Gateway's Promise not to sell Sub-$1,000 PCs?

Quick! Back up everything! Ten or more years without a failed drive is
pushing your luck! Hurry! ... Ben

On 25 Jul 2006 00:28:47 -0700, "Justin" wrote:


Ben Myers wrote:
Seagate is the Borg in this matter and the general feeling in the industry is
that Seagate bought market share and not technology, and that Seagate will phase
out Maxtor hard drive designs as quickly as possible, to maintain its own decent
reputation. There is no sense in carrying forward two sets of hard drive
designs, two sets of engineers, etc. I would expect the Maxtor brand name to
carry on for a bit, then get dropped, as when Quantum was bought by Maxtor. I
tore down an older computer the other day and one hard drive had a Maxtor label
on an obviously Quantum design. The failed second drive in the system was
(Surprise!) a Maxtor of Maxtor design... Ben Myers



I never had problems with Maxtor... I know people who did.
I like Western Digital myself.

Come ot think of it... I haven't had a hard drive fail since 1995 and
it was a Fujitsu.

Does that mean I'm due?

Ben Myers wrote:
Quick! Back up everything! Ten or more years without a failed drive is
pushing your luck! Hurry! ... Ben



Well I quasi back up. I saye importans junk on diskettes and jump
drives. I back up big files onto another PC thanks to the LAN.

Quasi backup is better than none. Why not a CD-RW with the capacity of over
400 floppy diskettes? And generally more robust, too, if taken care of
properly... Ben Myers

On 25 Jul 2006 12:30:55 -0700, "Justin" wrote:


Ben Myers wrote:
Quick! Back up everything! Ten or more years without a failed drive is
pushing your luck! Hurry! ... Ben



Well I quasi back up. I saye importans junk on diskettes and jump
drives. I back up big files onto another PC thanks to the LAN.

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:03:01 -0400, Ben Myers ben_myers_spam_me_not @
charter.net wrote:

There is no sense in carrying forward two sets of hard drive
designs, two sets of engineers, etc.

Actually some companies that buy out others keep the other's name in
tact in order to "own" their own competition. That way, when you get
****ed off at, lets hypothetically say Seagate, and run off an buy a
Maxtor to get even, you are actually buying from one and the same.

Regards,
Ed

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:55:36 -0400, Ben Myers ben_myers_spam_me_not @
charter.net wrote:

Why not a CD-RW

I use Ghost 2003 on DVD+R's. I have never had much luck with
DVD-RW's. There always seems to be one that will not "reload" after
being written to. Same problem going back over 4 systems with 6
different optical drives and using Nero and Easy CD/DVD Creator. With
that, I can say the problem isn't with the systems, drives or software
but the media. I don't trust RW.

Regards,
Ed

Yes, like Gateway and eMachienes, or Hewlett-Packard and Compaq.

With the large majority of drive sales still OEM through system builders, I
would bet that if the Maxtor brand name survives, it will be as a retail brand.
You can't full procurement managers the way you can fool consumers. But the
Maxtor brand has a well-deserved poor reputation. If it was my brand name, I
would put a stake through its heart and wear a neckace of garlic cloves to ward
off failing Maxtor drives... Ben Myers

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:12:16 -0400, Ed wrote:

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:03:01 -0400, Ben Myers ben_myers_spam_me_not @
charter.net wrote:

There is no sense in carrying forward two sets of hard drive
designs, two sets of engineers, etc.

Actually some companies that buy out others keep the other's name in
tact in order to "own" their own competition. That way, when you get
****ed off at, lets hypothetically say Seagate, and run off an buy a
Maxtor to get even, you are actually buying from one and the same.

Regards,
Ed

Ben Myers wrote:
Quasi backup is better than none. Why not a CD-RW with the capacity of over
400 floppy diskettes? And generally more robust, too, if taken care of
properly... Ben Myers



The floppy disk is for term papers and various MS Word docs.
Everything isnce undergrad is on one diskette dating back to 1995.
Not the same diskette.
Byt yes, big crap I put on CD and DVD-R and RW's.

Ed wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:55:36 -0400, Ben Myers ben_myers_spam_me_not @
charter.net wrote:

Why not a CD-RW

I use Ghost 2003 on DVD+R's. I have never had much luck with
DVD-RW's. There always seems to be one that will not "reload" after
being written to. Same problem going back over 4 systems with 6
different optical drives and using Nero and Easy CD/DVD Creator. With
that, I can say the problem isn't with the systems, drives or software
but the media. I don't trust RW.

Regards,
Ed

I've had issues with RWs too. CRC check failed seems to be the most
popular error I get.
My brother the techno challenged seems to use them for years without a
problem.
I don't get it.

Ben Myers wrote:
Yes, like Gateway and eMachienes, or Hewlett-Packard and Compaq.

With the large majority of drive sales still OEM through system builders, I
would bet that if the Maxtor brand name survives, it will be as a retail brand.
You can't full procurement managers the way you can fool consumers. But the
Maxtor brand has a well-deserved poor reputation. If it was my brand name, I
would put a stake through its heart and wear a neckace of garlic cloves to ward
off failing Maxtor drives... Ben Myers



I have one chugging away in my Linux machine thats constantly on for
the past three years.
Hehehee...
I don't have dust bunnies in the PC... I have dust bison.

"Ben Myers" wrote: "There are good quaility motherboards (Intel, Asus and
maybe a couple others) and pure junk (PC Chips, ECS, Matsonic, MicroStar and
any other brand name for a PC Chips board)."

Ben, what have you found wrong with MicroStar motherboards? I've only seen
one with the bad capacitors issue, the rest ( a dozen) have been very
stable.

Jack


"Ben Myers" ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net wrote in message
...
Component or commodity? They are all commodities these days. In a few
areas,
there are some brands of commodity components that are better than others.
There are good quaility motherboards (Intel, Asus and maybe a couple
others) and
pure junk (PC Chips, ECS, Matsonic, MicroStar and any other brand name for
a PC
Chips board). There are good hard drives (Fujitsu, Seagate) and junk
(Maxtor
now assimilated by Seagate, Samsung). There are decent CD/DVD
readers/burners/combo drives (Sony, Hitachi, LG) and really and truly
no-name
brands. Cases differ in price, quality and features. You still have
major
choices available like AMD vs Intel or Celeron vs Pentium 4 vs Xeon.

So pick your commodity components from what is available and move on.

... Ben Myers


On 23 Jul 2006 14:48:23 -0700, "Justin"
wrote:


Ben Myers wrote:
I can't argue loudly about on-board video, but on-board NIC and on-board
audio,
provided they are of reasonable quality, cost pennies to build into a
motherboard and give excellent performance. Intel or Broadcom NIC
chips are
first rate. So are ADI audio chips. So why would you need something
different?
The best argument would be if one were a major audiophile with
discriminating
ear to match. Then maybe a $200 audio card would make sense. If so,
the
on-board audio can always be disabled.

On-board video is not really awful either for most run-of-the-mill
computing
tasks. It simply does not cut it for gamers... Ben Myers


I understand that, I simply like choosing every component.
than again I also liked paying a buck for a gallon of gas too.