Grudges - what tech products won't you buy, and why?
 

Compaq computers - after having seen and worked on their shitty "big jagged piece of metal as heatsink" computers back in the P2 days, I would never touch one of those again. Can we say poor build quality and cutting corners? How about proprietary drive rails that cost $50 per set, and didn't have any extras included with the computer? I ended up hot-gluing drives into the cases since Compaq insisted on screwing me .

IBM HDD's ( had many fail )

Creative Labs
You don't stick to established standards then plain lie about it, you don't get my money.

Thermaltake
Really hot products. Pity they're heatsinks.

Anyone else have a tech grudge?

I think I'm through buying prebuilt computers. Building them yourself is more fun/rewarding/gives you more control.

I'll be more weary of thermaltake heatsinks. I've got one right now that I have to keep on the lowest setting (I have to admit its nice to be able to chose low medium high, though),, because anything above that is incredibly loud. It does a decent job of cooling, though.

I think I've had pretty good luck when it comes to computer parts. Just make sure to do your research before you buy anything. Doing a quick search on google for the model you plan on buying will tell you a lot. I was going to buy an IBM harddrive and found that tons of people were having problems with them, so I got the WD Special Edition, which I saw was getting a lot of praise around various message boards :)

I think my latest grudge seems to be against hp. They used to build some really high quality hardware. We've still got some LJ3's and 4's at work that just keep on going (usually only something simple and cheaply replacable goes wrong, 10 minutes and it's all running again, ready for many more years service). But in the last few years they've been taken over by the suits who just worry about profit margins and build complete shit and sell it for just as much as their old tanks (ie. heavy and indestructable).

I guess I just look back to the days when every company built products that couldn't be destroyed no matter how hard you try. Now everything is flimsy and cheap (just look at the DEC products before they were taken over by the peecee company known as compaq). Even on the low end, things have been going lower. back in the days of the 486's, cases used to be fairly solid steel, now their wimpy aluminium.

Why must the decent companies be overtaken by suits? All they do is try to save a cent here or there just so they can buy another ivory backscratcher.

I guess I could also complain about microsoft, but that's just too easy. Bad products and underhanded tactics don't go down well in my books.

</rant> You asked for it :)

I'll never buy anything from microsoft. Except for mice, they make nice mice.

The reason being, um... um... because I want a computer that actually works, and does it fast. Plus microsoft is evil.

Marcopolo, I definitely agree with you on Compaq and Creative labs. I have had problems with drivers from both companies. Creative Labs never seem to work right and for the original audigy cards it took a long time for them to release drivers designed for XP. On the Compaq front, it's their damn proprietary hardware. I had to reinstall windows on an old compaq once. However I couldn't get the network card working. There were no drivers for it on the restore CD, none on the 3com site (they manufactured the card) and only one thing on the compaw site. That was a program you could use to determine which driver you needed to download but the one it told me to dl was nowhere to be found on the net. I just said "sod it" and told the owner to get a new computer.

Amen; I got real sick of BSOD's a few years ago; I decided that I had to learn how to use Linux; I've never looked back (and I DON'T get BSOD's!!).

Marco,
Definitely agree with you on Compaq because That is all I support at work. They are the WORST computers that I have ever had to deal with. The only real way to guess what is wrong with them is to reseat everything (cpu, memory, that stupid riser fror the expansion bays, etc) and then if that doesn't work try to swap out parts from a similar machine to get them working. (This works on the old p2 and p3 machines, NOT the small form factor stuff). I don't even want to get started on trying to open/close the cases properly.

I won't pay for anything Microsoft anymore. I used to like Bill Gates and his company, but he's been pissing me off lately. From now on, I'll only use cracked MS products, and he can eat my ass.

Why bother? Linux is free, doesn't crash, works great (my Epson printer works MUCH better using CUPS/Foomatic) and you get to be REALLY cool ("Yeah, I got sick of the MicroSoft bullshit; I only use linux.") I've been MS-free for 4 years now; I can do anything any MS-user can in half the time (MY conputer doesn't lock up when I'm in a hurry!) I admit that there aren't a lot of native Linux games (the MS strong point) but WineX works well, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a copy of WINXP

It really sounds like compaq paid no attention to the stuff they acquired from DEC. DEC really knew how to make easy to access cases (as long as you went atleast one step above their cheapest model).

Take for example the multia (just about the smallest alpha system ever build (I've never seen an alphabook to compare it to though)). Undo two thumbscrews. slide the motherboard and backpanel out a few cm, then disconnect the power from the board. Viola, the mobo now just completely comes out the back. Nice and easy to access everything. Too bad you had to pay a bit more to get decent cooling from DEC (the multia had the weakest cooling system ever, one of the chips on the underside of the board was notorious for killing the entire system after it burnt out).

As you can guess, I'm a fan of DEC before the whole DEC -> Decpaq -> Hewlett Decpaq thing

I won't buy ANY HP product.

I bought an HP Color inkjet printer.

Big.Mistake.

ever since the pink screen of death i wont buy anything from gainward.

then again, im a huge leadtek fanboy so id probably never buy from them anyway

I use to not like IBM's HDs but i just got mine RMA'd and its working great. (I guess this years drives are good)

Anything USB. Universal my ASS. Yeah, they have gotten alot better over the years...with Windows...try to use your fancy USB devices in Linux or BeOS, good luck.

Also, any keyboard with Windows keys, god how I hate them...actually any keyboard that's NOT an IBM Model M (or something just as tough)...sigh they just don't make em like they used to...

Man, three years ago before I ever owned a computer I thought the antitrust trial against M$ was bullshit. Why should a company be penalized for its success in building good products, I naively thought. Then two years ago I built a PC and put Windows ME on it. Needless to say once I discovered what a bag of shit M$ products are, and then did my homework on some of their business tactics I decided no more of my money was going there. I'm in the process of moving over to linux.

So is XP Pro Corp. ;)

I won't buy PNY RAM, IBM hard drives, Compaq anything, or Canon printers

Maxtor drives ... had too many outright fail

PNY anything.. Even their CD-Rs aren't worth the few cents a disc.

Almost anything Compaq (i will still buy their laptops... cheap and some decent parts)

and i don't buy pre-builts. Never have, and I see no need to start.

______________________________
all in all, the only things I have a grudge against are Maxtor and PNY.. The rest of it has been worth the money i paid for it(sometimes cheap, and I knew it at the time)..

and i refuse to work on Compaqs or the new HPs.. Too little room to work with and with everything proprietary it is a bitch to try to get new things to work with them.

hmm i just bought some PNY RAM 1gig of PC2100 SODIMMs for my lappie, it sucked, just tried to return it darn easter! closed, though im guessing compusa wont take i t back coz i ditched the boxes.,

*and* to top it off i found P2700 512M sodimms from frys for $99 instead of 189 for the PNY PC2100s

i wont buy anything linux

Anything from Tiger direct. They stiffed me on a mobo deal once and their customer service department pretty much sucks, so I won't do business with them anymore.

Of course I should have known better since their prices were dirt cheap at the time (haven't looked lately) and you generally get what you pay for...

won't buy pre-made computers (gateway, dell, ibm, etc.). Apple is included in this. This does not include laptops.

Creative. While the name used to be something you could go by, I don't see any reason to stick with them anymore. So I won't.

Cyrix. Nuff said.

NVidia. This is mainly for the same reason as Creative, and the fact that ATI is slowly coming up and kicking NVidia in the ass. I'm not saying that I won't buy another NVidia card, I just don't see it happening any time soon.

IBM hard drives. I've had one fail, and have heard the stories. Sorry IBM, WD forever =\

Any other version of Windows, save for XP. 2000, while great, just doesn't cut it for me anymore. XP is the epitomy of all windows operating systems, and i'm amazed at why people refuse to upgrade. if you are an average computer user, xp is great. it has enough features to make a geek happy, and is the most stable out of any windows os i've ever encoutered (all).

other than that, i'm pretty willing to give any product a try. it has to fail for me to completely give up on it, and fail hard. if it's something minor, then maybe. but 90% of the time, if it does its job, and does it well, then chances are that i'll buy another product from the same line.

Ahh yes, the best keyboard ever made. I found a site that sells them prett cheap and picked myself up a few.

Man, I love the feel of those things.

Damn, after reading over these, I feal like crap!!

I own most of whats listed but I do not have a grudge against anything, yet:
The IBM SCSI drive is about to die
SoundBlaster 5.1 card was hard to get working (but works!)
USB can KISS MY ASS!!!!
I will soon be installing Linux on a test machine to see if I like it.

Oh, I and I second that Compaq crap. I have to deal with these electronic cow chips at work!

1. Dad shoots vacation video on a MiniDV video camera.
2. Four hours of video firewired onto IBM 75GXP without a single dropped frame
3. Days spent editing and refining the raw footage.
4. Editing finished. File saved to 75GXP.
5. "Quality, genuine IBM Product" Kicks the bucket beyond repair. We couldn't even ghost the drive onto the trusty Western Digital 80 gig.
6. Discovers various old time profanity that only my dad would know.
7. IBM is the devil, even though their Canadian head office is in my town...

I won't buy anything made by Toshiba. I
crossed them off the list years ago when
they sold classified U.S. milling technology
to the (then) USSR, enabling the ruskies to
build much quieter submarine propellers.
With a brother serving in the USN at the time,
I decided that people who were increasing
the risk of his getting torpedoed weren't
going to get any money from me.

everything that was on my list is no longer in business. I'm not fans of certain companies like HP computers, Gateway, and some other parts.. but more or less...they are all the same.

3 years of working in walmart electronics has taught me to steer clear of thompson consumer electronics (RCA, GE). I love sony, never had a part go wrong. Pioneer makes some awesome dvd players, and the slot one I'm using in my comptroller. I like kenwood audio, but I think my next car system might be Alpine.

I am amazed that no one said Lexmark yet..... They have got to have the worst printers on the market. As For HP, I have an old Officjet 1120c that has never steerd me wrong, I love it. It may be a little slow on color, but it still kicks ass every other way. Their new shit sucks.

I absolutely HATE Nikon's customer support (love my coolpix 995 tho) when I first installed Xp, it was dualbooting with a 98 install. The software for my camera work flawlessly with 98, so I thought it would be fine in Xp (just d/l some updates, and be ok) WRONG!!!!! their software HATED XP, and not even the drivers would work. So I called tech support, I explained my problem, told them all my info, gave them the serial # etc.. They then asked me about my computer, I said (well, I have a blah,blah,blah dualbooting to.." the guy said "ok, stop right there, we dont support dualbooting", WHAT? I said, no problem, just give me the fixes for XP, "I cant, dualbooting is not supported" I argued with this asshole for 20 minutes that dualbooting has nothing to do with this problem, and all it got me was a talk with his "manager" who said the same bullshit. I even tried to call a few hours later and told them that I disconnected the HD with 98, and they told me that they still wouldnt help me.


Fuckers.

From then on I trashed all their software, and use my camera as a removable storage device (it works great)

"I am amazed that no one said Lexmark yet..... They have got to have the worst printers on the market."


USED to be. The new ones are a lot better. I've had no problems from any of the 3 Z53's on my home network. They're fast, great color reproduction, and unlike the HP/Epson/Canon's I've had before, they haven't broken since I bought 'em 2 years ago.


Agreed on the compaq stuff. With the exception of their laptops, compaq is utter crap. Of course, they buy the laptops from another company and stick their label on them, so they're not REALLY compaq laptops ;)

Have to agree with shakran about the Lexmark printers - my Z53 works great for me :)

I don't really hold any grudges per se, but I do tend to stay away from products by companies whose business tactics I tend not to like. Microsoft and Sony are includedin these. However, if I find that their product is far beyond the alternative I won't be stopped from getting it. For example, my Sony minidisc player/recorder.

The KDS Disk storage unit that hooks to a pc, Kept locking up and would not work, Called Comp USA online who I bought it from they just said yeah we dont carry that anymore, Called KDS and they said yea we cant get it to work either. Thats there own &*%%( tech support people. So no more KDS anything

Creative Labs. I bought a CD drive that did not work with most CDs, and they refused to replace it. I avoid Microsoft software (It's buggy shit), but thier hardware is OK. I'm happy with Linux, even though X crashes every few weeks when I'm stressing it.

i will never buy another via product.

I bought a FIC super7 motherboard a few years ago, and will never buy another piece of crap from them, or their shitty via chipset they used. AGP just would not work under windows, no matter what drivers I used. Not for me, or the 4 other people I know who bought the same product.

Of course, it's fine under linux, but that's beside the point.

Hmmm... I have been using win2k proffesional on my computer (ASUS A7V-E mobo, 1.2 GHz AMD Athalon, Sound blaster live, PNY verto GF3, and 1 GB generic SDRAM) for over 2 years now and have only once gotten a BSOD. There have been a few annoying bugs that have come and gone over that time, so it isnt perfect.

My next computer will probably have both Linux and my old WIN 2k.

i will never buy radeon... NVIDIA for life

hmm.... had shit luck with Lexmark printers. I'm a out of the box computer guy for the time being, too lazy to build. I have had good luck with my hp printer, its about 3 years old and just now starting to go nuts. Mac's just plain suck. Sony everything sucks anymore. Bose speakers are the biggest joke in the electronic world. *no highs, no lows, it must be bose!!* I have yet to try Linux, I might check out Red Hat 9 soon. I've been running XP Pro Corp for a year or so now, and it hasn't given me any shit at all. Roxio 5 was a bit of trouble, but apply the 19 MB patch to the 200k executable and all was well!!

What to do about Adobe products? or games? (computer bearly runs the games w/o trying to emulate it, let alone the time it takes to support it)

But thats the only thing from deleting the Win partition from my HD.

I am all about switching over. Any suggestion for video editing software (and i really cant be stilted by a command line interface, I need an enviroment where I can just focus on what needs to be done) but im eager to try anything.

Glad I read the replies, I'm a Toshiba avoider as well. I was in the Navy at the time. They have since apologized for it, by the way.

That's what's holding me back, too. Gotta
have Premier, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
If and when Adobe releases Linux versions,
goodbye MS.

But my s**t-list is indelible. :)

(At least until the Alzheimers sets in...)