Most-hated components - the top 10

[Tea]

Let's list them — the over-rated, under-performing hardware components you dislike the most, top 10 from most worstest to slightly less worse.


RULEZ!

• Hardware only — no software, no other stuff.
• Components only. No complete systems — i.e., you can't list "any system made by Hewlett-Packard", only individual components that make up that system.
• Be specific: no vague general categories like "cheap, crappy power suppies". Name a brand!
• There aren't any more rulez.
• Except for any that I make up afterwards.

 

[Tea]

1. ATI video cards. Although we do our best to avoid them 100% of the time, we still have to deal with their crapfest driver software from time to time, and hate it. With the Dets, you just load it and forget about it: it will work: first time, every time. ATI makes you go through hell: not every toime, but often enough to get them well up towards the top of our do-not-sell-these-things-inder-any-circumstances list.
2. Lexmark printers. Hate the way they spam your startup with buggy, slow-to-load drivers.
3. SiS chipset motherboards. Low-budget, low functionality, huge drivers that are often impossible to find, even if you can figure out which one you need because the bloody chipset itself isn't marked with any number that lines up with the names you need to know if you are going to find te link to click on, and the cheapskate mainboard maker (we already know they are cheapskates because we know they used a SiS chipset, right?) can be viruually guaranteed not to have a usable website either.
4. ASUS motherboards. Over-priced junk most of the time, with terrible detail layout and poor documentation. Very fussy to set up, crappy AMI BIOS, poor reliability record. Got the lot, really.
5. MSI motherboards. Mostly because their website is so bad. Have you tried reading the clearly-marked model number off an MSI motherboard (e.g., "MS-1234") lately and typing that into their website's driver search function? It never works. How bad is that? Worse, you can't get a list of boards and just search manually for the model number, because to get a list of boards you have to know what chipset it is based on, and you can't find out what chipset it is based on until you get to the page about the particular motherboard and you can't find that page until you find out what chipset it's based on.
6. Pioneer optical drives. The most over-rated, incompatible, bug-ridden opticals on the market. If they were really cheap, they would be no better than everything else in the cheap an nasty category. But they ain't. I have no idea why people buy them, let alone pay top dollar for them.
7. Iomega Zip drives, and anything that has anything remotely to do with that old-school grand champion of pox-ridden hardware manufacture, including their optical drives, which are usually as crapola as everything else they touch. One hopes and assumes that the company will finally dissapear before too much longer.
8. Samtron monitors. The most unreliable junk ever to come from a company (Samsung) that is otherwise pretty good at most things. Their budget-priced Samtron moniters, however, are dreadful. Fall over, get fixed, fallover, get fixed, fall over, get fixed, fall over, throw the bloody thing away even though it's still got two years of factory warranty on it.
9. Western Digital hard drives. Too failure-prone. Lousy service - their refurbs are crap, and that's what you get.
10. TP-Link routers, and any other networking gear they manufacture except for hubs (because not even TP-Link can bugger a hub up). Why? Well, if I said "the setp routine fom hell", would that give you a clue?

 

[paugie]

I'll agree with you on some of those:

1. Lexmark printers. Here they get you to buy their printers by selling them VERY cheaply. More cheaply than the 2 (b/w and color) ink cartridges cost. Then you find out, they've installed special cartridges with small capacities which run out of ink after around 20 pages. Then you have to buy those cartridges which cost more than what you shelled out for the printer itself. Then you try to refill the cartridges because they cost so much in the first place. Then you realize it's not easy doing that. It's easier to break the cartridges while refilling them. It's easier to tear your hair out.

2. Why, I can't remember motherboard manufacturers utilizing SiS chipsets except ASUS and ASrock. At least not here anymore.

And I believe you forgot to mention the hardware most qualified under your criteria
over-rated, under-performing hardware components not to mention costly

3. intel Celeron-D's and Pres(h)otts

 

[Tea]

I know what you mean about the current Intel CPUs, Paugie. They can be really, really sluggish, and their ability to multitask ... well ... they don't have any ability to multitask.

Just today one of them got me into trouble. Machine is in to have various software problems sorted out. I was talking to the customer on the phone just now and told her that the main thing wrong with it is that it needs more RAM.

"Taking it up to 512MB would make a big difference", I said.

It's a 2800, can't remember if it's a Celeron or a P4, not that it makes much difference, and otherwise pretty much the standard thing: 80GB hard drive, on-board Intel graphics, not a vomit-box, just a reasonably well-built clone with noticably poor performance. Obviously (it seemed to me) putting a decent amount of RAM into it would help a lot. OK, it would never go as well as an Athlon XP or a A64-based Sempron, but ought to be heaps better than it is now.

"But it's already got 512MB", she objected.

Nahh, I thought, not running like that. obviously only 256MB. Then I looked .....

woops!

Luckily, observing Tannin's well-honed technique over the years has taught me how to backpedal almost as smoothly as he does .....

 

[Tea]

Actually, I don't hate the Intel Sluggerons. I mean, they are no trouble, they work just fine, apart from being so slow and costing about double what they ought to (by comparison with the AMD chips). So, overpriced and under-performing, absolutely. But I don't hate them, just think people who buy them have no idea, and people who sell them have no morals.

But that reminds me:

11: Intel motherboards, and (to a lesser extent) other motherboards with Intel chipsets. Those I do hate. You can always get them working, eventually, but the process is slow, stupidly non-standard because of the weird waste-your-time BIOS they use, and tedious. And the end result is never anything to write home about ..... mediocrity writ large. Give me a VIA or Nvidia chipset any day, or at least an Intel chipset on a decently pleasant board to work on - Gigabyte, Biostar, ,or etc.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd like to point out that Tannin violated Tea's rules with his item #1: He's complaining about ATI drivers, which are by definition not hardware.

Also, I have no idea what part of Catalyst drivers don't just work every time.

Also, SiS isn't my favorite chipset, but the recent versions that I'm familiar with don't need any drivers at all.

Anyway, here's my list

1. nvidia graphics cards - They run hot, they die fast and they seem to be a main cause of system instability in PCs that use them. Blah.
2. Inkjet Printers - period. Good printers are shaped like copy machines and cost a bloody fortune.
3. Western Digital hard disks - The brand that taught me all the different ways a head crash can sound.
4. Abit motherboards - Some of them default to overclocking. Some of them don't have important little parts like PS/2 ports. I think they buy bad caps on purpose, and of course they use the cheapest 40mm fans possible for their $150 motherboards. What's not to hate?
5. Cheap-ass cases - I have dozens of scars on my hands to explain that one. One of the local shops here amazes me by consistently finding cases in this day and age that I can break pieces off and shave with.
6. Wireless-everything. If it doesn't have wires, it sucks. Linksys stuff works great for about 3 months, then it dies. D-Link sorta works, but doesn't support security on half its products. Netgear is under the mistaken impression that wireless range should be measured in tens of millimeters. Wireless keyboards eat batteries and disconnect constantly. Etc, etc. etc. Wireless == pain in my ass.
7. S*ny. If they made it, it sucks. Viaos, burners, music players, whatever. I shall say no more.
8. Floppy Drives. Purely pointless. I can't believe I still have to buy them. I know full well no one will ever use the floppy drive I put in a PC, but if I don't, someone is going to throw a hissy-fit. I've taken to buying bulk system-pull drives off ebay. It's easier to swallow $.90 per drive than $5 for something that's not worth my time to install in a chassis in the first place.
9. Jetway/ECS/PC Chips motherboards - The scrapings from the liner under the bottom of the barrel. Absurdly common, because every single whitebox shop in Northern Illinois and Indiana uses one of those brands as their "bargain" motherboard. I can't get away from them. I'd be happy to have to scour MSI's web site for drivers (I never see MSI boards, by the way), if it meant that I didn't have to deal with herpes-ridden ECS.
10. Weirdo flash Memory and devices which use weirdo flash memory. Good flash devices are CF or maybe xD. Not MMC, not MS, not MS Pro, not MS Pro Duo, not RSMMC. How many fucking ways do we need to store 256MB of files on something a little bigger than a fingernail?

 

[time]

I can't recall any branded hardware that didn't have some redeeming feature, although that may have been just how cheap it was. But then, I don't normally have to swim in the sewer that is consumer computer hardware - in fact, I try to avoid it like the plague.

Therefore, I can't completely agree with some things on Tea's list:

1. ATI drivers used to be apalling, but I haven't had any serious problems for years.
3. I recently replaced an nForce2 with an SiS741. It seemed mature and reasonably straightforward, with better performance than VIA (although the system used an ATI graphics card rather than the onboard SiS graphics).
4. High-end Asus is still pretty expensive, but then so is Gigabyte. With my suppliers in Oz, I'd say the leading brands are similarly priced. Asus has the most models, the best availability, and reliability is better than some brands. Having said that, they can be cantankerous pains in the ass and local service is beyond bad - see below.
6. Pioneer has been fine for me, I don't know what you mean by compatibility problems. Unless you're talking about media compatibility, which I felt may have been worse with the 110 series. We don't use anything except Verbatim, so I haven't had a problem personally, but I'm happier with the new LG drives I've tried.

 

[time]

Warranty Service Asus-style

I returned an otherwise okay nForce1 with two bulging capacitors (trying to preempt any problems). After waiting five weeks, I drove across town to pick it up (I should have had it shipped, but hoped to combine it with something else).

When mounting the board about a week later, I noticed that a couple of the caps seemed to have dirt on them. Because I had Asus paperwork stating the board had been repaired, I just swabbed the caps with spirits and let the half-assembled PC run for a few hours.

The following day, I noticed that a couple of the caps seemed to have dirt on them. Doubting my memory, I took a picture and swabbed them again. A few hours later, a couple of the caps seemed to have dirt on them ...

Yes, despite all my history of angst with capacitors, I was gullible and believed Asus over my own eyes.

So I phoned the distributor, who discovered another repaired board had come in and offered it to me. I drove across town, swapped the boards, did the paperwork and drove home.

No dirty capacitors this time. Cautiously, I ran the board unmounted and it posted fine. When I attached a drive with Win2k on it, it booted okay but froze while loading Windows. I assumed this was down to the different motherboard chipset in the PC that formely housed the drive, or some other irrelevant problem.

I assembled the PC (from scratch, a mix of new and old bits) and installed Windows - or at least, tried to, several times. About ten minutes into the install, the PC would always hang. It took longer than expected because two of the Lite-On CD-RW drives I tried turned out to be flaky (which was very disenchanting). Once I resolved that, I could get the PC to lock solid within about three minutes of starting the install.

It goes without saying that I tried everything: BIOS, cables, CPUs, RAM, etc, etc.

Time for another call to the distributor. Lo, yet another replacement board had lobbed in from Asus. To their credit, they offered to test it while I waited. Once again, I drove across town, this time with the entire PC. I insisted that they run it up and see the problem for themselves, because I sure as hell didn't want the POS inflicted on some other poor sucker. Endless recycling until sanity prevails and the last hapless customer throws it in the bin?

Drove home, replaced the board, installed Windows, then watched the PC suspiciously for a week waiting for something else to happen. It didn't, and now all is well.

It only took THREE BLOODY FACTORY REPLACEMENTS IN A ROW to get a working one.

 

[Mercutio]

At least you can get Asus to give you an RMA...

 

[time]

I strongly agree with everything on Mercutio's list except for nVidia graphics cards. To be fair, I have experienced the instability he describes with at least one TNT, and of course there may well have been more but I just didn't realize at the time.

Seeing as Tea broke his own rules, I'd like to single out HP printer bloatware for special mention. :evil:

 

[Bozo]

Dell computers
Wireless anything
Asus motherboards
Seagate IDE hard drives
Enlight cases
Ali chipsets
Dell computers
All printers
The cheap ass cooling fans that are attached to almost everything. Guaranteed to fail in months.
Did I mention Dell computers??


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Handruin]

psst Bozo

RULEZ!

• Components only. No complete systems — i.e., you can't list "any system made by Hewlett-Packard", only individual components that make up that system.

:mrgrn:

 

[LiamC]

Dell computers
Wireless anything
Asus motherboards
Seagate IDE hard drives
Enlight cases
Ali chipsets
Dell computers
All printers
The cheap ass cooling fans that are attached to almost everything. Guaranteed to fail in months.
Did I mention Dell computers??


Bozo :mrgrn:

About Dell, did I mention this?

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5727

:eekers:

 

[CougTek]

RE : SiS chipsets

• We used an ASRock board with an SiS 741 chipset almost exclusively for months to replace dead socket-A boards and it's a joy to work with. Plug and play, really. The problem is more with manufacturers' implementations than with the chipset manufacturer IMO. The 741's drivers are easy to find. No reason in my book to complain about them.

I agree with the hate of Sony, ECS/PCChips, floppy drives, cheapo cases and PSUs and crappy chipset and GPU fans (which I try to avoid : passive cooling rules for motherboards and GPUs).

I don't have more problems with Western Digital drives than with other brands. The reliability distinction seems to be more related to the interface than the brand. SATA drives fail a lot more often than PATA drives.

No problem here with LG drives, as long as you avoid using their crappy firmware flashing POS software.

I often see Abit boards fail simply because Abit has been most popular during the 440BX-to-early socket-A days : the period during which many motherboard manufacturers (especially Abit and Microstar) have had leaking capacitors issues.

I don't hate Celeries either. They are slow, but they do work. The Sempron are too expensive for the cheapest systems these days, so we often have to lower ourselves to use Celeries. The systems work, albeit slowly.

The HP monitoring software is the offspring of Satan.

 

[Sol]

Also, I have no idea what part of Catalyst drivers don't just work every time.

Well there is the part that requires you to install the .NET framework... The part where ATI link you to the .NET 2.0 framework package even though thier control panel doesn't run without .NET1.1. The part where you absolutely must uninstall the existing drivers before installing new drivers or you have a very good chance of seeing what windows XP would have looked like in EGA...

As long as you observe ATI's few iregularities though you shouldn't have any problems with ATI drivers these days...

For my list,BenQ optical drives would be near the top along with Jetway motherboards. I havn't seen many of either in action but I think I've seen one fully functional example between them.

Jetway motherboards especially have produced some pretty sureal errors. A house mate once had one that made random games run in matrix style bullet time. Perfectly reasonable frame rates, just that time would run extremely slowly.

Wireless anything is up there for me as well, despite being insufficiently specific I think that over-rated and under performing absolutely nails it.

Oh and microsoft keyboards, the ones with those stupid f-lock buttons...

 

[Bozo]

Okay, I screwed up. Only individual pieces.

All the individual shit pieces that make up a shitty Dell.


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[paugie]

Bozo, what's wrong with Seagate IDE Hard Drives? Well, I don't use them, but why place them in the "hate" list?

 

[Bozo]

I've been buying WDs for some time now and never had many problems with them. But the consensus here is that WDs are junk. So I decided to try some different hard drives. The 'authorized vender' for the company that I work for does not handle Samsung, so I bought 4 Seagate IDE drives, and 4 Hitachi IDE drives. 3 of the Seagate drives failed within 6 months. The Hitachi's are still running but not in computers that run 24/7 like the WDs and Seagates.

I base my rendition of the junk list by how many Excedrin I had to take while dealing with these parts.
The Seagates were 6 Excedrin and a phone call at 2AM because a hard drive failed, holding up production.
Therefore, the Seagates made the Junk list.

With the Dells, I buy the Excedrin in bulk.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[time]

I base my rendition of the junk list by how many Excedrin I had to take while dealing with these parts.

Bozo, that's just wonderful. Every now and then, someone here posts pure gold.

With the Dells, I buy the Excedrin in bulk.

And that's platinum. I so badly wanted to nominate Dell; it's the only brand that truly inspires hatred in me, but Tea and her stupid rules ...

If it must be components, can I start the ball rolling with Dell's keyboards? It's quite possible that they're worse in backwaters like Australia, but surely they're the worst that money can buy?

 

[Tannin]

No one else seems to be following the rulez, Time, so go right ahead and tell us how you really feel. :-?

 

[Gilbo]

One the subject of Dell, I have a particular, specific gripe about those all-too-generally-sucky computers --although I'll agree it's hard to single out anything in particular for especial-suckiness in such a quantum singularity of suckiness:

1. Dell cases -- They use non-standard connectors. You need a Dell-brand replacement mobo or you're going to have to duct tape another case's front-panel to the side of the case just to turn the damn thing on & off. I wish I had a pic...

Otherwise:
2. NVidia chipsets -- I used to like 'em. They're full featured and fast. But they're actually bug-ridden, unstable pieces of trash. They won't crash your computer --oh no, they never screw you up front, always from behind--; they'll slowly corrupt your data, whether it's buggy NCQ over SATA implementations or buggy TCP/IP checksum offloading on the GbE, keeping data uncorrupted in a computer with an NVidia chipset pretty much requires that you back it up and routinely check hashes. Just the other day I was transferring my movie collection from one server to another --1 in 5 of the .vobs were corrupt when they got to the other server. Some times I had to try the transfer 3 times before the file would get through intact. Memtest86+, everything's fine except the goddamn NVidious, busted GbE :evil: . If you use the non-onboard GbE, everything comes through clean. Bah.

 

[Mercutio]

Let's not forget my other favorite Dell issue: The "We install a power supply that is rated for .1W more than the total component draw" issue. Nothing like finding a Mid-Tower case with room for two more hard disks and another optical drive, yet with a Prescott P4 and a 205W PSU.

205W?!?
Even if it's 250W, it's still a Whiskey Tango Foxtrox moment.

Also, if anyone isn't completely sold on the idea that Asus crap is, well, crap, I've seen Asus-branded motherboards in at least a dozen different HP Pavillion desktops. I just saw another one about 10 minutes ago, and it reminded me of this thread.

 

[Bozo]

Parts? Parts? I got your parts......
Dells sucky non standard power supplies. If one dies, off the shelf power supplies won't fit in the case
Non ATX mother boards...
Clam shell cases....
Dell only connectors....
Tying the OS to the motherboard serial number.....opps, guess that's software.
NICs that take Dell only drivers
RAID controllers that take only Dell drivers
Video cards that take only Dell drivers
CD/DVD drives that have a special non standard faceplate. Off the shelf won't fit.
Laptop CD/DVD drives in desktop/tower cases. (that die 2 minutes after the warrenty expires)
Modems that have been rejected by third world countries.
P4 (2.8GHz) systems with 160 watt power supplies.
Memory sticks that came from Kingston's trash can.
Motherboard capacitors that didn't last 6months.
Case and CPU fans that sound like a cat with it's tail caught in a door.
No srews to hold the mother board in. Just some cheap plastic thing that the Chinese threw out.
Pastic mountings for the hard drives so they can vibrate to death. (rejects from E-Machines)
Odd size hard drives. Only 0.5" thick


I need to go take a blood pressure pill......and some Excedrin

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[timwhit]

Nice list, Bozo. The next time that someone tells me that they are getting a Dell I will send them your list.

 

[Mercutio]

I kind of think that Dell exists to make Compaq and Gateway look good.

And then I work for a while in a Compaq shop and I start longing for Dells
again.

 

[timwhit]

So what big manufacturer is worthwhile? Uses standard motherboards/cases/PSUs/etc?

 

[Bozo]

I think I would look into a brick and mortar shop near my home. At least when you have a problem, you can talk to someone face to face.
And, they use off the shelf parts. The quality of the parts depends how much you want to spend.
The desktop computers where I work are leased IBMs. (about 600 of them) They seem to work well enough, but then, I don't have to work on them. There are only 2 people in our IT department to maintain the IBMs, so they must be fairly reliable.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[timwhit]

I'm more looking for a brand that I can recommend to people that live anywhere in the US. Like relatives that live in Kansas City, San Diego, Chicago, etc.

 

[Mercutio]

I build my own servers and I have enough parts to replace anything on them that breaks. About half the total number of PCs that I deal with as a contractor are IBM machines of one sort or another, but the rest is a mix of Dell, Compaq, Toshiba (notebooks) and Whiteboxes.

I don't mind IBMs, but they're business machines. They don't make home computers, and the way those systems are configured, you know that. I'd 500x rather have an IBM P4 on a Via chipset than a Dell "business" desktop P4 with an Intel chipset. No kidding. IBM machines seem slow to me. Nothing outrageous, but it wouldn't surprise me if the most current IBMs I deal with (P4 2.8s with HT) have underclocked CPUs and RAM. I haven't used an IBM (Lenovo) Server in ages.

I don't have any experience with Lenovo yet, but they haven't burned any bridges with me, either. I'd like to see what's in a new ThinkStation.

Compaq has apparently had an overabundance of vomit, and they've been stuffing the extra in their business desktops, but even at that, one of my customers likes to buy Vomitboxes from Radio Shack and Circuit City instead of anything decent. Fortunately, even he can't say no to whatever Dell's $229 special of the week is, so I'm hoping that plague will end soon. Regardless, the last "solid" Compaq business machine I saw was probably a 133MHz Pentium, and that was back in the days of proprietary data cables and special DOS partitions for setting BIOS options. New Compaqs are better about standard parts - better than Dells, anyway - but seem just as flakey to me.

Dells are just "meh" to me. I see lots of home units for service work in my trainer job, but I also know that they're the most common PCs around. Dell business machines seem very inconsistent and they always have. I like Latitude notebooks and maybe half the Optiplex models I've seen, but Inspirons and XPSes seemed to be cursed (XPSes are often cursed with nvidia video cards, which may be the start of the problem).

The Dell Servers I see are little toy ones that are basically repackaged desktop PCs. Blah. REALLY unimpressive, unless you've bought one for $6.95 on extra super double coupon day.

I don't know anyone using HP desktops, but I do service a site with a fair number of HP notebooks. They're high-end Pavillion models with 17" screens and 3.2GHz CPUs which someone mistakenly thought would be good for sales presentations (Hello! Viewing angle! And powerpoint content created on a 4:3 screen doesn't look hot in 16:9...). These notebooks are around a year old and I believe all 16 have had (hardware) warranty service at this point. Possibly the best business-related experience I've had in the last year was listening to the guy who bought those stupid things apologize for not listening.

I like Gateway and Emachines for home use well enough. Emachines uses weirdo power supplies and they both throw in the odd "You need our driver and not the generic one." I don't see them often for service and I have fewer "Why is that part in THIS machine?" moments. I don't know anyone who uses them for business machines, either. All those things put together may simply mean that I'm less generally aggravated with Gateway/Emachines, but they're still a breath of fresh air after screwing around with a Dell.

The summation of my experiences is this: I like IBM machines. A bad IBM is as good as good Dell. It also costs 25% more, but anyone who writes sales proposals can skate around that one pretty easily. For home users my answer is almost always "let me build it" or, if that's not an answer I pretty much tell people to buy based on the budget or feature they want right now and expect to buy again in around 18 months.

 

[CougTek]

I don't know anyone using HP desktops,...

I had two Pavillon towers to repair during the last two weeks. Both were absolute crap. The problem seemed to be with their motherboards (both of them, although they were different models). The integrated IDE controller was a drive killing device. And the power supply caused instability in both cases. Repairing them costed almost as much as a new system. And they were still not "reliable", just temporarily acceptable. I'm sure they'll both come back before the end of the year (at our shop or somewhere else, if the customers think the problem is with us and not with their POS).

IBM is the only major brand I tend to trust. Both our backup machine and our tech-box (the one that is always supposed to be in working order if we have to access the Net or do other work) are IBM P4 desktops. So far so good.

And I hate the Optiplex clam shells.

 

[Tea]

... repairing them costed almost as much as a new system. And they were still not "reliable", just temporarily acceptable. I'm sure they'll both come back before the end of the year (at our shop or somewhere else, if the customers think the problem is with us and not with their POS).

Exactly!

People bring in their POS Compaq/HP/Dell/Packard Bell vomit boxes expecting you to fix them, and you spend twice as long as you ought to because they are so small and tight and crappy and difficult to work on, and because everything taaaaaakes soooooooo loooooong because they perform like a slug on a valium overdose even when they ain't broken and they are nearly always stacked full of poxola screensavers asnd spyware and three different out-of-date anti-virus programs and half the time they shipped with Windows 98 and 64MB of RAM and the moronic owner has loaded up Windows XP on top of all that other junk and there is only 500MB of the ultra-crap 20GB hard drive left and they don't want to spend any serious money on the system because they already spent a small fortune buying it only five years ago and it's a Compaq/HP/Dell/Packard Bell so it must be good .....

So you waste far longer on it than you ought to, and get it running as well as it's humanly possible to do with such a shitbox ......

And three months later they plug in a Lexmark printer or an HP scanner or a Kodak camera or an all-in-one print-scan-wipe-your-bottom junkpile and load every single one of the stupid memory-hogging applications it shipped with, and they have forgotten every single one of the simple security rules you taught them so as not to get infected with spyware yet again ..... and it falls over ....

..... and it's all your fault!

 

[CougTek]

HP buyers are the modern version of the fool-of-the-village every settlement had back then. Like lemmings, they seem to have over-reproduce.

 

[Santilli]

I would like to say thanks to all of you here for posting, and advising. I was just thinking I haven't bought, or had anything around other then XP 64, that hasn't worked, in a very long time.
My list of hated hardware:
Apple G3 minitower
Any hard drive apple picks. They seem to go out of their way to find the slowest ones possible.
Most Apple laptops
They do make a mistake, and put out a quality one, by accident, once in awhile.
Maxtor hard drives
IBM hard drives
I'm going brain dead. Have to sleep. Finish later.

Greg

 

[Bozo]

One of thie things I have learned about recommending a computer to a non technical person is 'brand recognation'
I mentioned to a person that was looking for a computer that he would be better served going to the local brick and mortar computer shop. That didn't seem to suit him even after explaining all the benefits. Finally I said 'you can always buy a Dell'. That was it! He was all happy.

So now when anyone ask me about getting a computer, I tell them to check the internet and newspapers for the best deal on a Dell, HP, or Compaq.

I guess advertising and hype are more important than quality and service.


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

One of the things I impress on all my students is that good marketing is not the same thing as high quality.

The example I almost always use to demonstrate this is S*ny. Almost everyone I teach knows someone who has been through two or three Playstations, or has had a S*ny DVD player that won't play burned discs or something.

The average person, in the US at least, has a fantastically high opinion of Microsoft, Sony, Bose, Dell, HP, Apple (unlike Santilli I do like Apple computer hardware though), Western Digital, Symantec, McAffee and any number of other companies that many of us here know to be junk.

And then people wonder why I seem so down on computer companies...

 

[Bozo]

A few minutes ago I was reminded that I had recommended the brick and mortar to someone. That person did go to the store and ended up buying a reconditioned HP. The HP warrenty and service is handled right at the store.
Hmmm....best/worst of both worlds???

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[LiamC]

Somewhat on-topic I guess, but good for a laugh.

The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125772,pg,2,00.asp

See if you can guess 'em before clicking.

 

[Mercutio]

Also, I have no idea what part of Catalyst drivers don't just work every time.

Well there is the part that requires you to install the .NET framework... The part where ATI link you to the .NET 2.0 framework package even though thier control panel doesn't run without .NET1.1. The part where you absolutely must uninstall the existing drivers before installing new drivers or you have a very good chance of seeing what windows XP would have looked like in EGA...

You don't have to install the .NET framework for ATI's drivers, actually. You have to install it for their Control Panel Application, something I'd never in a zillion years put on someone's PC voluntarily, simply because I don't want anyone for whom I would build a PC to find the sliders for things like overclocking or white point.

When I install ATI's video driver, I use the "Low Bandwidth" download of the driver only. No control center included. If I need to, I add the WDM Vidcap driver, MMC and/or the AVIVO crap, but I don't ever bother with their control center. Everything that's really important is already exposed in the Windows driver.

Also, I upgrade ATI drivers without ever uninstalling them, which hasn't been a problem for me on anything new enough to be called a Radeon. If I'm switching video chipsets (S3 or Intel or nvidia or ATI), I uninstall the old ones as a matter of course before slapping in the new card. I've seen Windows shit itself on that change a few too many times to think that particular problem is the exclusive province of ATI.

 

[Sol]

Your right you don't absolutely have to have the control panel but I find it helps for troubleshooting problems with gart drivers and agp speeds. I've had a few problems with ATI's autodetection of settings on nvidia chipsets and it's hard to even check how it went without the control panel.

As for the changeover I never had any problems with installing Nvidia drivers over the top of old ones but I've had so many issues with ATI's that I don't even try anymore (This is with a 9700 and an x800). That said it has occationally worked fine so perhaps I just do something slightly differently to you. I can see where Tony might run into some problems though (Although not enough to justify his hatred...).

 

[Mercutio]

Drivers for a 5-year-old Dlink DFE-530TX+ 10/100 PCI NIC are fucking 48MB. I note, upon opening the ZIP file, that there are 1MB setup binaries for OSX, Linux and several different flavors of Windows - in both .EXE and .MSI format, plus a 5MB trial version of "EZAntiVirus".

The combined size of the actual .sys, .inf, .cat and .dll files that actually make up the WDM driver weigh in at 270kB.