>>>It's a bit awkward to type with crossed fingers...
>
>Yes, that's the sort of contribution I've come to appreciate! ;-) Thank God it's Friday- at least here, and maybe there as well by the time you read this.

So it is. Though, truth be said, I was doing absolutely nothing work-related whole day yesterday, because I couldn't bring myself to it. The day before I ran a lengthy conversion which started at 17:00 and ended around midnight. The trouble is that the db I converted from wasn't the same as the one I was working on - new types of things in there - so I had to watch it from time to time, intervene here and there, stop it, fix, re-run from that point on... mentally exhausting.

>In HP's defense, they produce an awful lot of machines and customers often vote with their wallets, reliably choosing a $100 cheaper machine with a flexing plastic case over an aluminium competitor with higher quality parts. Mind you, vendors have never helped themselves- I recall the TRS-80 shipped with uppercase only because the alpha chip including lower case cost a few pennies more.

Well there's the famous example of GM or Ford, who ran a serious calculation whether to glue or rivet the brake pads. The glue was less reliable but cheaper, so they weighed the cost of potential lawsuits (for injuries, deaths, damages) against the saving and decided to go with glue. The price difference per car? One cent.