Subj : Os/2 Evolution
To   : David Bowerman
From : Matt Bedynek
Date : Wed May 24 2000 09:12 pm

Hello David.

Wednesday May 24 2000 21:56, David Bowerman wrote to Matt Bedynek:

 DB> I'll limit this to recent (last couple of months) bad experiences to
 DB> avoid rehashing old history.  The five good experiences go back over
 DB> the last couple of years.

Precisely.

It depends on the manufacturer.

If I have two manufactuers that both make good products,. The first time one or 
the other gives me problems thats the last I deal with them.  I am -very- 
unforgiving when it comes to my money.

Here is my good and shitlist:

Good:

Tyan - Good support, regular bios updates to address common issues.  Reliable 
products.

Supermicro - Best support and products I've seen so far.  Very knowledable 
people, can be hard to reach technical support, but there are ways around 
that--just tell them your issue needs immediate attention.  Support e-mails 
answered in less than 24 hours.  Very reliable products.

Gigabyte - Okay.  Some of their motherboards were unable to provide the power 
required by the Geforce line of cards.  Don't like the support all that much. 
Shitlist:

3DFX - Poor driver support.  For both Linux and Windows NT. :-)  A recent 
review compared 3D cards and benchmarks between Windows and Linux.  3DFX has 
the poorest quality drivers.  Then again, their windows drivers are not that 
great either.

GUILLMOT - A maker of NVIDIA cards.  Their cards are OK.  I purchased a Prophet 
DDR card and it went out once.  Now it's going out again - this time the active 
cooling device (fan) is dieing.   Like some of the other card manufacturers 
they are putting these cheap heatsink/fan combos.

DIAMOND/S3 put the same cheap combo on their cards, but I had that card 3x as 
long as the Guillemot and it still works!

My need for support is sometimes limited as I am able to slow 95% of the 
problems in front me of.

My good / bad experiences are mostly limited to returning products for RMA.  I 
rarely need any support outside that arena.

Regards, Matt

  ICQ No. 16568532
  mbedynek@pdq.net

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