Dear Tony:
I have seen those other OEM systems fail far more often. They have gutted their excellent service departments with less experienced lower priced help. In the old days, these companies delivered great service, now they overprice it and underperform. There was a time where an OEM like IBM would ship and install a brand new mainframe when the old one failed and the problem was not fixed in 4 hours. They would move heaven and earth to get you a running system within a guaranteed time. Even when you were a small company with no real clout, with one of their low end machines. That is the kind of service that got them their reputation, and made the customers do repeat business with them.
Now, all they will guarantee is that they will start on it within a certain time but, they will not guarantee it will be ever fixed. When you ask for parts or new services, you get put in a queue and a lot of delays are incurred because thats what the bureaucracy says. The old ones knew all the shortcuts and could help the customer navigate the various systems to get you what you wanted or needed without all the problems that fustrate customers. That vaunted service is not there anymore.
Those that will provide the old style service (those screwdriver shops you disdain), will grow and the big OEMs that do not go back to the old ways of customer SERVICE will wither and perhaps die. How do you think IBM, Compaq, Sun, HP, Dell, and Gateway started?
Also, have you ever looked under the raised floor or behind the racks? Have you ever seen a network patch bay? I have seen OEM power supplies flake metal when the fans fail and they overheat. It does not affect cables but blows backplanes all to hell. Most cable failures come when you move them (a lot). Connector failures are more common (bent pins). Losing one CPU and having 71 usable left is much more desirable than losing one memory module and losing all 8 in a server (I have had this happen to me on six different occasions (once was a cache module on the backplane and it took one of your OEMs, six months to find the problem (the hardware engineers and the software engineers of that OEM pointed fingers at each other (saying it could not be "their" problem (you see what I mean by the loss of experience)))(of course it showed up as an intermittent problem (the system would randomly crash)))).
BTW, many of those companies are doing those 72 PC contraptions in the various back rooms they have. I know of ones in GE, Rockwell, AT&T, and Phillip Morris.
Pete |
