>>not. I personally have used Compaq's and installed them for others without any problems there, either. What problems have you encountered with Compaq?
>>
>
>Spotty QA - I've seen lots of DOAs (one of my clients used DEC to provide their turnkey boxes, and after DEC was acquired by Compaq, I got the chance to see all kinds of problems from the models that COmpaq shipped instead.) Drivers are almost always an issue. I won't talk about Compaq's NICs, other than to say they don't play well with others and have a poor track record from my experience. Power supplies are consistently poor. And the parts are nearly always propretary on their low-end boxes. I don't have complaints about their servers, except for NIC issues, but it's a company that I find to be very scary to deal with; they do not seem to pay attention to their OEM customers, and I find their support policies (when you call for free support, better have a credit card on-hand, or they won't talk to you, in case they decide it's your fault, not theirs.)
>
>Generally, I'd say that they're better than Leading Edge most of the time, but not always. They seem to make some bad judgement calls as far as where to cut corners to save a dolar or two. And they're a PITA compared to HP on supporting their PCs.

I agree, the real low end ones do seem to have a QA problem. I've always been able to solve my tech support problems with Compaq's online service (free), I've never had to talk to a live person, free or otherwise.

>
>>My only experience with an eMachine was very positive. A friend bought one that I helped setup. Took it out of the box and 5 minutes later they were online, no problem. An awful lot of extra useless crap came installed on the hard drive, though. Pretty similar to the low-end Compaq's. And I definitely don't like eMachine's and Compaq's decision to do the memory sharing that they do with their video. Does help to keep 'em cheap, though.
>>
>
>I don't mind the sacrifice of some system memory to video - after all, it's there in the AGP spec. I have the option of using non-eMachine parts, often a problem with Compaq's low-end stuff. And since the OS CD comes with it, you can just blow away the preconfigured crud and start fresh with an install from CD that can go with the machine.

True. Having a true OS CD, vs. Compaq's disk image including all their crap is much nicer. I've never had a problem putting a 3rd party NIC in any Compaq that I've tried, anyways.

>
>If you get the impression that I don't like Compaq, well, you're right. I'd rather write COBOL than use the low-end Compaqs. I'd rather debug uncommented APL than use the low-end Compaqs. I'd rather stick bare wires in an electric socket and play PD Voltage Tester than rely on Compaq...

Come on now, tell us how you really feel, Ed. Don't hold back.... ;)

>Acer is not on my list of preferred boards - Asus and SuperMicro make solid products, especially when venturing out of single-user systems. My bias against Acer comes from long periods of piss-poor product, interspersed with a few well-done components. It's hard enough to keep up with what the processors and chipsets are capable of and deal with some manufacturers that know what they're doing than to play Acers' games - they're one of the "board-du-jour" set, so that I was never exactly sure what would arrive from week to week.

We had those problems when we used to get our Acer boards through TechData or Ingram, but since we switched to a more local supplier for them, no more problems. And usually, we don't need to order more of the same too much later, we buy a whole bunch all at the same time, and we get the same parts. Sometimes we do get a different rev BIOS if we order them in separate batches, but it's the same board.


>Dell, Micron and Gateway are reliable vendors that have real engineering departments behind their systems, and very good track records. I like the Dell Inspiron laptops a whole lot. If they have something close to what I need beyond what can be easily bought off-the-shelf, or a client with several offices needs systems built in part to order, all three are good choices. Locally, Gateway's on-site support outfit has the best track record of the three for showing up on time with the needed parts to fix a problem, but not by a lot.

Good info to know. I'll be in the market for a new box before too much longer myself. These 3 seem to be a bit more pricey than some others, but I guess you get what you pay for. :)