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Sunday, November 14, 2010

Into bits

Urban-cub turned up at the door clutching an old computer. It was destined for the dump – but she wanted to ensure the hard drive had been removed. She had made a valiant attempt, but bad design had overcome her enthusiasm.

The case for this “own brand” computer was not held together with screws so that components could be replaced or upgraded or, in this case, removed. No, with the exception of one side panel – all the rest was held together with rivets!

After rooting about for a while GF concluded that the only solution was to drill the rivets out – and set about it with his trusty De Walt. 10 minutes and tens of rivet shards later the PC lay in pieces and the hard drive was extracted. Examination showed GF was right, there was no subtle third way that he had missed – it was, indeed, all held together with rivets.

Lesson to be learned here – Don’t buy an Advent PC if you think you might ever want to upgrade, augment, fix, or dispose of it!

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