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...)

I clicked on this link with the intension of making exactally that point. Agreed. Bastards. Thanks for endangering my life for a few bucks scum.

At my job.. we have problems with the apple products all the time.. their solution for anything wrong with OS9.. "get os X".. that's now what we are paying them for!!..fix it dammit.

Also HP products are crap..home and office products.. qll our printers on campus are HP and we constantly have problems with them. Plus everytime a toner runs out.. it's 50 bucks. A busy lab around finals can go through 10 toners a day. If a little rubber roller breaks.. 10 bucks.. just little shit you have to buy from them because of proprietary hardware.


Dont get me started on Compaqs.. there is a reason the school paid to terminate their contract with them 2 years early... They were more trouble than they were worth.

IBM: agree to many failure

e-machines: not upgradable and low quality

pre-build computer: all junk except Dell

Intel: get amd cheaper and faster

Lexmark (older printer): two print cartridge = retail price of the printer

epson printer: too hungry in ink, my friend had to buy new inks every month.

Artec DVD: the worst error correction

Elitegroup mobo: worst quality I ever had

3com cable modem: you can cook eggs on it

Originally posted by TwoToTango
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.

what is the problem?
toshiba is not a us company. it's japanese and they are good old friends with the ruskies.

No, it's not a US company. It's a company
that took money from the US to produce
classified military equipment. And then
turned around a sold it to the enemy, in
violation of the terms of their employment.

That's still wrong, wherever your corporate
headquarters happen to lie. And it put lives
in danger.

Many people in the world couldn't give a rip
about the safety of American sailors. If you're
one of them, Toshiba makes some good
stuff. By all means shop with them. I won't.

see also Mondak and Peetster.

"The punishment for violations of this law can be severe. The West German subsidiary of Digital Equipment Corporation was fined $1.5 million for allowing sophisticated computers to be shipped to the Soviet Union. Toshiba Machine Tool Company of Japan sold milling machines to the Soviet Union to make ultraquiet submarine propellers. The technology for the milling machines was licensed to the Japanese company by a U.S. company and sale to the Soviet Union was forbidden. Besides sanctions against Toshiba in Japan for violation of Japanese law, the U.S. Trade Bill of 1988 specifically banned all government purchases from Toshiba Corporation, parent company of Toshiba Machine Company, for three years. The estimated losses were approximately 3 percent of the company's total exports to the United States annually."

From http://www.ais.msstate.edu/age/lesson9/uslaws.html

Sorry all, didn't mean to thread-jack when
I first replied. I'm actually kinda surprised
to get so many responses. I'll go look at
some naked ladies for a while now.

<br>
Dammit, I used to have an IBM Model M. Dammit, Dammit, I shouldn't of given it away! Dammit.<br>
And also, HP is a pain in the balls and ass for warranty replacement. It took them 3 months to get our 2 month old printer replaced with a refurbished peice of crap that was slower and louder.

Anything by Real Corp. I wish real video never caught on. I shutter having to still use their products to watch my space ghost videos years from now.

HP can go play hide and go fuck themselves. I really had no reason to be pissed of at them before but yesterday they really made me angry. Basically, they wouldn't sell me a component for a printer because the part was mysteriously "unavailable." Not out of stock mind you, but "unavailable." The HP rep hadn't ever seen this "status code" before. I had ordered a printer with that component over two months ago, and they kept delaying shipping by saying the component will be in by the end of next month. So, I waited. Called them up today and the component is still unavailable. I did some searching on google after getting the specific part number and found that they were offering it with a cheaper model for free! Essentially, they won't sell me the damn $600 component, but they will give it away for free to someone buying a cheaper printer!

I don't know why so many people have bought IBM hard drives. I didn't even know they made IDE hard drives until I heard people complaining about them. In the last 2 years especially I've heard nothing but bad things about them (DLTA or GXP anyone?).

Zip gruge never again swines !
 

I bought a zip drive from one of our local stores at a fraction of the normal price becuse the power supply was missing, I knew what voltage I needed to run the external drive but there was nothing to indicate which way the connection needed to be made ie positive or negative to pin.
I e-mailed the manufactor's site for advice explained that I needed to know which way round to connect said drive but was repeataly messed around they simply wouldn't tell me becuse they wanted to sell me a new power supply of their own this went on for about 4 days by the end of which I was so pissed off with zip drives that I guesed the connection and got it right the drive works fine but I never use it becuse it winds me up to think about the shoddy treatment I got..by the way as i pointed out to imega any well damped 12 volt supply will do just fine ..

hah iomega zip drives are shit.
Enjoy your "click of death"
i wouldnt put anything valuable on their media..

I won't buy anything from Formac. I couldn't believe it when they decided not to develop OS X drivers for the Formac Pro TV tuner card. There's some open-source development going on that might get it to work, but it's in early early beta.

I e-mailed Formac with the suggestion that they release the last stable OS 9 drivers to the open source community. Surely someone would do the Carbon/Cocoa port for them, but no go.

Dicks.

I won't buy anything from Packard Bell.

On a serious note though, the only company I'm not a fan of is Soyo. I personally had horrible luck with their motherboards.

I'm a big Abit fan.

Also I'm tired of how Fragile AMD cpu's are. I've built lots of amd machine, and man...every p4 machine I build is a lot funner and easier to put together.

Easier as in not worrying about cracking cores, not having to deal with the socket a heat sink retention mechanism, and most importantly not having to use those annoyingly whiney amd stock fans.

I dislike gateway dell compaq hp these are all very low end products I think most people are better off buying pc's from local shops somthing breaks you just take it back to local shop and get it fixed insted of shippng it halfway across the country to get it fixed not to mention you are without a pc for weeks at a time most local shops have it fixed within hours not weeks

Pre-built (except Sony)
SiS (My chipset is busted to the point where my comp bluescreens if tilted off vertical)
Intel (The whole proposed permanent cookie embedded in your processor that had to be turned off after every reboot. Don't think it happened, but I still don't forgive them for it.)
Microsoft (Duh)
Real Networks (Spyware embedded in RealPlayer)

VIA. Never again. I bought a KT133-based motherboard a while ago. Endless problems with Windows 2000. I was always waiting for the next '4-in-1s', with promises that they would fix all the problems. They never did.

Creative Labs. Never again. I bought a number of products from them, including a SoundBlaster Live and a GeForce2 card. Most suffered driver problems, especially in Win2k. Their support was downright useless.

SonicBlue Rio. Never again. I bought two Rio MP3 players from them... the original Rio, and the original RioVOLT. Both crapped out after a few weeks.

Compaq. After I'm done with this laptop, never again. I've owned this laptop since September and already it's almost falling apart. Plus their driver support sucks. I tried for weeks to find a WinXP driver for the 'Easy Access buttons' on my keyboard. I used their support forums. I gave them my exact model number. I got half-a-dozen suggestions, none of which worked.

I have a Compaq that I have used for years without any problems at all...I use it for a monitor-stand. I wouldn't want to actually turn the damn thing on.

Verizon DSL.

A buddy of mine had some trouble setting it up, called their tech support. After going through the standard "is it plugged in?" BS, he explained that he was a Computer Science major in college, and was pretty sure that there was a weak signal to the demarc causing the problem.

The tech support guy said "Gee...I think you're more qualified to fix this than I am...I dunno."

He (my buddy) hung up.

After finally getting a cable modem I needed a ethernet card. Went out and picked up a $10 Netgear card. I should have purchased the $10 Linksys card on the shelf right next to it. Took it home installed it and the fucker wouldn't work. I was a complete novice with ethernet at the time and it took me hours to methodically go through everything I could dream of. Finally, I found hidden somewhere deep within their website that some of the normal cards had been shipped with the wake on LAN card firmware. Download a simple patch and it was fixed in no time. The problem: this had been a known issue for well over a year at that time. Why did I have to dig so deep for the solution? Wasted a good couple hours on that. First and last time I ever buy anything from Netgear.

Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 speakers! Those babies cost $400 dollars. $400!!! And they lasted, *drumroll please*, two weeks. I will never buy anything even remotely associated with Klipsch. Hell, I won't even buy anything with a K in it anymore. If you see these speakers, run as fast as you can the other way.

Mahler...I have a $2000 klipsch system on my computer. They = rule for me. :)

Konichiwaneko,
I am guessing that you have a receiver/amplifier with some Klipsch speakers hooked up to your rig? You don't have the ProMedia's I am guessing (unless you royally got shafted on the price)? Do you have some Synergy's or Reference speakers? THose, those are fabulous speakers. I shoulded have added the caveat that Klipsch speakers (the PMs) are the best on the market......when they work. A two week shelf life is simply unacceptable. Unacceptable. For that amount of money, they should last years.

IBM Hard drives (seen too many fail)
Compaq/eMachine computers (worked on too many)
I dont really like any pre-built systems. Guess its b/c they are cheaper to build yourself.

Apple products for the exception of the iPod. Overly priced slow hardware and bloated OSX. Fuck style.

my dad is the same way for the same reason...i guess it rubbed off on me.

mbox micro studio is a huge pos. to get it working (on XP no 2000 support) you need to disable raid controllers and antivirus, then it still doesn't work. i'm returning mbox and getting cubase sx.

Cendyne burners

I have one right now (seems to be originally manufactured by Benq i think). Rated 48x16x48, but it won't burn CD-R on anything but Sony, TDK, and Fuji at higher than 24 speed.

Tech support sucks
drive doesn't even work with generics that came bundled with it at Best Buy

Norton... take-over your machine, cause more problems than it solves, bunch of ass, uninstall - don't make me laugh, clunky, overpriced, crap support, your update license has expired please pay more, virus and "system doesn't works".

switched to AVG for my virus protection - never looked back.

No Norton -- bad programming, huge footprint, always leaves a bad taste

Best Buy

Microsoft isn't bad, if the price is right -- an Action pack subscription costs $200 a year (ALL MS software), and if you are selling to others, Microsoft is the elephant in the living room

off-brand memory -- NFW

Dell should be in there with compaq. Proprietery IDE ribbons and power sources are not cool. I was surprised i didn't need a proprietery screw driver to take it out with.

I hate any type of prebuilt computer....
I second that thermaltake heatsinks sucks...I had one....never really noticed a diff in temp....loud as hell and a pain in the ass to take off....
Creative isn't a really a good company....you can't really find the right drivers easily at all which sucks when you get a bare bones soundcard.
ATI is good and yes there drivers do seem kinda ass backwards at times to install but the are getting up there in ass kicking performance

Now you get kernel panics instead. ;-)

XP Pro Corp most certianly is not free. Pirated !- free

I stay away from linksys, too much of thier gear is crap.

I stay away from iWill and ATI. I the iWill motherboard's agp slot wouldnt work and they didnt want to help me. When i bought an ATI video card it woulndt work so I called them up exchanged the card 3 different timesand it still wouldnt work. after the third exchange they said i needed to buy a new one because I had sent it in too many times for waranty stuff.

I've had a lot of problems with my 32x Cendyne burner. It won't write at anything over 12x, and frequently gives shitty results... i.e. "scratched-sounding" CD's fresh out of the drive. And I know its not the media, I use either Imation or Memorex.

I'll never again buy watercooling products from dangerden... it's a long story but the short version is their products are poorly constructed and their customer service is practically non-existant.

what else... any iomega cd burner... anything from emachines, lexmark printers, and overclockerz ram.

Apex electronics are the poor man's anything

my list, with no explanation:

• PacBell (now SBC)
• Via
• AOL
• Comcast
• Microsoft
• Toshiba
• Gateway
• Compaq/HP/Digital
• ATI
• Sony VIAO products
• Infogrames

pretty much everything comes down to two things: shitty customer service or crappy ass software/hardware.

Tyan - I have a S2380B (i think) and I've had to baby and doctor this thing to even get it to work. It was a replacement for a previously bad MSI board. The secondary onboard IDE controller was dead within about 2 months, AGP controller often throws a reboot when changing resolutions quickly.

Compaq/HP - Tech support is horrid. Trying to work inside them (especially pre-Psario (sp) models) was a complete nightmare. Hardware they come assembled with is all poor. Driver support is extremly poor.




I've never had significant problems with anything Sony I've bought. Same with Creative Labs (SoundBlaster MP3+ Live PCI & SoundBlaster Platinum), never a driver problem (Win98 & Win2k dual-boot.)

Netgear. I bought a wireless router and wireless card from them a couple of months ago. Biggest mistake I ever made with a tech purchase. The router just doesn't work right, it keeps shitting itself and resetting in the middle of me doing anything on the web. Netgear won't warranty it. When I bought it there was 6 rebates that came with it, four from BestBuy and two from Netgear. Bestbuy honored all their rebates, but Netgear denied their two big rebates totalling fifty dollars since I "didn't send it in on time." The receipt said the rebate had to be postmarked within 30 days of purchase. I mailed it out 18 days after purchase. Netgear never mentioned anything about having to be postmarked by September 14, they just said within 30 days of purchase. I can't stand shady companies like that whose business model is based around screwing customers.

Maxtor hard drive failures. they seem to last 4 years or so. mine, my 2 cousin's each had one fail after 4 years.

I know you were talking about prtinters and such, however my biggest pet peeve about thises guys is when they started shipping their PCs with a restore disc, but no OS discs and no access to drivers, so if you wanted to install something other than what it came with, you could spend hours just getting everything set up.

Restore disc = bad thinking. I bought the computer, give me tools to make it work the way I want, not the way you want me to use.

End of rant.

Peace,

Pierre

Ugh, I hate Dell. Absolute crap. Poor service, shitty product.

I also hate Microsoft. What I don't understand is how come none of these products ever work right? That's just crazy and ....unAmerican. My XP has crashed way too many times. I've reformatted/reinstalled like 12 times in the past 2 years. All I do is surf the net, use MS Word, very rarely Excel and iTunes. Sometimes Windows Media Player. That's it, no games except Starcraft and Age of Empires. There's no way these applications should be crashing my computer. I am a simple casual user. I don't even know how to do HTML and stuff so it's not like I'm screwing around with the computer. I'm a plug and play guy.

Reading this thread is scary. How can all these companies make products that simply don't work or are shoddy? Isn't that fraud?

Oh yeah,

For all the Toshiba boycotters, add Mitsubishi (and NEC, their subsidiary) to the list too. THopefully none of you are using NEC parts or monitors/flat panels etc.

Those fuckers used "slave", POW labor in death camps to build the engines on their Zeros in WWII and other fucked up shit. They would work them to death and torture them too. The fuckin' Japs make Abu Graib look like Disneyland.

And to top it off, when our boys tried to sue the Japanese, our government sold them out and made it illegal to to sue them. Now that's fucked up. Can you imagine our government making it illegal for Jews to get Holocaust reparations? Unbelievable.

Thanks for the info on Toshiba, I've added them to my Shit List too.

AOL = horrible customer service. tried to dispute a bill, and all they did was give 3 free months.... wasn't even enough to cover the cost of the bill. fuckers.

MadCatz products: they make video game accessories. not sure for pc, but for dreamcast,ps2,xbox, etc. they're products are horribly made.

OS 9 came out about 6 years ago, around the same time as Windows 98. if you have a problem with windows 98, you know what microsoft says "get windows xp". Both OS 9 and Windows 98 are old, outdated, and unsupported operating systems. I dont fault them at all for saying that.

Although not really a "tech product"... I won't ever pay money for any of the "Medal of Honor" games. They're nice games; they look great, sound great, play great... for two days. Then you're done, finished. Replay value is pretty much zero, so you might as well throw it away.

If I buy a game, I expect to have at least a few weeks of fun. (Morrowind kept me going for months!).

Hardware: never seem to have had a really bad product.

d-link: bought one of their standard ethernet NICs for my comp. Couldn't get the blasted thing to work in win XP or mandrake 9.0 [this was about a year ago]. So, I called up d-link tech support, contacted some guy with broken english, told me to return the card and get a new one, I did. New card, same issue. Called again, this time they were blaming my CAT5 cable was shoddy for the NIC not working [NOTE: I got some other CAT5 Cable from my friend's dad who's in IT hardware] and it still didn't work.
So, I said screw this, took my 10 dollar loss, bought a linksys card and 15 minutes later, I was on the net on linux and win xp.

Imation I have always ran into trouble with their blank CD's. Lots of errors during burning, plus they flake pretty easily too [the top layer where you write with the sharpie upon flakes off, thus rendering the cd to be useless]

Not to support their actions, but if you are not going to buy products from a company because they were associated with wartime actions, you are going to have to cross off nearly every company on earth. Yeah, its a shitty thing to do, but boycotting them (and using racial slurs to do it :rolleyes: ) because they built stuff for an enemy 60 years ago and used POWs to do it is ridiculous. Might as well also boycott BMW, Mercedes, and all American farming products--all used POW labor to produce things used by one side in that same war. The same thing has been happening for 3000 years... Are you going to boycott all the products ever produced by every company in the world?

Voting with your pocketbook is an excellent thing; doing it for irrational reasons isnt.

My biggest gripe has to be non-Antec power supplies. I've had so much bad luck with all other brands of power supplies (including Enermax, Enlight, etc). The only brand of power supplies I've ever had function for over a year nonstop in a server has been trusty ol' Antec Tru-series power supplies.

Oh yeah, and MS can kiss my ass. I run Slackware.

Ok sailor, you make a good point:

I know what you are saying but I have to think about it a little.

I believe that BMW etc have apologised and paid reparations for their wartime atrocities but the Japanese companies have not. Otherwise I would agree, settle it, move on. But in this case, there has been no closure (at least a satisfactory one).

Also, making a choice to boycott is one of selectivity. For example, if you're vegan or anti-sweatshop, you are going to have one heck of a time trying to get by and stuff. You'll have to basically boycott everyone. But that doesn't mean you can't make a choice and a statment in doing so. Please note, I absolutely understand that companies participate in wartime actions (I would never be able to fly - Boeing, etc *lol*), however, I was trying to make the distinction between those companies and the ones that participated in slave, labor, concentration camps and committed atrocities etc.

Absolutely, you get behind your country in wartime production, but Boeing didn't run death camps etc. That was the differentiaion I was trying to make.

So for me, boycotting company "x" is more symbolic etc and a reflection of my beliefs. Similarly, many Jews indeed boycott Mercedes and Ford even, for their beliefs. More power to them.

I agree with the racial slurs bit; I retract, I got a bit excited. I get really frustrated because I personally see it as an injustice (yes I know life's not fair etc. blah, blah) and an insult to our vets. Two wrongs certainly do not make a right and I definitely don't want to participate in spreading ignorance or blind hatred.

I still hate Microsoft and Dell though...

Gigabyte. A buddy of mine had a top of the line Gigabyte board with dual power regulation systems hooked up to a ups. Guess what killed it? A power surge from within the power regulator that plugged INTO THE BOARD!
Scratch ever buying a gigabyte product.
D-Link
ECS
And a few others that dont come to mind right now.

Gotta say I cannot stand HP/Compaq

Musicmatch and Real are both up there too.

MM used to be kinda ok now it is a bloated piece of shit. Same with Real

Long live winamp 2.81!

Here are things I won't buy/use/touch with someone else's 10-foot pole:

Compaq desktops (I love the Compaq/HP Proliant servers), Dell anything, Gateway anything, Real anything, Lindows/Linspire, ATi (too many bad experiences with various ATi products), and hrm. That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

You might want to add anything made in Mexico and UK too. We fought them too, you know.

Brass eagle(for you painball players) Will keep my rainmaker version 1

Any MMORPG from SOE *after seeing how thay fuged up SWG* Was a great game and concept then thay decided to let it go and start on EQ2 and forget about us.

Thermaltake cooling products.

HP/Compaq for crappy desktop machines. Compaq has always made crap as long as I can remember (remember bigfoot drives?), and HP has inherited the crappiness.

Dell desktops are okay, but Dell laptops keep dying at my company. But I don't know if it's just Dell, because we only buy Dell.

All D-Link products have been crappy to me. You get what you pay for.

Iomega for their crappy Zip drives.

And Microsoft. I'm forced to use their crap at work.

You obviously have never seen a kernel segmentation fault. Don't get me wrong, I use linux and love it, but it has its drawbacks too sometimes. Yes, it can crash, and it can be a hard one.

Alternative for photoshop in Linux is GIMP.

Blender is out there for 3D stuff should you need it. There are several well supported packages for video editing instead of premiere. Go check out sourceforge.net
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Why is it that so many people hate Microsoft? Just because other people do and now you can too? I ask because I use products where I work that are made by Microsoft (Office 2003 suite, Windows Server 2003, Exchange, Navision, etc.) I also use linux as our smtp proxy (spam filter), network monitoring system, and my personal bitch computer (currently running protien folding for TFP.) MS actually does make some decent products. You can't condemn the whole company for one product you may not like. And I am willing to be that MS has never actually done anything wrong to you.

Somewhere up above I was seeing someone bashing IBM because of a drive that went bad. The DeskStar (deathstar) drives were awful, and I bought one, and it went bad. But, I still continue to purchase IBM products. I have the faith. No matter what brand of harddrives you buy, it is easily possible for it to die. IBM makes solid products, especially their thinkpads and blade systems.

OK, on to HP. The only thing I buy from HP are the printers. They are good. Period. They have the largest market share, and it continues to hold. We use both consumer and corporate style printers where I work and most of them work flawlessly. We put a lot of use into these printers, rarely an issue. If an issue arises, I don't write off HP because one of their products had issues. I get over it and move on.

And Compaq? Well, I have seen too many of their consumer products fail. When I was younger, I worked as a service tech at Best Buy, and Best Buy is a major seller of Compaq computers (before HP takeover). Well, all I can say is that they return more Compaqs than anything, for actual return or service. The consumer products seem awful. However, their server equipment is quite good. I'm talking about the ProLiant lines and whatnot.

Dell: Someone mentioned issues with Dell above. Did you have more than one bad experience? We use all OptiPlex machines where I work and PowerEdge's for servers. They run good. There service has always been top notch for us (of course we pay for service as well). We had a Dell PowerVault go bad one afternoon (for those who don't know, the PowerVaults are multi-tape backup systems). We called about 0825 that morning and Dell had one flown from OK City, OK to here and we had it about 2pm. Thats pretty good in my opinion.