Paul - RE: "I asked for a K6-2 system.
INSTANTANEOUSLY she said:
"NO I WON'T SELL YOU ONE - I have a Celeron system, etc., etc.
AMD CHips are NOTHING but Problems , etc., etc. !"
She spent last Thursday calling 34 of HER customers and switching them over to
Intel Celeron systems - and she is UPSET TO THE MAX with the
AMD/Motherboard problem.
And she said the problem was the K6-2 as well as the motherboards!
Just thought you'd like to know."
Who would do you believe, a salesperson, or a director at Intel?
The Intel person, of course.
Who would you believe, a salesperson, or a director at Gateway?
The Gateway person, of course.
""In a quality-control check, we noticed an anomaly, so we put [production] on hold for a bit. We wanted to make sure that if we saw an anomaly that we didn't ship a bunch of them out there," said Mike Ritter, a director of product marketing in Gateway's Home Division. However, "this is not an AMD-specific problem."
"The anomaly was tracked to the PCI bus on the motherboard, which is manufactured by Microstar International. It wasn't seen in 100 percent of the machines, so some Gateway Select PCs using K6-2 have shipped. Ritter could not say how many."
zdnet.com
So, clearly, this is a motherboard problem, not an AMD chip problem. It isn't AMD's fault Gateway chose such a cheap motherboard to build their systems with. This is obviously Gateway's fault for using a POS motherboard. Have you seen either Compaq, IBM, Toshiba, HP, Sony, NEC, or Packard Bell announce hardware glitches?
In case you didn't fully realize this part of the above linked article, I will repost it.
"Wayne Freeze, a technical writer and author of several books on Visual Basic who lives in Beltsville, Md., ordered a 450MHz Gateway Select PC on March 2 and was given a ship date of March 5. So far, he has yet to receive the machine or a call from Gateway. Only after several calls did he find out his machine was delayed because of a technical problem. He has not yet received a ship date.
"Calling the customers Gateway may not have gotten around to Freeze yet, but the company has been contacting customers whose ship dates have been approaching, Ritter said, to offer them a Celeron-based PC. "We're trying to be more proactive in our approach to these situations," he said.
""I love Gateway," Freeze said. "Their customer support has always been excellent. I'm not annoyed by them holding [the PC] up as much as I am with them not telling me what the heck is going on.""
I don't give a flip what Freeze thinks about Gateway's customer support, but what I do notice here is a loyal GATEWAY consumer, not a loyal INTEL consumer. This guy has purchased an Intel-based Gateway system(s?) in the past, and now, he has purchased an AMD-based system. This is just one example of what is happening in the retail market, where Intel's market share is continuing to decline, even though they are dropping processor prices.
Unfortunately for AMD, this motherboard problem will hurt their image with Gateway consumers. I wonder if many salespeople are like Sinclair. If so, the consumer will think it is an AMD problem. |
