Companies that have burnt...

[Santilli]

"Sense of Adventure?" Odd, but no one has ever accused me of lacking THAT;-)

Turns out, it didn't work, even in compatibility mode, and, Nero does so little I can't do with other programs, I don't see a reason to waste anymore time on it. Still, the media player, if it does play Blu-ray well would be a nice alternative to PowerDVD, which seems to play similar games, with upgrades on upgrades etc.

I suspect turning off a few items in 7 might get it to work, but, I'm not in that much of a need for a DVD burning program right now, other then what's built into 7.

 

[Bozo]

Supermicro.

Bought 6 C2SEA-O motherboards for a project at work. In the first week, 4 of them failed to recognize anything plugged into the bottom PCI slot. 3 of them would work not with a 3-Ware 9650SE RAID controller. I spent 2 days testing and reconfiguring the systems to make them work.
Called their tech support in Bangladesh and explained the problems I was having. I was told my periferals were all bad.
I replaced 4 of the motherboards to finish the project. (what worries me is the two that are still running....it's only a matter of time before they fail)
I did some testing on the bench and called their tech support again. I was told(if understood the butchered english correctly) that the motherboards were fine.
One more thing. I never received a reply from any of the e-mails I sent to tech support or their offices in California.
I mention all trouble I was having to the vender I bought them from and he contacted his sales rep. The sales rep somehow managed to have an RMA form sent to the vender and forwarded to me. The form has been filled out and returned twice to Supermicro, to two different people.
It's been three weeks and still no RMA number.

Up yours Supermicro!

 

[MaxBurn]

Wow bozo, i dont like to hear that. Why didnt you just return them to the vendor rather than deal with an RMA?

 

[ddrueding]

In my experience Supermicro makes very affordable and not very good stuff. I really liked their 1U barebones machines for a couple years; until things started failing. Now I just get 4U chassis and stick desktop hardware in them. Doesn't seem to be any less reliable, and is quicker and cheaper. That is what redundancy and backups are for.

 

[CougTek]

I don't have much experience with Supermicro, but I thought they were stronger in the high-end segment. Now you tell me they are the new PC Chip? Yuk, I won't touch them.

 

[ddrueding]

Not ad bad as PC Chips in my experience, more like an ABit or Msi (middle of the road) which isn't good enough for server hardware.

 

[Santilli]

Seems to Supermicro tried to enter cheap markets, and, their stuff is just that, cheap.

Atom servers from a high end server company?

The Sata 'backplane' they sold was cheaper then the 100 bucks it cost, and I returned it.

I wonder if they cheapening of the line applies to their high end stuff as well?

Still, the X5DA8 is still going strong, and, after 11 years, still runs Windows 7 with few
problems.

David, what were your observations on the server box, compared to other highend server stuff?

 

[ddrueding]

Which server box?

 

[Santilli]

Mine.

 

[ddrueding]

My memory just isn't that good. It seemed plenty stable, even with tons of stuff hooked up.

 

[Bozo]

Wow bozo, i dont like to hear that. Why didnt you just return them to the vendor rather than deal with an RMA?

I was long past the time to return them to the vender. (30 days) But they did help me get the RMA through Supermicro's sales rep.

 

[Santilli]

I maybe adding OCZ to this list;-(

 

[LunarMist]

I maybe adding OCZ to this list;-(

Looks like it now...

 

[Chewy509]

If this is true, then it's certainly another reason not to purchase any Samsung products: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/30/2148244/Samsung-Plants-Keyloggers-On-Laptops

PS. There's related articles on all the major news sites as well...

 

[LunarMist]

I'm not sure what value that is to the consumer. Can it be turned off?

How are other Samsung products affected? My TVs are not connected to the internet and the cable co. knows what channels are set anyway.

 

[Chewy509]

I'm not sure what value that is to the consumer. Can it be turned off?

How are other Samsung products affected? My TVs are not connected to the internet and the cable co. knows what channels are set anyway.

Due to the nature of the keylogger, the only way to be sure is to clean install the OS. (Nuke it from orbit, in other words). Some say it can be removed, but some things you just don't risk.

Reading through the comments on ./, it seems some Samsung Andriod based phones have similar software installed, but this only appears to effect some of the network branded phones and not all within that model/range. Eg may be on some AT&T supplied versions, but not on the Verizon supplied versions and vice versa. (This is just an broad example, it is not an indication that AT&T are installing spyware on phones they are supplying).

PS. This has no value to the customer, quite the opposite. Since it's a service that's running, it's comsuming machine resources that could otherwise go towards other things.

 

[timwhit]

I'm not sure what value that is to the consumer.

If you forget your passwords or credit card numbers, you just call Samsung and they will give them to you.

 

[MaxBurn]

Wow, i didnt hear it was intentional. Wheres the lawsuit countdown?

In related news sony looks to be losing the round against ticket master in consumerists worst company in america contest.
http://consumerist.com/2011/03/meet-your-worst-company-in-america-sweet-16.html

 

[LiamC]

A little early to jump to conclusions.

 

[Mercutio]

Samsung says it was that guy's particular antivirus package giving a false positive StarLogger to a SLovenian language package. They reproduced it and everything.

 

[Newtun]

Ars Tech: "Samsung laptop keylogger almost certainly a false positive".

 

[Bozo]

After all the fartin' around getting the RMA, turns out Supermicro is not on our approved 'ship to' list.
This will take at least another week while Supermicro is approved.

 

[LunarMist]

The northern army is kinda like that too.

 

[timwhit]

The northern army is kinda like that too.

???

 

[LunarMist]

Ars Tech: "Samsung laptop keylogger almost certainly a false positive".

So they are just fools?

 

[LunarMist]

???

Wrong forum. I suffered from a clipborne error. :spiderman:

 

[Newtun]

So they are just fools?

from Computerworld:

GFI apologizes for false alarm on Samsung keyloggers
'It's just mud on our face,' says security firm exec
Eckelberry's surprise at Samsung quickly turned to acute embarrassment when he began getting reports from colleagues that the evidence for the supposed keyloggers was based on a false positive from VIPRE, a malware-detection product sold by GFI.​

 

[Stereodude]

That's some brilliant hit piece journalism there.

 

[Mercutio]

Basically nothing that happens in trade press is actually journalism, SD.

 

[MaxBurn]

http://consumerist.com/2011/04/say-hello-to-your-worst-company-in-america-elite-8.html

Hoping for comcast or b of a.

 

[ddrueding]

Those would be my finalists as well, with BofA just taking it.

 

[Mercutio]

Comcast has won every year so far.

 

[CougTek]

Apple won over Microsoft, made me smile

 

[blakerwry]

http://consumerist.com/2011/04/say-hello-to-your-worst-company-in-america-elite-8.html

Hoping for comcast or b of a.

I don't know that anyone is forced to use BofA. However, due to (sometimes local) monopolies people are forced to work with Comcast, Walmart, and TicketMaster. These companies certainly take advantage of their status, and I think we'll see one of them win the prize.

Personally, I have nothing against walmart. I don't shop there often, but when I do, I can find what I'm looking for (usually auto/sporting goods) and can get out without too much hassle.

But I'm easy to please - As long as the company is willing to take my money and give me what was promised, I'd be happy. It's when they misrepresent a price and/or product that I get upset. Westlake hardware was on my shit list for a few years for that, I'm currently working with a Kia dealer who thought my new car would look better with some dealer advertisement on it... the manager's suggestion was to cover it up. Though the owner of the dealership was willing to fix it.

 

[Handruin]

Comcast has won every year so far.

I've noticed though that Comcast customer support has been at least ten times better so far than that of whatever FIOS calls their phone number that I have to call whenever I have an issue.

 

[MaxBurn]

Plenty of people are forced into BofA when they take over their home mortgage.

 

[Tannin]

1. S*ny
2. Western Digital
3. Adobe
4. Symantec
5. Apple

Pretty good start. Hmmm .....

6: Telstra
7: Optus
8: All the other telcos

..... hmmm .... maybe I better take the telcos as read and start again.

• 6: Hewlett-Crapard (no explanation required)
• 7: Asus (I can forgive them for being over-rated, I can forgive them for being over-priced, I probably can't forgive their terrible RMA service, I can forgive them for having such a slow, incompetent, annoying website, I can forgive them for making products that are no better than average and clearly inferior to (for example) Gigabyte or Biostar, but I certainly can't forgive them for being so farnarkling arrogant and self-congratulatory.)
  hopeless
• 8: ATI (Horrible, slow, .NET-crippled drivers that never work properly. How dumb was I to buy a Thinkpad with an ATI chip? Constantly annoying.)
• 9: Toshiba (Over-rated, over-priced, terrible, and I mean terrible driver support on their various badly-designed websites in various parts of the world, marginally honest sales practices, general annoying poxiness at most things they do, arrogance worse even that that displayed by Asus. Did I mention hopeless, I mean really hopeless driver support?
• 10: Symantec (by a short half head from McAfee).

 

[Mercutio]

I've noticed though that Comcast customer support has been at least ten times better so far than that of whatever FIOS calls their phone number that I have to call whenever I have an issue.

One of my customers just moved to new office and chose to switch to a Comcast business package that included phone service. His phones were working over the weekend while I was setting up his racks and crap. Monday: No dialtone. He called Comcast, they did tests, said they'd send a truck.

These are phones for a business that does telephone sales, by the way.

By Wednesday of that week, he still hadn't seen a Comcast guy. Thursday, the guy finally shows, says he needs to replace the transceiver or something but he doesn't have one with him because all he ever does is residential cable installs. My customer is expecting his shit to work this morning when the Comcast guy shows. In the meantime I have Google voice forwarding his main business line to a cell phone, and that's all the phone service he has.

Go Comcast.

 

[time]

Pretty good start. Hmmm .....
8: ATI (Horrible, slow, .NET-crippled drivers that never work properly.)

Er, what do you mean by ".NET-crippled drivers"?

 

[Chewy509]

6: Telstra
7: Optus
8: All the other telcos

..... hmmm .... maybe I better take the telcos as read and start again.

Hi, good to see you back! :cheers:

I certainly agree. Telstra gets another vote due to the extra crap they put onto their supplied mobile phones...
Optus has always been on my wife's list, since they refused to acknowledge a court order to terminate a mobile phone contract with no penalties, and instead sent the a bill for the full amount service fee for the remainder of the contract period (which was something like $900). They even had a cheek to pass it onto a debt collector, until my wife gave the debt collector a copy of the court order, and it all of a sudden went away including the red mark on her credit history.

And since I'm having ongoing issues with my ISP, they are about to get a vote. They have an issue with a core router that connects to one of their peers (PIPE network), which bandwidth is limited to 20% of the provisioned capacity. This is caused issues with getting to certain websites (that are routed through the peer) during peek times. This was reported 2 mths ago. The time for fault resolution, maybe in another 2 months time! And this fault affects ALL their customers that have traffic go through this one core router!

(Recommendations for a decent ISP, that is able to use Telstra DSLAMs in the Gold Coast region would be nice). (Where I live is only serviced by Telstra DSLAMs, so no Optus, iiNet, or any other ISPs DSLAMs).