>>Are you suggesting that Asus motherboards are a "motherboard du jour?" They have long been considered the best motherboard out there by many experts. And among the best by all the other experts.
>
>Yes, I consider the Asus to be a board du jour, in the same way I consider other 'major' vendor's boards (companies like SuperMicro, Tyan, Abit) to be; they are treated as interchangable, the vendors aren't good about keeping a given revision of a board available, and I have to wade through several layers to get to an engineer if I really need one.

Are you suggesting that you can talk to an engineer that worked on a brand-name board without wading through several layers? Do you think they man the 1-800 lines? Or is that 1-900 lines? I have always been able to go to the Asus Web site and get the answers I need or, occationally, I call our supplier's support line and get the answers I need. Oh, and I wait on hold for 5 minutes at most.

>I really consider Super 7 to be the dead horse of the year. Super 7 is a single processor architecture; with the likely direction of Wintel operating systems heading for NT, I want an architecture that can scale to >1 CPU. The boards that I buy for myself are dual-processor boards, on the theory that even if I can't buy a CPU enhancement that will give me 1.5x the real throughput of a single processor now, I can certainly get that level of performance from a second CPU and an SMP kernal under NT.

I don't suggest buying a new system with a Super 7 socket either. So why harp on the Super 7? I have no problem with buying dual processor boards for that reason.

>As for Asus being 'the best', we differ in opinion. I like the P2B, but I'd rather have the GX chipset, which both Tyan and SuperMicro have been shipping for several months in both Slot 1 and Slot 2 flavors. The Abit B6's soft configuration features make it an attractive, stable BX platform, with, IMO, a better BIOS than either Asus or SM ship today, and for the overclocking crowd (I'm not a fan of overclocking) may be the single best buy available.

Asus has a dual PII Xeon board (XG-D) with the GX chipset. Asus boards are fast.

>During normal business hours, maybe; there's no comparison for the home and small business user who need basic phone support after hours. The large vendors can afford to staff a help line 24/7.

Yeah, hence the high price. A lot of home users don't want to pay the price. They can wait a few hours for help.

>In the case of the server marketplace, the big guys have an advantage, too; most of them can keep spares for their systems within 4 hours of a customer site. I probably can roll my own low-end server around a P6DGS or DGU (or the S2DGU if the customer wants to go Slot 2) and an ARO1130CA RAIDPort and get better bang for the buck (that's the configuration I run at home, a P6DGS with dual PII/400s, 256MB of ECC memory, two 2GB CP2107s as a mirrored pair for the boot/system partition, and a 4 drive array of Quantum Atlas IIIs in a striped set with parity, controlled by the AR01130CA), but it's unlikely that I can afford to keep all the necessary spares to keep that server up with <4 hours downtime in mission-critical environments. If nothing else, I have to troubleshoot the system on site
>before I can get the system back up and running. HP, Compaq, Micron and Dell can roll in a complete, new system to meet service requirements and troubleshoot the hardware off-site at their leisure. You can be up and running as quickly as the last complete backup can be put on the new box.

The small shops that I know have enough spare parts to build many complete systems at anytime. And access to local distribution centres that have enough spare parts to build thousands of complete systems. We use a local guy. We had a power supply go. I brought the box over and had it fixed in 20 minutes. If he wasn't around, I would have had to do it myself. Would have been running in less than an hour. If it was a brand-name machine, we would have had to go to a backup because they often user proprietory power supplies and also don't want you to work on "their" machines. You are mentioning what you would have to do; this is irrelevent as you don't run a computer shop.

>If I have a need for a strong service staff, a major vendor that has a lot of depth, in terms of spare parts and staff, offers me a better chance of keeping things up and running.

Most large companies have spare parts. And again, it is a decision a company has to make: Do you want to pay for their spare staff? And I disagree. I have heard too many stories about people calling for tech support and not being able to talk to anyone who knows what he's talking about.

>Actually, yes, Dell can refer you to an ISP - they own a couple. They will come and set up your network for you for a price. And they have greater depth of knowledge on their staff going for them. I can guarentee that if I have a service contract with HP on an LH3, and I call in with serious trouble, they can connect me with an MCSE or CNE at almost any time of night or day, regardless of vacation schedules, personal emergency or illness. And they can get me spares on virtually any hardware that I bought through them.

I would bet Dell knows nothing of local ISPs in my area. I don't consider Dell to be local. Going with a nation-wide ISP doesn't help my local economy. I will come and set-up a network for a better price than Dell will. I can do it tonight actually, when your staff is out of the office. Or on the weekend.

The problems with tech support of many large computer companies has been well-documented and publicized; I don't think I have to tell you that. Again, spare equipment is not a problem for a computer shop.

>A three year life on hardware is not very realistic. This year's high-end 450MHz PI/BX chipset/AGP video/UDMA drive workstation will be below the entry-level curve within two years; BIOS and chipset advances will make a new piece of equipment, with a new warranty, a better buy in terms of new software and standards. I may upgrade my own stuff (as I said, I consider myself to be a hobbyist, and spend far too much time playing with sand) but I wouldn't buy a piece of equipment today on the basis of future upgrades - I made that mistake with Socket 8. How many of the people who bought Pentium Pros actually bought the OverDrive? I didn't; it was less expensive to buy a new BX or GX chipset board and a 400MHz P II than it was to replace the Pro with the Pro Overdrive, which gave you the equivalent of perhaps a P II/333, without the advantages in the newer chipset and BIOS.

Ed, there are still companies running FP 2.6. Do you think they are running dual PIIs? Also, do you understand the cost of upgrading a processor? About the cost of the new processor and 30 minutes (maybe) of time. To upgrade a new machine it is a lot more equipment cost and a *LOT* more time cost. All the software has to be re-installed and configured. The likelyhood of a problem component is greater. None of this is a problem with a new processor. The user just see a faster machine.

>>I am not saying "A small shop is ALWAYS better." I am saying "A small shop is SOMETIMES better."
>
>And I'm not saying "A big vendor is ALWAYS better." I am saying that "A small shop is rarely better, unless unique hardware or software requirements exist that override the advantages offered by a large vendor."

I disagree.

>>Does HP recommend a BX board and PC100 memory so the system can be upgraded to a PII 450 in a year for a hundred bucks or so? I do. Value Added.
>
>Several major vendors, including HP, have offered processor upgrades for their systems, ranging from daughterboards that went (in theory anyway) from the P54C to the P55 to Slot 1. No one in their right mind did it, because by the time the cost of the upgrade became economically attractive, it would only bring the machine up to what was the entry-level box at the time of the upgrade. If Katmai/Pentium III/whatever does take off, and PC98 becomes a viable standard, and vendors change standard RAM types agains (a distinct possibility, since RDRAM, RAMBus and the like will be needed to get better throughput to memory as FSB speeds increase; we're already close to the limits of SDRAM/SyncDRAM implementations today with PC100. I've got a bunch of money in my own UW SCSI stuff, including UW2; FireWire and FCHAN are going to probably move us away from the parallel copper SCSI implementations used in high-end systems today, even with the flexibility gained by the LVD UW2 cabling scheme.

Well, I sold some Celeron systems a few months ago and saved customers over $1000 off a PII 350. I will be installing PII 350s in those machines for about $350 in the next few weeks. They save >$650 for putting up with a Celeron for a few months. And I might be able to find a home for their Celeron processors. There is no argument here.

>Eventually the buying public will realize that piecemeal upgrading isn't going to keep them near the baseline of new, entry-level systems. Processor upgrades stopped being attractive, significant performance enhancements which cost less than subsystem replacement with the 486 - the OverDrive debacle, and the brief attempt by companies like AMD to produce clock-quadrupled processors to keep up with the low-end Pentiums, without the advantages of the new architecture represented the real end of single-component upgrades. In most cases, when a new processor technology became available after the DX4/100, the motherboard needed to change to take fullest advantage of the enhancements..

You keep talking about new, entry-level systems. Do you feel that it is neccessary for companies to run computers that are at least at the level of new, entry-level systems? It is not economical for most companies to replace their systems every year. As I stated before, it is not just the cost equipment. It is the high cost of installation. I have already given you a situation above that demonstrates that processor upgrades can work.