Did I wreck the site? Was not my intention.

[Thomas Radtke]

It's a pity Pioneers are included as interesting later models only. Those were the last (and best!) series of quality calculators from HP, therefore a reasonable inclusion.

[HP67]

(10-05-2017 07:34 AM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  It's a pity Pioneers are included as interesting later models only. Those were the last (and best!) series of quality calculators from HP, therefore a reasonable inclusion.

I don't get it... I think the 48 is much better than the Pioneers. And furthermore I thought everybody thought that!

[pier4r]

Little OT. To the Europeans that bought the HP museum thumb drive, how much does it take to arrive on average?

For me it is one month now. I almost forgot that I bought it.

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(11-05-2017 09:08 AM)pier4r Wrote:  Little OT. To the Europeans that bought the HP museum thumb drive, how much does it take to arrive on average?

For me it is one month now. I almost forgot that I bought it.

Don't recall exactly, I think about ten days, more or less.

[rprosperi]

(11-05-2017 09:08 AM)pier4r Wrote:  Little OT. To the Europeans that bought the HP museum thumb drive, how much does it take to arrive on average?

For me it is one month now. I almost forgot that I bought it.

I would contact Dave to ask when it as shipped and hopefully he has tracking info. I mail items to Europe often, and nothing has ever taken a full month to arrive.

[pier4r]

(11-05-2017 01:52 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  I would contact Dave to ask when it as shipped and hopefully he has tracking info. I mail items to Europe often, and nothing has ever taken a full month to arrive.

I see the USPS tracking info, it is "transit to destination" since the 10th of October. I am not sure what Dave could do.

[Luigi Vampa]

I think my USB memory stick took ca. 10 days to arrive to Madrid. YMMV.

[rprosperi]

(11-05-2017 02:26 PM)pier4r Wrote:  I see the USPS tracking info, it is "transit to destination" since the 10th of October. I am not sure what Dave could do.

Oh, you didn't mention that you had tracking information... In that case, your best hope is to contact your local postal office and ask them to find better information; nearly a month with no progress is a serious enough problem that they should do something, even if it is to verify that item has been lost.

[grsbanks]

(11-05-2017 08:26 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Oh, you didn't mention that you had tracking information... In that case, your best hope is to contact your local postal office and ask them to find better information; nearly a month with no progress is a serious enough problem that they should do something, even if it is to verify that item has been lost.

Ask in customs as well. I don't remember how inquisitive French customs are but I suspect what you will receive before anything else is a request for import duty.

If rates practised in France are anything like here in the UK then you will be asked to pay roughly €15.

[pier4r]

I am not sure whether the German Zoll (custom?) strictly check packages from the US.

I got nothing so far, I will ask the post tomorrow. And if it is lost, well, at least I helped to keep the forum going.

Although I enjoyed the thought to have the forum archives and the books about RPL.

[grsbanks]

For some reason I had it in mind that you were in France. Don't ask why, I have no idea!

[pier4r]

Good News!

Well, maybe.

The package was blocked by the customs that is not really convinced by it. We will see how it proceeds. At least is not completely lost.

[jebem]

(11-15-2017 09:05 PM)pier4r Wrote:  The package was blocked by the custom that is not really convinced by it. We will see how it proceeds. At least is not completely lost.

Yap. That is what usually happens with my orders from China and USA.
The Portuguese Customs can be very picky when checking small envelope packages that do not have a credible declared value on the attached customs form.

When it happens it will take more than 30 days to clear the package, and of course they ask me the order receipt so they can properly apply the import duties and VAT.
Sometimes they even charge for warehouse storing! Basically they hold the package because it looks suspect and then they charge me for the time spent in their warehouse.

Once I ordered some nice gold plated hi-fi banana plugs for my loudspeakers from China in eBay.
I have paid like 10 Euro inc s&h.
Customs took one month to clear it and i paid zero import taxes because the order value was under the max allowed value for free duties.
So i finally managed to get my order after two months. Free shipping from China is sloooow.

[pier4r]

At the end there was almost an happy end.

I got to the customs (quite late, they work a lot!) and got the mohpc package paying the additional VAT. In total I paid around 50 €.

Now I am making a backup copy of the contents.

The point is, thought, that even if the contents are likely very valuable, it did cost a lot of effort. This considering that those are digital contents and the nowadays internet infrastructure( note1) could have spared a lot of back and forth, time, checking and so on. Sure not for all internet users, but for many yes.

So for my perspective the next time that I would have to get digital content outside the EU not through the internet, I'll likely pass.

(note1) where 14 gb are not that "much" for connections of 256Kbps in download or more. It would take almost a week to download the contents with a 256Kbps connection.

The effective "bandwidth" of the mohpc in my case was:
- Shipped on the 5th of October, let's say the 6th.
- Arrived on the 17th of November. (43 days later)
- size 14.4 GBytes
round about 33.3 Kbps

[jebem]

33Kbps!
That bring me found memories from the early 80's when I was working for Datasaab computer systems. Back then, 1200 or maybe 2400baud with 1 to 1 encoding was the practical data transmission speed using dial-up lines.
But that was enough to support the required bandwith to connect secondary terminal controller units to the mainframe computer.

On the positive side, the MoHPC usb pen comes customized with a nice red label. Carefull handling is required though, or else the label fades out easily, at least on mine.

[pier4r]

I connected to my main home server (a qnap ts 431P) , I made a copy and now it is there.

Actually I should compute the md5sum of every file as well, but I am too lazy, it is already enough if I put a copy on a new stick every 3-4 years.

[Dieter]

(11-18-2017 09:47 AM)pier4r Wrote:  The point is, thought, that even if the contents are likely very valuable, it did cost a lot of effort.
...
So for my perspective the next time that I would have to get digital content outside the EU not through the internet, I'll likely pass.

This may be frustrating especially as within the EU things are very fast and easy. I assume that a substantial part of the forum members here are located in Europe (BTW, does someone have any figures on this?), so there is an obvious idea that comes to mind:

What about a reliable person somewhere in Europe that stocks a dozen or so of these thumb drives and ships them to buyers in the European Union? All the payment stuff could stay as it is, and upon receipt the shipping address is transferred to that person, along with a fee that covers his/her expenses. Typical shipping times within the EU are just a few days, and there are no complicated customs procedures at all.

Dieter