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To: Tony Viola who wrote (73936)	2/18/1999 12:16:00 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 186894

Tony,>>>at the risk of forever being typecast as a reliability bigot <<< In the same way I am a "you almost can't tell the difference from the real thing" bigot. First of all these people, who almost always have a deal for you with something that is almost like new type thing, will never understand what people at the well run companies have discovered long ago. People who work for and manage things for successful companies have long discovered that cheap is very expensive. First of all, wrt, to a company's purchase and implementation of PCs, the hardware represents only about 12% over the life of that PC when you include all the software, maintenance, and support that PC will need over its useful life. In the case of a microprocessor (eg, PII, PIII, or Xeon), you are talking about something that cost less than 1% of total cost. No sensible person responsible for that part of the budget is going to risk his company's performance to save a quarter of 1% especially if that involves some risk - where there could be problems with reliability, compatibility, or slower response time where each second could mean enormous differences. So much for the Corporate side of where AMD might represent some kind of competition. It is in the consumer side where $100.00 or even even for $2.50 there are going to be these types who inevitably go for the thing "that is almost like new", or "almost just as good as the real stuff", or where you "hardly notice the difference in speed". For these people, there is the never ending quest to get a bargain. Inevitably they are going to squeeze a few more dollars and get something that is almost as good as the AMD stuff. I have been observing people like this for quite some time now, and I've come to this conclusion. For most things in life, these people kind of seem to get away with being cheap - but when it come to computers - it never seem to work. Have you ever notice how for these people, the computer never seem to work. The guy who sold me this at the store said this, but it's doing that. The manufacturer refuses to fix this even after I called them 35 times. I sent it in to be fixed, but they returned it with not really fixing what I wanted to be fixed and I had to send it back. That peice of software is a piece of **. I'm so P*-off that *****. And, it never seem to end. They could spend several hundred hours of their time, as if that wasn't worth a dime, and go around being frustrated all the time. I just hate to be around people like that. (EOS)End of sermon, Mary BTW: What do you thing of the trade or Wells, Homer Bush, and Lloyd Grahame for Clemens?

To: Tony Viola who wrote (73936)	2/18/1999 1:43:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

<Maybe they don't matter in cheap "toy" PCs, strictly for home use, and, in this country, these are probably a second or third PC in the home.> I think you struck a major point with this one. I'll bet half of these sub-$1000 computers are not going to first-time buyers, but rather to homes which already have a computer or two. Tenchusatsu

To: Tony Viola who wrote (73936)	2/18/1999 7:12:00 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Tony, RE:"We have found a severe reliability problem with closeout (aka grey market) hard drives. Sometimes they don't read or write, that's all! Samo samo with cheap RAM, undoubtedly SIMMS vs. the much more reliably newer DIMMs".... Tony, before you become too much of a skeptic. I have taken an E-machine apart. The HD was a Seagate. Others use Samsung. The CDROM was 24x, do you need 32x? Hardly poor "reliability" or off brand names. They get a good deal because the drives are small relative to what else is out there. Then again, who needs 13 gigs? The RAM in the one I looked at was a SDRAM DIMM...not a SIMM. 66 MHz RAM works fine at 66 MHZ...just like a Celeron.