Vlad The Impaler
Learning Storage Performance
1. Fujitsu HDDs.
I am amazed no-one else mentioned them. I had an enjoyable 5 minutes this week telling some greasy Fujitsu Enterprise salesman exactly why I would never even entertain the possibilty of him coming to see me with a view to capturing our SCSI/SAS sales for Fujitsu. Apparently, the company has 'moved on' since the MPG days, and gives much better service. If that is the case, then perhaps Fujitsu would not mind compensating us for the ill will and hassle we had when their crappy IDE drives failed enmasse, rather than rapidly walking in the other direction, with their fingers in their ears.... I really enjoyed sticking it to that scumbag company. The worst. The only company I will never forgive for their absolutely disgusting and dishonourable atitude.
2. WD HDDs.
Yes indeed. Three failures in a row of replacement drives for the same original in-warranty failure. Never again.
3. MSI Mobos.
Time was, we sold a lot of these. Then we had a batch of 20, 9 of which were DOA out of the box! Scarily enough, the distie took them all back for a credit without question. A few weeks later, that distie (a pan European one) dropped MSI. Hmm. Than a 100% failure rate with a batch of three mobos. Although all the stuff we have sold has been pretty solid, we no longer sell MSI new. A rare case of getting out when the going is good!
4. ECS/Jetway/Mercury/whatever
I too have the same problem with the crappy little shops around here selling that rubbish. Nowadays, however most private people tend to go with Dell or Packard Bell. The British have a strange sense of value. They tend to just buy the cheapest and/or the most intensively marketed solution. The price of everything and the value of nothing....
5. Lexmark Printers
Only bought by the hard-of-understanding.
6. Wireless Keyboard/Mice
Now I don't have a problem with wireless networking. As long as you use good quality components, you don't normally have too many issues. Keyboards/mice however are different.
Failure rate of wired stuff: 0.1%
Failure rate of wireless: 25%
Over three years, battery failures, general failures, or whatever else waste my time with support. Have you changed the battery? (dumbass!) Why make things difficult when they could be easy?
7. Norton Antivirus/Intgernet Security
Grr. It won't update. My machine is half the speed it used to be. It said I should block IE in the firewall so I did. What is IE anyway...? It ate my first born child. Is there anything this truly dire piece of code can't break? You all do know that the code was originally produced by amalgamating the text of the Munich Agreement, the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact, and the written business plan of Wal-Mart, don't you?
8. Microsoft Activation
I lost my Dell restore CD. Doh! Time to buy a new copy. I changed my mobo. Time to waste yet more of my time speaking to some mong in India. How about "none of your frickin' business" if you want to know why I am reactivating. I want my 10 minutes back that you stole from me!
9. VIA/ALI/Nvidia chipsets.
Maybe it is because I am in a different market, but I have found that VIA and Nvidia chipsets give the most grief. A lot of my customers are of the 'I have a very special and very expensive data input PCI card that cost me £50k' types. A lot of these cards simply don't work correctly unless you have an Intel chipset. This is not of course completely VIA etc's fault. These cards are made by smaller companies who just don't test them enough, and make them to Intel's specs.
I have not found setup and more difficult across any chipsets. It is purely and simply that I have never had to replace an Intel chipset because of compatibilty issues, period. VIA and the others, I am afraid to say is a different story. It is for these reasons that a lot of the the engineering/defense corporates still require Intel stuff only. They just don't want to run the risk of something not working. Intel rely on this for their market share.
10. All specialied software compaines.
The best for last. Why is it never their fault? Sunspots, mobile phone masts, Police radios, the user, someone else's software, the printer, the PDA, the keyboard. All of these are genuine excuses that my customers have been given over the years for why a piece of software does not work. Always someone else's fault. My favorite is a large UK Practice management software company that work with Opticians. The reason their software did not work was apparently because our hardware was not compatible with it. Apparently only their hardware works with their software. To underline this point, they then installed a damaged Beta version of their software on the machines that were bought from us, which then crashed. We then discovered that it was a Beta version, which was installed 'accidently' apparently. Right. By then, of course the damage is done. They have sowed a seed of doubt in the customer's mind, and you are screwed. What a lovely way of doing business.
I am amazed no-one else mentioned them. I had an enjoyable 5 minutes this week telling some greasy Fujitsu Enterprise salesman exactly why I would never even entertain the possibilty of him coming to see me with a view to capturing our SCSI/SAS sales for Fujitsu. Apparently, the company has 'moved on' since the MPG days, and gives much better service. If that is the case, then perhaps Fujitsu would not mind compensating us for the ill will and hassle we had when their crappy IDE drives failed enmasse, rather than rapidly walking in the other direction, with their fingers in their ears.... I really enjoyed sticking it to that scumbag company. The worst. The only company I will never forgive for their absolutely disgusting and dishonourable atitude.
2. WD HDDs.
Yes indeed. Three failures in a row of replacement drives for the same original in-warranty failure. Never again.
3. MSI Mobos.
Time was, we sold a lot of these. Then we had a batch of 20, 9 of which were DOA out of the box! Scarily enough, the distie took them all back for a credit without question. A few weeks later, that distie (a pan European one) dropped MSI. Hmm. Than a 100% failure rate with a batch of three mobos. Although all the stuff we have sold has been pretty solid, we no longer sell MSI new. A rare case of getting out when the going is good!
4. ECS/Jetway/Mercury/whatever
I too have the same problem with the crappy little shops around here selling that rubbish. Nowadays, however most private people tend to go with Dell or Packard Bell. The British have a strange sense of value. They tend to just buy the cheapest and/or the most intensively marketed solution. The price of everything and the value of nothing....
5. Lexmark Printers
Only bought by the hard-of-understanding.
6. Wireless Keyboard/Mice
Now I don't have a problem with wireless networking. As long as you use good quality components, you don't normally have too many issues. Keyboards/mice however are different.
Failure rate of wired stuff: 0.1%
Failure rate of wireless: 25%
Over three years, battery failures, general failures, or whatever else waste my time with support. Have you changed the battery? (dumbass!) Why make things difficult when they could be easy?
7. Norton Antivirus/Intgernet Security
Grr. It won't update. My machine is half the speed it used to be. It said I should block IE in the firewall so I did. What is IE anyway...? It ate my first born child. Is there anything this truly dire piece of code can't break? You all do know that the code was originally produced by amalgamating the text of the Munich Agreement, the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact, and the written business plan of Wal-Mart, don't you?
8. Microsoft Activation
I lost my Dell restore CD. Doh! Time to buy a new copy. I changed my mobo. Time to waste yet more of my time speaking to some mong in India. How about "none of your frickin' business" if you want to know why I am reactivating. I want my 10 minutes back that you stole from me!
9. VIA/ALI/Nvidia chipsets.
Maybe it is because I am in a different market, but I have found that VIA and Nvidia chipsets give the most grief. A lot of my customers are of the 'I have a very special and very expensive data input PCI card that cost me £50k' types. A lot of these cards simply don't work correctly unless you have an Intel chipset. This is not of course completely VIA etc's fault. These cards are made by smaller companies who just don't test them enough, and make them to Intel's specs.
I have not found setup and more difficult across any chipsets. It is purely and simply that I have never had to replace an Intel chipset because of compatibilty issues, period. VIA and the others, I am afraid to say is a different story. It is for these reasons that a lot of the the engineering/defense corporates still require Intel stuff only. They just don't want to run the risk of something not working. Intel rely on this for their market share.
10. All specialied software compaines.
The best for last. Why is it never their fault? Sunspots, mobile phone masts, Police radios, the user, someone else's software, the printer, the PDA, the keyboard. All of these are genuine excuses that my customers have been given over the years for why a piece of software does not work. Always someone else's fault. My favorite is a large UK Practice management software company that work with Opticians. The reason their software did not work was apparently because our hardware was not compatible with it. Apparently only their hardware works with their software. To underline this point, they then installed a damaged Beta version of their software on the machines that were bought from us, which then crashed. We then discovered that it was a Beta version, which was installed 'accidently' apparently. Right. By then, of course the damage is done. They have sowed a seed of doubt in the customer's mind, and you are screwed. What a lovely way of doing business.
