in place upgrades or future requirements, racks are cheap after all.

its basically a case of using hardware to make up for limitations in software (plus indirectly maximizing the licenses sold).

What, you can't design and build a simple rocket within 4 years?

Come on, this is 2010 - surely we can design rockets a lot faster than in 1969...

[/sarcasm]