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My Grandfather was the fourth son
of four children born to Nels and Hannah Youngberg (Swedish Immigrants to Carlton,
Oregon) in 1896 and the only child born on their homestead farm which is still in
my family. Pop died in 1985 on that same farm, but not before he celebrated a 60th
Wedding Anniversary with his wife Louise (born in Yamhill, Oregon in 1901). Gram followed him in death a couple of years ago, but not before she was able to celebrate the homestead making "Honor Farm" status (a full Century in the same family) which is a distinction that Oregonians rightfully consider with a LOT of pride. The only reason I'm giving you this bit of family history is so you'll understand the background that helped shape my opinions on the following subject which is first and foremost about value and pride. | |||
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I founded PMA Consulting in 1988
on the cornerstone of an "Approved Hardware List" compiled of vendors
and products that displayed at least a semblance of the same policies that I employ
in my business dealings with clients. If we need warranty replacements they have
to be as close to instant as is inhumanly possible and we'd better not need much
more than about 5% warranty replacements too! Seagate hard drives fell off our list
in 1989 with the ST236 model and hasn't made it back onto the list today despite
their position as the industry leader in hard drive sales.
The same fate was suffered by 3Com in 1996 when we got 4 bad network interface cards out of a 5pack and it took almost three weeks to get replacements. | |||
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EFA motherboards went by the wayside
in 1996 when their Triton2 chipset Pentium boards suddenly lost all ability to do
input/output and required us to replace 15 boards in the field within the same six
months and almost bankrupted the company along with losing our biggest client at
the time. We're still here after 10 years I'm sure in major part because our Approved Hardware List requires very little maintenance once implemented. Since we don't spend much time replacing "used oats" with quality parts AFTER we've sold the "used oats", we have a lot of energy remaining for all the rest of the problems our clients seem to take a perverse pleasure in finding for us to cure. | |||
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Unfortunately, it is getting increasingly
difficult to maintain this list because even the "farmers of pride" are
now getting pushed closer to the "used oats" syndrome. When we fired Seagate
in '89, we sold only MiniScribe hard drives and Archive Tape Backup Units until
MiniScribe went bankrupt and Archive was bought by Maynard. Then it was Control
Data Corp's drives and Conner's (after they slurped Irwin which had absorbed Maynard)
Tape Backup Units, we were also willing to sell Conner's hard drives which stood
up well and passed the RMA (Return Material Authorization) acid test. Our only modem
was the USRobotics Courier or Sportster lines until the recent purchase of USR by
3Com . . . | |||
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We've noticed now with the 3Com/USR
buyout that what was once among the finest modems you could buy, the internal Sportster
line is almost all WinModems now and their quality has slipped to the point that
we now only sell MultiTech for connectivity. We converted to Asus motherboards after
the EFA fiasco mostly on recommendation of the Comp.OS.OS2.Misc newsgroup denizens
and have been extremely happy with that choice for two years now. But I am starting
to see a trend in the industry that is forcing me down a dead end alley. It is called
the ATX style motherboard. ATX is another "breakthrough technology" whose
only purpose is to make parts cheaper. This board has all the I/O built in to the
main board, including video, sound, serial ports, IDE controller, printer port,
USB, IR port, and in some cases, even network interface cards. The interface ports
are soldered right onto the main board and fit into a case that has ports along
the bottom edge of the back to let them be exposed for your use. | |||
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This technology saves about 15% on
a manufacturer's (that's me) cost, and can make a HUGE difference in the profit
margin when selling systems. The downside, however, is that it leaves us with NO
CHOICE as to what peripherals to sell with our systems. What you see on the mobo
is what you get. And I do mean period. Once upon a time, this technology was employed
exclusively by the Mail Order houses, Packard Bell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, Dell,
(my personal list in ascending order of quality) etc., while independent clone manufacturers
stuck with the older AT style mobo and installed the other parts from our own Approved
Hardware Lists. The forces behind this trend are the same folks that gave us WinNT
and the 640K limit. This new style of hardware shores up Intel and Micro$lop's dominance
because the newer integrated video cards will use Intel's Pent3 and Celeron MMX
architecture and their new 810 chip. Happily enough, this whole scheme only works
well on a Win* operating system too! Oh joy! At this point, the only solution I
can think of is a boycott. | |||
I like the word commodity because it reminds me of commode (or toilet) which is the proper recepticle for the "commodity" lines produced by Packard Bell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM and Dell as well as the systems being produced today by the formerly quality conscious independents of yesterday. | |||
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Now it is up to you to insist on
good products, before I get backed into a corner of "I can't buy quality components
with which to build quality systems" because no one is willing to pay for quality
systems anymore. We've already lost the Operating System War folks but it isn't
too late to head off the Used Oats merchants at the pass. Support the Men and Women
of Goodwill and we'll all win in the end. It's even possible we could fend off the
end for another couple of years. | |||
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Smiley Nebeaux Nerdinski BBS |
