have we all had it with lousy offshore phone tech support, or what????

The sale of ****ty computers is a multiple-faceted problem, and to
blame Gateway alone is inaccurate.

The buyers are, generally, stupid in several respects-they buy on
purchase price alone, don't understand the tradeoffs involved, and
refuse to use good sense in specifying, installing, and maintaining
their hardware. On the other hand the vendors respond to these problems
with their own agenda in mind: they cut costs to the absolute minimum,
ignore all previous standards as far as possible (and refuse to
document the rest), and pander to customer ignorance at every turn, all
to maximize their profits in the only quarter that counts: this one.

Consider well-built products, and why they are well built. They always
have certain things in common: relatively high (but not extreme) build
cost, solid conservative engineering, a general refusal to pander to
fashion but usually a certain style of their own, rarely being ugly.
Most importantly, they are designed at arm's length from marketing and
sales and have user bases consisting of above-average people.

On 28 May 2005 16:38:57 -0700, wrote:

Consider well-built products, and why they are well built. They always
have certain things in common: relatively high (but not extreme) build
cost

True but not really that bad when you actually see what your are
getting. My last White Box cost me around $150 more than what GW
showed as being somewhere close in hardware (brand names not
included). GW wanted $1200 with a lot of the components being a
mystery when it came to manufacturer. My White Box was $1350 and all
the components were brand names of my choice (even if they were
probably built in Asia or Mexico).

So for an additional $150, I got a box built MY WAY and with the brand
components I chose and just to throw a hard throbbing bone to Ted, I
get local support from the actual guy that built the damned thing in
the first place who's reputation is riding on every box he puts out
there and who actually CARES about my happiness with the box. Stuff
you would never see GW or those other fake companies employ in their
swiftly failing business model.

and have user bases consisting of above-average people.

That may have been true 5 years ago but people are starting to wake
up, even Nik's Sheep. I see a lot more people that have no idea about
computers except how to turn one on and punch the keyboard for word
processing results and emailing the kids on the weekend starting to
approach the local White Box builders for their next system. So you
might ask why someone so ignorant of computers would start looking at
White Boxes over GW, Dell and those other fake computer companies.
Because they are starting to see that quality backed by local support
is actually a better value in the long run even if the cost is a
couple of hundred bucks more in the short run. You don't have to be
computer literate to "finally" figure that out, even for Sheep.

I read tonight where even the software companies are starting to loose
big time as a result of years of customer abuse, not because of
Pirates. Mostly honest people are starting to employ cracks and key
generators to "continue" the usage of software that they can not get
the support they paid for when they first shelled out for the
software. Same with the headaches attributed to activation problems
like MS and Symantec are using. People pay big bucks for the right to
use the software and then are confronted with activation problems and
a company unwilling to make it right or a company where no English
speaking support can be reached for help. So, they just say to hell
with it and get a crack, key generator or WPA_Kill for XP. I own two
legally paid for copies of XP and if MS ever refuses to activate them
when and if I need to reinstall, upgrade my system(s) or move them to
new systems, then I will have no problem stepping around Big Bill's
activation and use them anyway.

The crap these trashy companies have been dealing out to the public
for years is starting to come back and bite them in their third world
loving arses and they are fighting like to hell to stay alive.

Regards,

On Sat, 28 May 2005 21:34:44 GMT, ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net
(Ben Myers) wrote:

That's what I've seen in the last year or so of fixing or refurbing these
beasts... Ben Myers

I don't see how you keep from pulling your hair out Ben. BTW, I
assume you offer quality built, locally supported White Boxes to your
community. Got a business web site for us to see your work?

Regards,

I still have 90% of my hair even though I can't persuade people from buying the
cheap junk sold in stores and elsewhere. I build no more than a half dozen
white boxes a year. The money is to be made cleaning up messes made by other
people, either the manufacturers or the computer owners themselves with poor
decisions.

Small networks are not as plug-and-play as everyone pretends they are. Wifi has
its tricky elements. People need Cat 5 runs between office cubes and patch
panels. Hard drives crash, and I replace them even under warranty, because
clients quickly learn to value their data. Adware, spyware and other varmints
regularly inhabit computers. Stores and name brand mfrs (e.g. Dell) regularly
sell low-ball computer setups. This past week, I sold and installed 5 memory
upgrades to P4 XP systems which had been delivered with only 256MB. My clients
considered me a miracle worker for figuring out how to speed up their systems so
much.

I can get white boxes assembled from my local distributor for $25 over the price
of the individual parts, but everyone in my area is so enamored by Dell or the
latest sale at Circuit City, that the selling cycle is not worth the time to
sell a white box. My cardiologist has eMachines garbage running his office,
less reliable than my ticker and circulatory system. Go figure. I go with the
flow... Ben Myers

On Sat, 28 May 2005 22:53:29 -0400, Shooter fhasfdjh@AlkjdaF@com wrote:

On Sat, 28 May 2005 21:34:44 GMT, ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net
(Ben Myers) wrote:

That's what I've seen in the last year or so of fixing or refurbing these
beasts... Ben Myers

I don't see how you keep from pulling your hair out Ben. BTW, I
assume you offer quality built, locally supported White Boxes to your
community. Got a business web site for us to see your work?

Regards,

"Shooter" fhasfdjh@AlkjdaF@com wrote in message
...
On 28 May 2005 16:38:57 -0700, wrote:

Consider well-built products, and why they are well built. They always
have certain things in common: relatively high (but not extreme) build
cost

True but not really that bad when you actually see what your are
getting. My last White Box cost me around $150 more than what GW
showed as being somewhere close in hardware (brand names not
included). GW wanted $1200 with a lot of the components being a
mystery when it came to manufacturer. My White Box was $1350 and all
the components were brand names of my choice (even if they were
probably built in Asia or Mexico).

So for an additional $150, I got a box built MY WAY and with the brand
components I chose and just to throw a hard throbbing bone to Ted, I
get local support from the actual guy that built the damned thing in
the first place who's reputation is riding on every box he puts out
there and who actually CARES about my happiness with the box. Stuff
you would never see GW or those other fake companies employ in their
swiftly failing business model.

snip

I think you've made an important point here. The way that the big guys
hold down cost is to cap the price they are willing to pay for a given
component. The manufacturers of the cheapest part gets the contract to make
thousands of these pieces of **** that end up in the homes of unsuspecting
users. Even if a user is have aware of the quality issues, many of the crap
components come from the same companies that make good quality ones. The
difference is in the price of the parts they can use and still make a
profit. This is also why you often see such polarization of opinion as to
the quality of one companies products as viewed by different users and
techs. Where a white box builder will swear by one companies component and
then some corporate repair tech tells you they make cheap shoddy components.
The difference is the white box guy isn't buying their cheapest model, but
the repairs tech is seeing the cheapest models from the same manufacturer
stuffed into some name brands low end model with the expected results.

One of the biggest screw ups I ever saw was a series of 33.6/56K
winmodems the specifically stated they were not to be installed in Celeron
systems that showed up in a number of name brand systems sporting Celeron
CPUs. The same company offered a full chipped version of the same modem and
recommended it's use in Celeron systems, for about a $1.50 more per unit at
wholesalers cost. But for that $1.50 the end-user usually got a much more
stable dial-up connection at a higher baud rate (usually above 48K). But
I'm sure at the corporate level a savings of $1.50 per unit looked good.

KC

You are wrong there Shooter. Sheep are buying 3rd world built ****
(HP, Compaq. EMachine, etc.) in record numbers from Hack store fronts
like Staples, Office Max, Office Depot, Sears, Best Buy, etc.... The
Sheep are also still going crazy over the mail order Taiwanese ****
with the Dell name stamped on it and GW, well GW is Dead, Dead, DEAD...
It just doesn't realize it. It is only holding on because it added
cheap **** Taiwanese Plasma's to its "****" line of 3rd world
offerings.

Even the government said that this past Christmas showed a record sales
of computers from these Hack Store fronts selling cheap 3rd world ****
with their names stamped on them. Same for Dell and their Taiwanese
line of ****.

No Shooter, the Sheep are still too stupid and closed sighted to
understand the long range value of going for quality coupled with local
support over that of cheap assed **** from Taiwan with an American
Company name stamped on it with no noticeable support (GW, Dell, HP,
Compaq, EMachine, etc., etc., etc..........)

NIK


Shooter wrote:
That may have been true 5 years ago but people are starting to wake
up, even Nik's Sheep. I see a lot more people that have no idea about
computers except how to turn one on and punch the keyboard for word
processing results and emailing the kids on the weekend starting to
approach the local White Box builders for their next system. So you
might ask why someone so ignorant of computers would start looking at
White Boxes over GW, Dell and those other fake computer companies.
Because they are starting to see that quality backed by local support
is actually a better value in the long run even if the cost is a
couple of hundred bucks more in the short run. You don't have to be
computer literate to "finally" figure that out, even for Sheep.

That reminds me. I am running XP Home on 512 meg of mem. Will an
additional 512 give me the added performance to justify the $116
crucial price for a 512 stick of DDR PC2100?

Thanks... NIK

*** Email Address is a spam trap... Do Not Use ***



Ben Myers wrote:
I still have 90% of my hair even though I can't persuade people from buying the
cheap junk sold in stores and elsewhere. I build no more than a half dozen
white boxes a year. The money is to be made cleaning up messes made by other
people, either the manufacturers or the computer owners themselves with poor
decisions.

Small networks are not as plug-and-play as everyone pretends they are. Wifi has
its tricky elements. People need Cat 5 runs between office cubes and patch
panels. Hard drives crash, and I replace them even under warranty, because
clients quickly learn to value their data. Adware, spyware and other varmints
regularly inhabit computers. Stores and name brand mfrs (e.g. Dell) regularly
sell low-ball computer setups. This past week, I sold and installed 5 memory
upgrades to P4 XP systems which had been delivered with only 256MB. My clients
considered me a miracle worker for figuring out how to speed up their systems so
much.

I can get white boxes assembled from my local distributor for $25 over the price
of the individual parts, but everyone in my area is so enamored by Dell or the
latest sale at Circuit City, that the selling cycle is not worth the time to
sell a white box. My cardiologist has eMachines garbage running his office,
less reliable than my ticker and circulatory system. Go figure. I go with the
flow... Ben Myers

On Sat, 28 May 2005 22:53:29 -0400, Shooter fhasfdjh@AlkjdaF@com wrote:

On Sat, 28 May 2005 21:34:44 GMT, ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net
(Ben Myers) wrote:

That's what I've seen in the last year or so of fixing or refurbing these
beasts... Ben Myers

I don't see how you keep from pulling your hair out Ben. BTW, I
assume you offer quality built, locally supported White Boxes to your
community. Got a business web site for us to see your work?

Regards,

On 29 May 2005 09:50:10 -0700, wrote:

You are wrong there Shooter. Sheep are buying 3rd world built ****
(HP, Compaq. EMachine, etc.) in record numbers from Hack store fronts
like Staples, Office Max, Office Depot, Sears, Best Buy, etc.... The
Sheep are also still going crazy over the mail order Taiwanese ****
with the Dell name stamped on it and GW

Well, maybe you're right. I'm just going on what I see locally and
the local builder I use is simply covered up building new systems for
those that have had a stomach full of the foreign crap with American
Names on them. He does do a lot of local advertising though, trying
to educate the "Sheep" which seems to be working.

Regards,

On 29 May 2005 09:59:45 -0700, wrote:

That reminds me. I am running XP Home on 512 meg of mem. Will an
additional 512 give me the added performance to justify the $116
crucial price for a 512 stick of DDR PC2100?

I went to 1024 from 512 and didn't really see all that much difference
on my XPHome setup. I may be wrong but doesn't it really depend on
how and what stuff you got going on your system such as stuff running
in the background all the time?

Regards,

On Sun, 29 May 2005 09:57:05 -0500, "Kevin Childers"
wrote:

The way that the big guys
hold down cost is to cap the price they are willing to pay for a given
component.

And that is just fine for the $399 pieces of Taiwanese junk out there.
If someone wants such junk and knows WHY it is only $399 then go for
it. However, these immoral companies market this junk is if it were
the cutting edge of the industry and make the buyer (Sheep) think it
is made by Americans in American Shops located in America. LIES! All
LIES! You wouldn't believe how many people think that if it has
"Intel Inside" then it must be made by Americans in American Shops
located in America. Hell, from what I am told, the "Intel Inside"
Processor isn't manufactured in America any more.

Then you have the ones that make the "Sheep" think that their $999
Taiwanese system is 3 times the system of their $399 Taiwanese system
when in fact it is just packaged in a prettier box and has a larger HD
and more memory, probably no more than $100 worth of actual upgrades
to what was in the $399 system or $10 more if buying this crap by the
freighter load.

Its not just the computer industry but corporate mentality in all
fields, all over the globe. Its "Let's stick a hard one up the Arse
of the buying Public". And as long as you have your lobbyists pay the
politicians off by giving them money, exotic trips and whores, then
there's no one there as watchdogs.

But its so easy when the worlds so full of brain dead sheep.

Regards,