In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Robert Redelmeier
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Frank McCoy wrote in part:
However, about 99% of memory installed on PCs is *not*
EEC or even parity enabled. They all *should* be.

Oh, pray tell, why? Do you believe you know the PC
business better than Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, ... who have
decided to manufacture chipsets and computers without ECC?

Do you believe ~50 US$/box is better spent on ECC than on
improved capacitors, mobo layers, cabling, cooling or shielding?

It shouldn't add more than 10% to the price of memory; which would be
about 2% or less of the price of the computer itself.

The problem isn't Intel or anybody else with the possible exception of
IBM; but there only slightly.

The problem is custom and history.
They didn't do it in the past, for fairly good and decent reasons.
They don't do it *now* because they didn't do it in the past.
That is NOT a good reason.

There are always many improvements possible. The key is to
choose the best ones. Not fixate like a kid in a candy store.

The problem is:
WITH ECC built in, probably over half the cases of "Blue Screen of
Death" or computer crashes and foulups *could* be things of the past!

Even in cases where things like poor capacitors cause spikes, having ECC
memory in the machine would obviate a large portion of those problems.

The original reasons of the extra logic and extra expense just ARE NOT
that relevant any more. They shouldn't even SELL non-ECC memory, for
the relatively tiny price-differential versus the HUGE difference in
reliability. It's like selling retread tires as new ones for almost the
same price. Sure they're CHEAPER ... marginally.

The worst part is, people could actually be KILLED by such mistakes made
by a computer that might have been corrected with ECC ... Yet nobody
will trace it back to that; just: "Sorry, the computer crashed!"

That's unlike a bad tire, which eventually *will* get noticed after
enough people die.

Worse-yet, people aren't even being educated as to what the difference
is. Essentially they're told and even believe that non-ECC memory is
just as good, only cheaper.

"I've ran my computer for years without ECC; and it ran just FINE!"
Only that ignores the freezups, crashes, blue-screens, and other crap
that got attributed to software instead of memory failures. ;-{

These days people seem to *expect* such failures, when 99.99% of the
ones caused by bad memory (probably well over half) could be fixed.

Most people ass-u-me that their memory is good; never EVER running a
memory-test other than the completely useless crap on boot. Hell, most
people, if a computer is crapping out, just replace the whole thing.

In fact, many computer-repair places *encourage* their customers to do
just that ... It makes more money for the company; while running a good
memory-test takes up very valuable technician time and space in the
repair-shop.

For a mere pittance in extra cost these days, especially if ECC memory
was the *standard* instead of the rarely-used, the "extra cost" would be
a huge monetary *gain* instead of a loss. Most especially so in
customer satisfaction.

Still, they don't count "customer satisfaction" as worth a dime these
days, not in comparison to saving ten or twenty cents on a part, do
they?

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