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Admin
Admin
I am going to guess that this is the most likely explanation. We use Dell servers and we get Dell OpenManage software from them (server management software). It consists of several CDs and is in a box appropriate for shipping several CDs. Except that last time they sent us 5 copies which consisted of 5 little boxes packed in a bigger box. It appeared that they were already packaged for individual shipping and someone just put 5 of them in a bigger box rather than unpackage them and start over
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So what does CMOS stand for in the context of batteries??
Admin
Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor. In this case, it's not a battery made from a semiconductor, but the battery that keeps the CMOS fresh when power is completely removed from the computer.
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http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.751
get 20 of them for less than 4US$, free shipping, and packaged as they should be
Admin
Admin
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Nice troll. GTFO.
Admin
Silly metric system.
Admin
http://www.sarcasmdetector.com/
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Oh yeah - WTF reinstated.
Admin
Screw you all, I work for a manufacturer of corrugated boxes and packaging materials.
Admin
http://www.sarcasmdetector.com/
Admin
Great comment :-)
Admin
I could use all those boxes for my craft supplies.. I can has them, please?
Admin
Nah, that's still inefficient. What if someone asks for 19? Pack sizes in powers of 2 would give maximum efficiency. A customer asking for 19 items then gets three boxes (16 + 2 + 1) in one large box rather than, say, 10 boxes (1 box of 10 + 9 boxes of 1).
Admin
Nah, that's still inefficient. What if someone asks for 19? Pack sizes in powers of 2 would give maximum efficiency. A customer asking for 19 items then gets three boxes (16 + 2 + 1) in one large box rather than, say, 10 boxes (1 box of 10 + 9 boxes of 1).
Admin
I can understand needing to get the product from dell. Where I work we can only order from "approved vendors" getting a new vendor approved takes an act from congress, the sun, moon, Saturn and Neptune to be aligned, and you have to sacrifice a life newt to get it done. Gotta love corporate accounts payable.
Admin
I work for the military as a civilian in electronic maintenance. We ordered 500 tiny washers. They come from the manufacturer in boxes of 100. The gov't ordered them from the manufacturer and had them delivered to a warehouse where they paid people to individually pack each washer in a 12in x 6in plastic bag, which was then stuffed into a 1.5in x 2in x 2.5in box. This box was then sealed with a label with identifaction information for the washer, including that the box contained 1ea. 500 of these boxes were then packed into one big box and shipped to my shop where three people spent 4 hours unpacking each washer and collecting them in one bin for use.
Admin
Better than the alternate extreme - we were manufacturing boards and had 1000 batteries. These were standard lithium coin cells except with solder tabs so they could be soldered to the board to keep the onboard RTC alive.
They came all jumbled up in a plastic bag. Literally - the bag contained 1000 batteries, loose. 1000 batteries, with tabs, all exposed metal.
Was no big surprise that a large majority of boards came back that failed the RTC test had to have their batteries changed, and majority of those batteries had to be discarded. The only miracle was somehow the batteries didn't melt/leak/explode from being shorted by other batteries.
Nowadays, we ensure the batteries come in a tray (like they should). Easier on the pick'n'place machines as well.
Admin
Unfortunately, this sort of thing is Standard Operating Procedure - the rule, not the exception. Every time I order from Amazon it comes in a boatload of packaging. One CD came in a package that could hold ten. One small paperback came in a package big enough for an unabridged dictionary. I ordered memory from Kingston - it came in a box big enough for a whole computer.
Admin
And come back in 6 months to change them again...
I bought a pack of those cheap chinese batteries, used one in my watch, and it lasted a whopping 2 months. I went to a shop that sells decent brand batteries, ok for a few more $, but it's been 2 years and my watch is still running fine.
Admin
Fact! Fact! My Facts are So MF True I Don't Need to Explain Them! Fact!
Boo Yah!
Admin
As I suspected, total misuse of an acronym.
I think you mean keeps some particular CMOS circuit powered. After all, the computer is pretty much ALL CMOS.
Admin
The shippers (Dell in this case) receive them like that from the manufacturer - in fact they demand it, so they don't have to package them for shipping.
It is more carbon neutral to not waste time and energy repacking fifty small boxes into one "common sense" package.
If you want fifty CMOS batteries in one medium sized box, you'll have to unpack them and repack them yourself. Now that would be a real WTF.
Admin
Well. Every major company uses robots or shipping line to ship stuff, it's all automatic, no way for a robot to notice these are small things and pack it in one box.
For a example, people say newegg is wasting packaging as well.
this is one of their Warehouses.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3315&p=2
Admin
We once ordered several rubber feet for some laptops from Dell. They each came packed the same way in individual over sized boxes.
Admin
These items were probably shipped in quantity kazillion from some factory in China and arrive at the Dell distribution center prepackaged, operating under the assumption that they will generally be ordered in consumer quantity one. The shipping clerk, who is probably under the gun to fulfill a certain number of orders per hour, is going to do what's easiest and fastest, which is to pull down N boxes, wrap them up, and get them off to UPS or FedEx as expeditiously as possible in order to keep their job and reliably put food on the table for their family. I doubt that the shipping clerk even knows (or cares) what's in the package, working from a packing list. Most of the process is probably automated.
To suggest that this somehow is brought to us by "affirmative action" is an outrageous slur, not to mention total nonsense.
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OH come on guys.
This is obviously a viral marketing campaign that is encouraging you to "have a little fun".
Take the boxes and fashion them into weaponry.
Then attack your coworkers. If they don't join in and think its funny, they will at least think you're crazy, and probably not bug you to turn on their num lock for them anymore!
Admin
same thing happened to me from Sears
We orders 35$ in sears cheques, we received 3 envelopes, 5$, 5$ and 25$.
Admin
I just unpacked a Dell this morning. Inside was a box that was the same length as the keyboard box, but twice as tall. Inside of that box was the mouse, the manual, and a few CDs, all of which took up less than a third of the available space.
We joked that the box was probably that wide so that it didn't slide around during shipping. Of course, the contents of the box were free to slide all over the place.
Admin
I had a similar experience with IBM. Who remembers those little rubber caps for the t60 docks. I ordered 30... received 30 individual boxes with 2 caps per box... and these things combined are only half the size of a dime.
Admin
Carbon neutral?! It's a big lie, when the trees eventually die - there's no system in place to stop all the absorbed co2 from being released. Hence we're just storing up a bigger problem for our children.
Plus carbon neutral is unregulated, so there's nothing stopping people selling the same area of trees to many people!
Admin
In other words, you find thinking to be too much of a strain and have to resort to same old mindless utterances that have been amusing the rest of us for all these years.
You might want to remind your keeper that the old commie response has been supplanted by the terrorist hate our freedom meme.
Admin
Is it ok to put the answer as a function of velocity?
Admin
I'm betting it was just a couple of days before the end of the budget year. . .
Admin
DEC used to do the same damn thing. I ordered five of those little hook things that go in DLT drives (this was actually for an older TK50 in a MicroVAX II). The sent a confirmation of the order via mail, in septuplicate. Then there was the receipt for paying with a credit card, nine copies. A few days later the order came in a 10x12x5 box. In the box was a packing slip, twelve copies worth, and the hook things in a plastic bag. A few days later I received an invoice via mail, ten copies. And then to top it off, a letter thanking me for my order, and a survey to ask how they did.
When Compaq bought DEC, they picked up DEC's practices and would send a couple of screws in large boxes. HP is pretty much the same way. Still, ordering from them is still more fun than ordering from Sun.
Admin
This article says that "when it said it would make all company-owned and -leased facilities carbon-neutral by the end of 2008".
This is not a big problem. You improve buildings by thermal insulation or by changing the way you heat the facility. I wonder if they could produce carbon-neutral computers...
Admin
That's DEC for you. I think they'd still be around and profitable if they had figured out sane ordering and shipping practices.
Admin
When you are a large company and a little low on the mandatory quota of affirmative action groups. You look to hire people just because they will help you meet said quota.
They will hire anyone who applies/picked from a headhunter that match the quota requirements of affirmative action policy.
Then they put them in the most meaning less jobs they can find, E.G. stuffing boxes that meets the min size requirement for UPS and FedEx with one coin cell battery each. Why you might ask? because it is easier to hire whoever to meet the federal affirmative action requirement than to have the new hire meet your job requirements.
As the people they hire are the the typical McDonald's workers who can't make change without a cash register. So their lack of math skills keep them from counting to twenty batteries and placing them into a box and ship it out with an orders so that it doesn't get lost. Where when there is one box per battery multiple people can count the one battery per box, to be sure the order is correct.
Even with this method that Dell and HP use, I've ordered IPKVM dongles and received the incorrect number of smaller boxes in the larger box.
Admin
Jake,
I am the Community Liaison for Environment here at Dell and just read your post – thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have been working to improve our shipping processes and rely on customers like you to let us know how we can further improve. Thanks to your post, we are now looking into how this happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. I will get back to you with an update shortly.
Thank you, Todd Dwyer Dell Community Liaison - Environment
Admin
Lyle is that you?
Admin
This is not a WTF. I had the opposite problem. We ordered one box of greenbar paper from the local office supply store, since we seldom use the line printer and we have no place to store a pallet load of fanfold paper. They unboxed it and packed the loose paper in peanuts in a larger box and delivered it to us. Of course, that makes it useless for using in the printer.
Admin
Admin
A battery, about 2"x2"x2/10" in a box about 2'4"x1'8"x8" ... Silly Imperial system.
Admin
Hey Steve, YHBT YHL HAND
Admin
Ad hominem arguments are for those more interested in idealistic dreams than reality. Communism/socialism as a philosophy is very much alive today. Can you say "sustainable development", neighbor? The USA may soon become an Obamanation, although McCain would be pretty bad too. I certainly see your point about terrorism, though.
Admin
I don't normally talk about how ad-hominem has shown no compunction in committing character assassinations or engaging in full-scale vendettas. However, in this case I'm going to make an exception. I figure it's okay because ad-hominem partakes of the luster of intellectual life while adding neither rays nor radiance to its glitter and charm. What follows is a call to action for those of us who care -- a large enough number to call your attention to the problem of macabre polluters. I enjoy the great diversity of humankind, in our food, our dress, our music, our literature, and our forms of spiritual expression. What I don't enjoy are ad-hominem's profligate, aberrant artifices, which reap a whirlwind of destroyed marriages, damaged children, and, quite possibly, a globe-wide expression of incurable sexually transmitted diseases. In conclusion, let me just say that ad-hominem uses people and destroys lives without compunction.