The Systems that Sell [Archive]

Tannin

01-24-2002, 04:49 AM

In another thread, I started to ponder what sort of systems people buy, and what things they don't buy. That thread was about CPUs, but the question has more general relevance, I think. So here is a list of the systems we offer (which are probably not all that different to the systems that most other places offer), together with some comments about them.

First, two integrated things:

1: An integrated-everything Celeron 900, 15 inch monitor, 20GB hard drive, 128MB. No-one buys it. (Which is just fine by me.)

2: An integrated-most things Duron 900. 17 inch monitor, 20GB drive, 128MB SDRAM, on-board sound and video, but full-size case and quality power supply. Add for modem or whatever else.

Neither of these sell well here. We sell the odd example of the integrated Duron, they are not bad for use as network workstations or for little old ladies who want to type letters andf won't ever upgrade and don't have much cash.

But the bottom of the range Celerons really only exist because of a rather complicated chain of circumstances. People wander in just wanting us to offer a lower price than the vomit-box movers down the road for a really cruddy system - a Compaq or a Hewlett-Packard or a no-name clone with the cheapest bits available. Now you and I know perfectly well that those are dreadful little things: underpowered, flimsy, gimmick-ridden vomit boxes with a very short lifespan and no redeeming features. But Joe Average doesn't know that, he just knows that it's got 900 Megathingies and it costs AU$1350. Nine hundred Megathingies and 15 Gigawhatis for $1350 has to be a good deal, right?

Well, we could explain that you can't upgrade them, you can't repair them, that the warranty is far too short and it has to be sent interstate if you ever need HP or Comcrap to fix it, that the monitor is too small, the tiny power supply can't handle anything bigger than what's in it right now (and costs a fortune to replace if it goes wrong), that the software setup looks great in the shop but with 28 things on the task list before you even start an app it will crawl like a 486SX before you even get it out of the box, that there is no room for a CD burner or a motherboard swap, that the sound is nothing special, that the modem is a cheap one, and worst of all, that it doesn't have an AGP slot so you won't ever be able to play 3D games on it.

And you know what happens if we do that? Joe Average takes it all in and, two times out of three, he decides that we must be just saying all that stuff because our systems are $300 dearer and we don't want to loose a sale. The fact that our systems really do have AGP slots and decent power supplies, that it's perfectly reasonable to expect a longer working life and much better long-term value out of a proper seperate component machine than a supermarket vomit box is quite often lost on Mr Average - hey, he's an expert on outboard motors or wheatgrowing or schoolteaching or something, it's not fair to blame him for not knowing how to tell a computer from a crapbox. He goes back to asking "so how many megahurts did you say it had on the hard rom?" and winds up back at the chain store, smiling happily while he exchanges the contents of his wallet for a Presario or a Pavillion.

So what we do is we have a really cheap and crappy thing too, and we offer it for around the same price as the vomit box merchants. And we tell Joe Average all about it: we tell him just how bad it is, how the monitor is too small and the warranty is only one year, and how it will be difficult to upgrade and cost more in the long run. "It's better than a Hewlett-Crapard, of course. What isn't?" we say, "But if you plan to get long-term value and performance out of your investment, then a full-size seperate component machine is the way to go. Sure it costs a little more - but in the long run, quality costs less.

Now Joe Average hears us.

Because that cruddy Celeron is something that we sell, when we tell him how much better a real computer is, he listens. Nine times out of ten he buys from us. And the silly thing is that it only exists on paper! We've never had an order for an integrated crap-box yet, and don't even have the parts to make a demo unit.

This, I guess, is what people mean when they talk about "the virtual PC".

Tannin

01-24-2002, 06:48 AM

Now come the real machines. These all have a proper two year warranty, A-Open cases, AMD-certified power supplies, Honeywell keyboards, Logitech optical mice, Panasonic or Sony CD drives, 17 inch monitors, and 256MB of A-grade RAM (usually Legend or Crucial). In reality we build every one to order and no two are quite the same, but this is the way we advertise them, and very often the way that they end up.

1: For business. A 20GB Samsung hard drive, on board sound, plain vanilla 80W speakers and an 8MB S3 3D video card. These are a very big seller, our second most popular model.

2: For the professional buyer: A 40GB 7200 (usually Western Digital, sometimes Samsung), same sound and speakers, and a 16MB Matrox G450. Don't sell many of this one. If Matrox had the sense to drop the price of their 32MB G450 a bit, we might sell heaps more. (Hey, 16MB of RAM costs them an extra $100? I don't think so.)

3: Cheap home system: 32MB TNT-2 M64, 40GB Samsung 5400, half-decent 380W speakers. A huge seller, easily the most popular one we make. Mums and Dads buy this one. The are not interested in games but they want to get the kids to stop complaining about their
old 32MB Pentium MMX that actually does everything the family needs, albeit rather slowly. They don't want to spend up on anything too fancy, not just so the kids can play faster games, but they don't want to be fussed with games that just don't run. And they want something they can upgrade later on.

4: Bigger home system: 60GB 5400 RPM and a 32MB Gforce II MX-200. A fairly slow seller.

5: More games oriented: 40GB 5400, 64MB MSI Gforce II MX-400, Sound Blaster, a pair of those excellent Creative PC Works speakers. A few buyers, not many.

6: Top of the standard range: 60GB 5400, MSI or ASUS Gforce II GTS, same Creative sound and speakers. Not many takers for this one either.

So. Why do so few people buy the higher-end machines?

I'd be interested to hear your theories, gentlemen.

(Next, the bit that I started to write about: the CPU, mainboard and RAM packages. .... but not quite yet. I have to go and play cricket.)

Tannin

01-24-2002, 07:27 AM

(Whoohoo! Played a side in the next grade up from us. And creamed them: 117 to 36! Err, maybe I should mention that there are ... um ... around about ... er ... zero sides in grades below us.)

Now, the CPU mainboard and RAM options.

1: The standard one you get with every system unless you pay extra. Duron 900, 266MB SDRAM, any main board I can find that's decently reliable and fairly cheap, nearly always using a KT-133 chipset. Most often, the unlovely FIC AZ-11, which is enormous, has no ISA slots (which is a real pain - you have no idea how many people have a second printer port or a scanner card or something else in ISA that they want to keep) and is very boring. On the other hand, it's really cheap now, and practically never gives trouble. Very popular, the Duron 900, our best seller.

2: Pentium 4 1500, Intel i845 chipset mainboard (any brand so long as it's not complete crap), 256MB SDRAM. Never sold any. Not even one.

3: P-III 1000, Intel i815ep chipset Gigabyte mainboard, 256MB SDRAM. These are a sweet combination. OK, they are not the value for money that the Athlons are (or the Durons) but they go well and we've only had one fail. Mind you, we sell a tiny number of them. One so far this year, about one every three months on average. I recommend them to people who actually need an Intel CPU because they are running weirdo software - essentially this is semi-pro musicians who want a home studio system.

4: Duron 1200, 256MB SDRAM, Soltek SL-75KAV mainboard. It costs a mere $100 more than the D-900 package at present and is great value. The KT266A-based mainboard is 266 FSB capable, Thunderbird and Athlon XP ready, so this is good for prospective chip-upgraders on a budget too. Getting very popular now. When the Duron 900 fades away, this will take over no doubt.

5: Athlon Thunderbird 1400, same board and RAM as (4). Was really popular around Chritmas time, phasing out in favour of XPs now.

6: Pentium 4 1700, Intel i850 main board, 256MB RDRAM. Another paper product: we've never sold one, don't think anyone has even asked about this model - certainly not after they see the price. Or is it the P-4 2000 chip we list now? Fair dinkum, I can't even remember. Maybe I should look at switching it to a DDR-based board - but why? No-one seems to care about it anyway. As the alert reader will have guessed by now, this one merely serves to highlight the value of option (7).

7: Athlon XP 1700, 256MB DDR, Epox or Soltek KT-266A mainboard. Sells more than anything else except the Duron 900 now, and deservedly so in my view. I love these things.

8: Athlon XP 2000, 512MB DDR, same mainboard. Never sold one. The function of this machine is to make people feel OK about shelling out the extra bikkies for the 1700.

------------------------------------

Now, I guess that every place has their own particular wrinkle, and that everyone's customer mix is different. Just the same, I find it interesting that out of that fairly comprehensive range of systems we offer, a good 80 percent of what we actually sell is number (1) or number (3), and of the eight different CPU packages, 90 percent of our buyers go with the Duron 900, the XP 1700, or one of the SL-75KAV ones - the Thunderbird up till Christmas time, now the 1200 Duron.

CougTek

01-24-2002, 10:43 AM

A few things,

Now come the real machines. These all have a proper two year warranty, A-Open cases, AMD-certified power supplies, Honeywell keyboards, Logitech optical mice, Panasonic or Sony CD drives, 17 inch monitors, and 256MB of A-grade RAM (usually Legend or Crucial).
I don't put Panasonic CD-ROM drives in my systems because OpenBSD doesn't support them contrarily to most other CD-ROM readers. I agree that people messing with OpenBSD are quite rare, but nonetheless, if they ever choose to make the switch, I want to be sure they won't have compatibility problems.

I prefer the regular Logitech mouse to the optical version. Sure, you have to clean it once in a while, but the movements are more accurate IMO. Personal preference I guess.

4: Duron 1200, 256MB SDRAM, Soltek SL-75KAV mainboard. It costs a mere $100 more than the D-900 package at present and is great value. The KT266A-based mainboard is 266 FSB capable, Thunderbird and Athlon XP ready, so this is good for prospective chip-upgraders on a budget too.

The Soltek SL-75KAV isn't a KT266A-based motherboard. It uses the KT133A chipset. See for yourself. (http://www1.soltek.com.tw/English/product/75kav.htm) The Soltek SL-75DRV, SL-75DRV2 and SL-75DRV4 are all KT266A-based motherboard, with the later support ATA133 via the new VIA south bridge.

4: Bigger home system: 60GB 5400 RPM and...
5: More games oriented: 40GB 5400,...
6: Top of the standard range: 60GB 5400,...

I refuse to sell 5400rpm drive in anything but the cheapest box I build. Unless you still believe that I/O Meter (in which your dear Samsung SpinPoint performed quite well) was the most accurate benchmark for workstation type of usage, the latest measurement by Eugene should teach you that 5400rpm ATA drive are significantly slower than their 7200rpm relatives, even for Joe-average type of applications.

However, I agree that from a pure selling viewpoint, it's more profitable to place capacity over rotational speed. I don't know about the pricing details in Australia, but here a 40GB 7.2Krpm cost about the same as a 60GB 5.4Krpm. Many people cannot figure that they probably won't even fill 15GB on their hard drive and they are lured by the first number they see : capacity.

But I always take the time to explain to my customers what is the best thing for them and I almost always end up selling a 7.2K rpm instead of a 5.4Krpm. 5.4Krpm should only serve as backup or secondary storage space IMO.

I know it doesn't show, but I enjoy discussing configuration choices.

More later on...

Mercutio

01-24-2002, 11:31 AM

Here's what I sell. First thing is, most of my customers are either college students - I know some people at the local Purdue and Indiana U campuses, so my flyers stay on all the bulletin boards all year-long - or they're people in my neighborhood, which mostly means they're poor and probably haven't ever had a computer new enough to run current software.
Sometimes I build computers for my business customers, but by and large I feel better steering them towards Dell or IBM.

I offer my customers a promise: I will build a vastly superior computer than anything you can go buy in a store, and I will do it for less than the store's price. For college kids, this is surprisingly easy - Windows is licensed to both schools for $5, and so is Office. I don't think even Dell gets it that cheap.

I tell everyone I sell to that I'm not trying to make a profit, that this is my hobby, and most people understand that. I also explain that I only provide minimal free support, but it's support from a real person, not someone reading from a script.

First, the college-kid system. Two classes of people here. Boys, and girls. Not surprisingly, most of the boys want to play computer games, and that's a very different thing from what the girls want, which is mostly to type papers and do e-mail and otherwise ignore the computer.

Basic "college kid" system looks like this right now:

1.33GHz Tbird + 256MB DDR RAM on Epox 8KHA
17" OEM display
40GB - 60GB 5400rpm maxtor hard disk
ATI 7x00 or Matrox G400 video card
Decent set of stereo speakers
CD-ROM

... and I can sell those for about $700 - a bit more since RAM has gotten more expensive. Better speakers and an actual sound card, at $55, is the thing that gets upgraded most often, but CD-RWs are popular, too. Surprisingly few DVD-ROMs, but I add them when I can. I like to deliver value. The utility of 7200rpm drives is lost on just about everyone I talk to (If the drive makes everything go faster, why do I need a faster processor?), so I don't use those very often. Which is fine. Neither does Compaq.

That's a hell of a machine for $700 or $750. It usually beats the snot out of even the $1500 machines at Circuit City and Best Buy.

The ultrabudget machines are exactly what you'd think.

Duron 850 on whatever's cheap that week (Usually a Gigabyte or Soyo board)
256MB SDRAM
20GB maxtor hard disk (if the price is close, I DO buy 7200rpm drives, here)
15" OEM monitor (or 17" lease-return)
Matrox G200 or G400, or S3 Savage4 or even 3dfx V3
CD-ROM
Cheap speakers

Usually I sell these with grey-market (used or OEM) copies of Windows 95 or 98, and the whole system sells for around or under $400. I used to set up NetZero or BlueLight internet service as well. Now I just hold their hand through getting access to a local mom and pop ISP.

I get by with a lot of standard parts. Everyone gets the same keyboard, the same case and Power Supply, the same modem and I buy as much stuff locally as I can. I order a lot of video cards and hard disks, though. Monitors, I must sheepishly admit, usually come from Comdisco, a big company in Chicago that sells a lot of lease-return and overstocked OEM-branded equipment. Most of the monitors I sell say Dell or Gateway on the bezel.

Everyone gets a copy of Ghost - and the contents of their system as I configured it, on a CD. Everyone gets a batch file configured to run daily and at startup that backs up their "my documents", Outlook express and Mozilla mail directories, bookmarks and favorites to a 5GB emergency partition (and keeps copies for the last three days). Not terribly efficient or graceful, but it works very well. Everyone gets Winzip (shareware) and Winamp + some impressive graphics plug-ins. Everyone gets a couple MP3 files. Everyone gets Acrobat Reader. And nothing in the start tray except task scheduler.

CougTek

01-24-2002, 12:06 PM

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2002 6:48 am : I have to go and play cricket.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2002 7:27 am : Whoohoo! Played a side in the next grade up from us. And creamed them: 117 to 36!

Criquet games aren't very long.

First, two integrated things:

1: An integrated-everything Celeron 900, 15 inch monitor, 20GB hard drive, 128MB. No-one buys it. (Which is just fine by me.)

2: An integrated-most things Duron 900. 17 inch monitor, 20GB drive, 128MB SDRAM, on-board sound and video, but full-size case and quality power supply. Add for modem or whatever else.

What motherboards do you use on these systems? I assembled a Celeron II on a Microstar MS-6368 ver5.0A w/LAN (http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/PLE133_LAN.htm) last week-end for a cheap upgrade. The motherboard only cost 109$CAN (~131$AUS) so the overall system cost was quite low.

SiS730-based motherboards are also quite inexpensive I think. Not speed demons though, but for this type of computers, they don't have to.

Mercutio

01-24-2002, 12:13 PM

Why no takers on the high end?

Look what I sell for $700. 1.33GHz CPU. 17" display. 256MB RAM. 64MB video card based on a modern chipset. 40GB drive.
What more could you want?

A 19" display maybe, or big, superfast hard drive like a WD100BB. We're still under US$1000. Premium 5.1 speakers? 512MB RAM? CD-RW AND a DVD-ROM? Maybe $1350.

And in the end, how much difference is there going to be for the person buying the system. Probably none (well, except the monitor).

I think a lot people see that now. Tannin's AU$1300 machines and my $700 machines both represent the "right" price point now. The only difference is how much computer that money buys.

Mercutio

01-24-2002, 12:27 PM

To Cougtek, now: A lot of the college kids I deal with have good internet connections, friends with CD-burners and some clue how to operate their machines. Maybe their old PC at home has a 4GB drive in it. Whatever. It's full, they know it, and their roommate has 10 or 20 CDs full of stuff he got from napster. They have games that require 2.5GB of disk space. Capacity is absolutely a major selling point.

I can buy a 40GB 5400rpm disk ($80) for about what a good 20GB 7200rpm costs (usually about $73). That 20GB is a hell of a trade-off. 40GB 7200rpm drives are right around $100, and that extra $20 is a lot harder to justify when it could also buy another 20GB of disk space (WD600AB is about $102, locally).

CougTek

01-24-2002, 04:37 PM

I also sell several computers to students and very few of them have particular space requierements. As Tony wrote : "I guess that every place has their own particular wrinkle, and that everyone's customer mix is different."

Another peripheral I place special attention to is the monitor. No curvy crap from me for sure. I work 10 hours a day in front of a little square bulb, so I'm very picky about these. I also consider it almost criminal to sell a generic monitor with convergence problem, large dot pitch and low bandwidth resulting in either flickers or blurry image to a family with young kids. We all know they often spend hours in front of the "new toy dad bought them" and their eyes are more fragile at this early age. I don't want my customers to come back to me with Pepsi bottle's bottom on the nose because of the crappy screen I sold them.

I haven't sold a monitor cheaper than a 17" flat screen CRT in more than two years now and I'm very proud of it. And I don't want to sell any 19" CRT with a lower video bandwidth than 180MHz and larger than 0.25mm horizontal dot pitch. Anything less would be uncivilized. ;-)

Mercutio

01-24-2002, 04:51 PM

Mostly I buy Dell-branded monitors that have been OEM'd from Sony. Trintron tubes, exceptionally bright, or low-dp Gateway displays which I believe are made by Mag (Gateway and Mag share a warranty repair depot, at any rate). Way, way better than the KDS or AOC displays that would otherwise by my best bet. I also like Hitachi 19" .22dp displays. They run about $100 more than the 17" displays I buy, but people really love 'em when I can get them. All of this, of course, depends on what Comdisco has in stock. But there's nothing like finding new-ish 21" Mitsubishi displays for $279, something that's become very common in the last few months as .coms die.

I have no problem selling a 15" display to someone who can only afford to spend $400 on a computer. I'd RATHER sell the 17", but sometimes that just isn't possible.

The other thing that really hurts: Sometimes I get the little old lady who just wants to do E-mail, or retired engineer, or former Mac user with a dislike of Windows. Ah-Ha! Perfect person for a Linux machine. Linux costs nothing, and my grey-market Windows license is usually $40 or $50.
Guess what? Almost all the cost savings goes into getting a hardware modem.

Argh!

Tannin

01-24-2002, 05:55 PM

This is turning into a very interesting thread, gentlemen. Lots to respond to.

I like the Panasonic CD drives, Coug, because they are solid, reliable units with a two year factory warranty - nearly everything else has a cheapskate 12 month one, even Sony. And also because I am a creature of habit. When I put a company on my "A List", they tend to stay there foerever or until they have a really serious #%$@* up. (IBM used to be on my hard drive A List, Hewlett Packard on my printer list. You get the idea.)

I prefer the Logitech ball mice too - well, I really like trackballs best, nearly all my own machines have trackballs, but those that don't have ball mice. But we use the opticals for the majority of our machines because, well, marketing I guess. (People who get up my nose seem to wind up with a cheaper one .... Funny about that.)

AHHHHAHgggh! Don't link me to proof of the correct chipset in the SL-75KAV, just link me to that ol' edit button! Slip of the brain. I know perfectly well that it's a KT-133A, that's what I thought I'd written.

Tannin

01-24-2002, 06:26 PM

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2002 6:48 am : I have to go and play cricket.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2002 7:27 am : Whoohoo! Played a side in the next grade up from us. And creamed them: 117 to 36!

Criquet games aren't very long.

Ahh, I see you are on the ball, Coug! I wondered if anyone would pick that up. I wrote the first two parts at the office, proof-read and posted the first one, ran out of time and emailed the second one to myself so that I could proof and post it when I go home. Hurried off, grafted my usual dour 25 with the bat, bowled a few delightful leggies, drove home, posted #2, then wrote #3.

The cricket game took maybe an hour and a half, same as usual. The 39 minutes was about average for me to wriite a mid-length post. (Yes Timwit - now do you see why I mentioned bolt cutters?)

CougTek

01-24-2002, 08:08 PM

Mercutio,

Be careful with OEM monitors. The prices are attractive, but there's a hidden issue with them. AFAIK, Dell only offers warranty on complete systems, not spare components like monitors, unless you bought them directly from their website (which isn't your case). If one of them (not really "if", more "when") dies before its time, you'll have to absorb the cost of the replacement unit from your wallet. If the savings you do when you buy several OEM monitors conter-balance the money you lose when one of them fails, then fine. But beware.

Dell Trinitron CRTs are above average and they would be fine enough to fit on my list. There are better units, but at the price you seem to be able to get them, they are certainly hard to beat.

Tony,

Have you tried the AOpen 56X CD-ROM? Not bad, you gotta admit it. If you haven't already, give it a shoot. Not too noisy and reasonnably fast nonetheless. AOpen CD-ROM readers are reliable in my experience. The 56X model is also cheaper here than the Panasonic 48X.

AHHHHAHgggh! Don't link me to proof of the correct chipset in the SL-75KAV, just link me to that ol' edit button!
You don't know how much I enjoy imaginating you, about to eat your keyboard, because of such an inoffensive mistake :lol:

Will Rickards

01-24-2002, 08:50 PM

What sells is also largely determined by the salesforce.

You guys like the LG optical drives?

Tannin

01-24-2002, 09:54 PM

Funny you should ask that, Will.

We just ran out of the solid, cheap and reliable Panasonic 32 x 8 x 4 burners and the new model (a 24x I believe) is two weeks away, so we need an interim one. Yesterday I ordered 5 pcs sight unseen: LG ones. What is your experience of them? Good drives?

Mercutio

01-25-2002, 12:18 AM

Mercutio,

Be careful with OEM monitors. Dell Trinitron CRTs are above average and they would be fine enough to fit on my list. There are better units, but at the price you seem to be able to get them, they are certainly hard to beat.

Yeah. Comdisco gives 30 days on complete systems or 90 days on monitors and printers, and that's all the warranty I get. I cover replacement cost for a year out of the goodness of my heart for everything I sell, but so far I've had a monitor die only twice, which isn't bad at all.

I wasn't aware of Comdisco at all until I heard a computer shop owner talking about it. I guess it's one of those outfits that leases equipment or buys leased equipment. They might do reclaimation of retired hardware, too. All I know is, they have a freakin' huge warehouse full of cool stuff. It's like Candyland for grown-up techies.

I pay between $70 and $100 for 17" displays. 15" displays run between $25 and $50. If I wanted to buy used Desktop PCs, I think I could get tier 1 branded P3-600s for around $400 apiece, everything but the OS.
There's a price list on their web site. It's usually wrong.

AOpen makes great Optical stuff, by the way. They aren't Toshiba or Yamaha, but they're very good. Doesn't LG = Philips/Magnavox? I haven't had good luck with much of anything made by P/M (monitors, CD-RWs etc).

CougTek

01-25-2002, 12:22 AM

The LG GCE-8160B (16x/10x/40x) is a high quality burner that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a cheap yet reliable CD-writer.

Their 24x model is another story though, but their 32x seems to be in the same league as their 16x. Their 24x burner uses an Oak Technology controller and their 16x and 32x models use another brand (the name starts with a 'M') that my memory cannot recall.

CougTek

01-25-2002, 12:25 AM

Doesn't LG = Philips/Magnavox?
Nope, LG = Goldstar

Philips is German IIRC.

Cliptin

01-25-2002, 12:55 AM

...(the name starts with a 'M') that my memory cannot recall.

Matsushita?

CougTek

01-25-2002, 01:21 AM

No. Matsushita is Panasonic. It was something else. I'llsearch and post it in a few minutes.

CougTek

01-25-2002, 01:27 AM

MediaTek

Mercutio

01-25-2002, 01:32 AM

Doesn't LG = Philips/Magnavox?
Nope, LG = Goldstar

Philips is German IIRC.

I'm quite certain that Philips has an East-Asian connection...

Yes, A look at the press releases on Philips web site mentions the release of 34 million shares of preferred stock in LG.

So LG is probably owned, at least in part, by Philips.

Mercutio

01-25-2002, 02:09 AM

An odd thought just occurred to me, and since I'm talking to a couple of people who sell WAY more computers than I do...

Have either of you ever actually tried focusing on the high-end?

For the longest time Dell stayed out of the sub-$1000 PC market. Now they're the biggest PC maker there is, practically synonymous with "quality" for a pretty large segment of the computer-buying population. Could the lack of sub-$1000 systems be the reason for that?

Corvair

01-25-2002, 02:54 AM

http://athome.compaq.com/showroom/static/iPAQ/images/bridge_ia1.gif Compaq IA-1

I saw one of these little things this weekend and was quite impressed with it, but much more so with what it COULD do, but doesn't (unfortunately).

Its size is small but it was still fast (I believe it is Duron powered). The screen was surprisingly easy to read. It consumed only a very small desktop space. With 4 USB ports on the back, I suspect you could add a "real" keyboard and your favourite mousie (its standard keyboard wasn't too bad, though). Cost was only $149. The Bad: You are stuck with a dial-up subscription to MSN or AOL. There is no hard drive in the unit, just 16 MB of FlashRAM for the webbrowser to spew its html and cookies into. Maybe one could attach a USB hard drive. It doesn't run real Windoze, just Internet Explorer O/S.

Maybe someone has already hacked into the ROM on one of these IA-1 units to allow it to browse the web WITHOUT the addition of MSN or AOL.

Mercutio

01-25-2002, 03:01 AM

Tannin

01-25-2002, 05:42 AM

Woops! Those were not LGs I ordered. I did buy two LG burners the other day, so as to have something faster than 8X in stock, and, as things panned out, didn't sell either of them! One is in Belinda's machine (girlfriend) (Belinda, not the machine), and the other I sold to a guy who brought it back complaining that it mysteriously kicked itself back to 8X now and then. Rather than buggerise about messing with his system (Win XP - no thanks) I lent him a Panasonic 8X and took this one home to try it out. Since then he decided to keep the Panasonic and throw the $50 difference towards getting himself an MSI Gforce II MX-400. So the LG is still here at home, some weeks later, and it has worked perfectly on 100% of the grand total of one discs that I have burned on it. (A back up of the 400 saved pre-MBF SR threads that JTR sent me.)

I had no idea which model it was. In view of your praise for them, CougTek, I'm pleased to look at it now and discover it's an LG 16 x 10 x 40.

Unfortunately, when my five burners arrived today, I realised that they were not LGs at all, but Lite-Ons. My only experience with Lite-On optical gear has been poor to middling - we sold a lot of their 20X CD-ROM drives and lived to regret it. No better than Acers. (Lite-On monitors, in contrast, used to be excellent: plain, fairly low-spec, but very cheap and as reliable as sunrise.)

Pradeep

01-25-2002, 09:37 AM

4: Bigger home system: 60GB 5400 RPM and a 32MB Gforce II MX-200. A fairly slow seller.

5: More games oriented: 40GB 5400, 64MB MSI Gforce II MX-400, Sound Blaster, a pair of those excellent Creative PC Works speakers. A few buyers, not many.

6: Top of the standard range: 60GB 5400, MSI or ASUS Gforce II GTS, same Creative sound and speakers. Not many takers for this one either.

So. Why do so few people buy the higher-end machines?

I'd be interested to hear your theories, gentlemen.

Well regarding the diff between the GF2MX cards, there is a big difference in mem bandwidth between the MX 200 and MX 400, but there is absolutely no performance diff between the 32MB and 64MB version. Of course it looks impressive on the spec sheet.

I believe people are sick of paying say $3000 every 2 years to stay reasonably current, nowadays hardware has caught up to and exceeded software requirements. So they don't want to spend more than is necessary to get the job done. Also I suppose the impact of the new generation of gaming consoles must be affecting that niche of the PC market. After all, for the price of a GF2 you can basically get a PS2, which is portable self contained, and can be used as a DVD player too.

Corvair

01-25-2002, 01:00 PM

Tiger's had those for under $100 (probably refurbs), and just like all the other internet appliances, it can be hacked. Most of them use StrongARM chips, though, which is probably a bit limiting.

The internet appliances are very, very cute. They should sell and they don't. Pretty much everyone can see how little utility they offer.
If only one of these things had at least a 20 GB 2-1/2 inch hard drive (i.e. -- notebook hard drive), jeez I would pay US$300 or even $400 for one!

No, I would never want to run Photoshop on one of these sort of thingees, but I would be happy enough just using one for pure Internet browsing tasks. They turn on like light bulbs, then a second later you are connected to the Internet, which, unfortunately, is via MSN.COM or AOL.COM at first.

Adcadet

01-25-2002, 07:37 PM

Everyone gets a copy of Ghost - and the contents of their system as I configured it, on a CD. Everyone gets a batch file configured to run daily and at startup that backs up their "my documents", Outlook express and Mozilla mail directories, bookmarks and favorites to a 5GB emergency partition (and keeps copies for the last three days). Not terribly efficient or graceful, but it works very well. Everyone gets Winzip (shareware) and Winamp + some impressive graphics plug-ins. Everyone gets a couple MP3 files. Everyone gets Acrobat Reader. And nothing in the start tray except task scheduler.

Nice touch! You've obviously been around the block.

Will Rickards

01-25-2002, 11:15 PM

What is your experience of them (LG drives)? Good drives?

I installed a new LG CD-RW drive in my parents old computer.
It is a pentium 100 with 24MB of ram.
The new drive works a treat even at high write speeds.
I forget the model number, but it got a very good review from cdrlabs.
From what I hear, from the review, these drives are nice and cheap.
They sound great for somebody like you.
But I can't say as I've had much experience with them outside
of one drive.

Adcadet

01-26-2002, 12:24 PM

Tannin - you present an interesting way of getting more business - having low-end products (at least on paper) to help show people the real value of the high-end stuff. Does anyone else do this with things like business proposals? Reminds me of "strawman arguements" back in my debate days.

Fushigi

01-26-2002, 11:01 PM

I wasn't aware of Comdisco at all until I heard a computer shop owner talking about it. I guess it's one of those outfits that leases equipment or buys leased equipment. They might do reclaimation of retired hardware, too. All I know is, they have a freakin' huge warehouse full of cool stuff. It's like Candyland for grown-up techies.

I pay between $70 and $100 for 17" displays. 15" displays run between $25 and $50. If I wanted to buy used Desktop PCs, I think I could get tier 1 branded P3-600s for around $400 apiece, everything but the OS.
There's a price list on their web site. It's usually wrong.

Comdisco does leasing services. They lease everything from PCs to mainframes. They also offer disaster recovery services (although I think they just sold off that unit). They sell off the lease-returns, as Mercutio knows, including the big iron. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find a few big Sun & IBM boxes in their warehouse, waiting for an interested buyer.

Lease-returns from corporate use are almost always a good deal when it comes to monitors. Rarely used >8 hours a day, electronics hardly ever stressed by high refresh rates, heck a lot of office-type users will stick with 1024x768 even if they can run at 12x10 or 16x12. That's assuming they even know they can change the res.

On PCs it's a different matter. Too little CPU, RAM, & HD. Even if the CPU is adequate, RAM and/or HD would have to be upgraded to make the system decent. The company I work for, at least, is reasonably decent and buys 256MB RAM & GHz PIIIs; I consider them above average in that regard. But the HDs are minimal since they only really need to hold the OS; data is (or should be) on the file servers.

- Fushigi

adriel

01-27-2002, 01:39 PM

...having low-end products (at least on paper) to help show people the real value of the high-end stuff. Does anyone else do this with things like business proposals? Reminds me of "strawman arguements" back in my debate days.

You mean "strawman" or "bait-and-switch" arguments? "Bait-and-switch" is both a debate term and an advertising term. In advertising it means to actually advertise at one price and sell at another, and it is also considered a "bait-and-switch" for an advertiser to try to get customers to buy a more expensive item by disparaging the advertised item. These advertising practices are illegal, but that is only true for most US states. I don't know about Oz.

adriel

01-27-2002, 01:56 PM

I wonder how good those Mattel "Hot Wheels" and "Barbie" computers are. Anyone think they are reliable, upgradable, compatible?

http://www.businesswire.com/photowire/pw.080399/bw2.jpg

adriel

01-27-2002, 02:01 PM

They were Celeron-333, RAM-32, GIG-3, Expansion-USB only, Price-$600. I hear a single one of them is currently being used as a root DNS server. :o

Tannin

01-27-2002, 05:30 PM

I was guilty of a small deception, Adriel, in the interests on clarity and brevity. We don't actually advertise those little systems, in fact we don't advertise at all, ever. (Bar the phone book and a 3 foot by 2 foot sign on the front of the ship.) But we do list them in our price list. They occupy, between the two of them, less than a half page in a 10 or 12 page document. And yet, though we hardly ever sell them, they are a product that we would find it difficult to do without.

Pradeep

01-28-2002, 02:51 AM

These advertising practices are illegal, but that is only true for most US states. I don't know about Oz.

Bait and switch is illegal in Australia as well. I believe Tony's good friends Hardly Normal are under investigation for something along those lines? Or was it deceptive advertising? One of the two.

time

01-28-2002, 05:46 AM

The key difference is that Tony is not promoting those systems. Just by being able to provide them if required, he can better explain what his customer is getting for the money.

Bait and switch involves promoting a product you have no (or little) intention of selling. Legally and morally these are poles apart.

BTW, "Hardly Normal" is a popular euphemism for a local furniture/electrical/computer chain called "Harvey Norman". They are actually incredibly successful, to the point of displacing almost every other such retailer in Australia and New Zealand. In terms of computer sales ethics they are above average, which given industry standards, means they'll at least stand by a contract, but that's about it. :)

Tannin

01-28-2002, 06:04 AM

Bait and switch involves not selling a product that you advertise because you make more money on a different product. (Or whatever other similar reason applies in the particular case.)

What we do is offer a superior product and recommend that people go with that one. The difference is, in the end, it's part of my job description to advise honestly but it's not part of my job description to refuse to sell something that a customer wants. If, after all our literature, and after spending anywhere up to a couple of hours with me in the showroom talking about it, Mr Average still thinks an integrated-everything Celeron 800 with a 15 inch monitor is a wise long-term invenstment ... well, at that point I'll figure I've done my level best and I'm dealing with an idiot, so seeing as someone is going to take his money, it might as well be me.

But nobody ever does. I can be quite persuasive when I put my mind to it.

Santilli

01-28-2002, 06:38 AM

I think the average guy is figuring out that you can't upgrade your computer much, because, when you think you can, driver, or os related problems keep new components, or old components, from being compatible with either the os, or the hardware.

So, minimize the investment, buy the components you know are going to work together, and keep the system as long as possible.

Later I'll go into a couple systems I put together for former windows 3.0 user, and, a law office, that both support this theory of computer buying.

Suffice to say, why buy a 1200 dollar scanner, that works with 98, if you have no promise that Nikon is going to release a new driver for the next msft os?

Result, you get stuck with a large hardware investment, but no upgradeability, because no one takes the time to write a driver for it, or, worse, the software you would use, or any software, refuse to recognize the scanner, because it was bought 4 years ago.

I think this sort of planned obscenelessence is getting to the consumer, and he wants to minimize the capital in both hardware, and software, since the industry doesn't allow him to recover the investment by making the hardware, or software, upgradeable with the operating system.

In other words, make sure everything works with the current os you are using, and don't believe, or worry, about the possible future upgrade ability of any of your system components.

To take it one step beyond, invest the majority of money in components you are sure are going to last a while, like certain pci hardware components, and minimize as much as possible, since you know msft or the hard/soft maker is not going to support your components in a new os, since they want to sell a new component instead.

gs

Mercutio

01-30-2002, 10:44 AM

This is too interesting a thread to just watch it die...

I'm asked all the time about upgrading PCs, rather than buying new ones I've developed a sort of philosophy about it.

Basically, for a non-technophile, upgrades make just about no sense at all.
I'm sure just about everyone has heard "I just got a new computer... it's only two years old!" or "what can we do to make my 486 run Windows XP?" from a clueless friend or relative at some point, and that's reason upgrading isn't really useful to those people.

Basically, most people don't even think of changing hardware (other than maybe RAM) until their computer is so far out of date at upgrading is no longer economically practical.

I tell people that, and it rankles them, but it's the truth.

Just an interesting aside to Santilli's comments, above.

CougTek, Tannin, how much are you paying for Windows licenses? I lost a pretty decent order of equipment this morning from a business I've worked for in the past for quoting my price for XP Pro licenses ($500 for four full-install licenses and one copy of the media).

CougTek

01-30-2002, 02:45 PM

I have no special discount for Win9X OS, but I'll get Win2K Pro for free for the next 15X systems I build. I got the remains from the licence a company bought for several Win2K installations. They bought a lot too many for their need (they used about 15 but they bought a license for ~250 computers). Because I have a contact there and they know they won't use it, I can sell their remaining copies for free, 0, niet $. I charge slightly less than the regular OEM price for Win2K, but it all goes in my pockets :)

Tannin

01-30-2002, 04:20 PM

AU$193 ex-tax for Win 98E, ME or XP Home. 2K or XP pro, about $300-odd. Far too much, in other words.

Vlad The Impaler

01-30-2002, 05:03 PM

We like Asus TUSI-Ms with Celeron 1100 for the low end, (scalable video ram sharing, up to 64 MB if my memory serves me well, and Asus A7N266s for the higher end with Athlon XPs. We have found that cheap £40-£60 AMD integrated Mobos can still be a little troublesome when compered to the TUSI-M.

Higher up, the Supermicro dual Xeon board is king. We sell quite a few of those. I am itching to try a dualie AMD, but have yet to find a buyer. This last one is our own 'paper system'.

CougTek

01-30-2002, 06:08 PM

Vlad,

Did you compared the MSI K7N420 Pro to the Asus A7N266? They are supposed to perform almost as well one to each other. Why don't you sell the Microstar instead? Here, it's ~40$CDN cheaper than the Asus (~26U$).

We have found that cheap £40-£60 AMD integrated Mobos can still be a little troublesome when compered to the TUSI-M.
Have you tried the ECS K7SEM? It's based on the SiS730 chipset. I never used it, but I've been tempted. No blazing performances for sure, but it's certainly cheap. Reliability is the big "?". However, my experience with recent ECS motherboards have been very positive so I tend to think that most of their motherboards, although rarely speed demons, are typically above average in term of stability/compatibility.

NRG = mc²

01-30-2002, 08:00 PM

I'm quite certain that Philips has an East-Asian connection...

Actually they are originally Dutch (Holland)

Vlad The Impaler

01-31-2002, 04:10 PM

Hi there Coug,

We have tried some MSI KT266A Mobos, but found them to a little less stable than our standards required. I might just give an Nforce one a go though. I will let you know how I get on.

ECS=PC Chips, or close to it. I have seen some pretty awful ECS attempts in the past, so that would be a no no. However the Asus A7S seems to have the same SIS chipset. Hmmmm.

Tea

01-31-2002, 05:04 PM

I also tried the MSI KT-266As, Vlad. Found that they were very fussy about RAM, particularly with two 256k DDRs in them. Didn't have to RMA them but had to fiddle around too much for my taste. (In fact, this, my home machine has one in it, together with an XP 1700. Couldn't make it go with 512MB, went with a single 256 as a temporary measure, discovered that it was still heaps faster than the old KT-133A with an Athlon 1200C and 512MB SDRAM, shrugged and just left it alone.)

The Epox and Soltek KT-266As, however, have both been completely fuss-free. Sold maybe 20 of each now.

Santilli

01-31-2002, 07:51 PM

HI
The computer at the law office just took a bit of a dump.

I was wondering what the consensus is, on a cheap, business computer, made out of quality components.

It's only for pretty much word processing, it has to be silent, so no active chip cooling. On board sound, or no sound, either is fine.

A silent, cheap case, with decent cooling, and I've pretty much got all the other components laying around...

gs

Mercutio

01-31-2002, 09:36 PM

I'd suggest a Celeron 900 on an Aopen AX3S + 256MB high-grade SDRAM + a 40GB Maxtor 740X + Dlink or Linksys NIC + Matrox Gx00 + Aopen 52X CD-ROM + Compucase mid-tower

Total without a Windows license should be around $350. $400 if you want building it to be someone else's problem.

CougTek

01-31-2002, 09:48 PM

I'd suggest a Celeron 900 on an Aopen AX3S + 256MB high-grade SDRAM + a 40GB Maxtor 740X + Dlink or Linksys NIC + Matrox Gx00 + Aopen 52X CD-ROM + Compucase mid-tower

I was about to propose the same kind of system, but with this motherboard (http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/PLE133_LAN.htm) instead. You save the cost of a separated NIC and graphic card. I built a system using this mobo recently. Very cheap and worked like a charm. I don't know how good is the 2D quality (less than the Matrox card for sure), but it was it was still very readable at 1600x1200 on my Sony G400 19".

Mercutio

01-31-2002, 10:00 PM

I never even heard of MSI until last year. Still never seen an MSI board.
AOpen, on the other hand, makes stuff that I know is universally first rate.

Personally, I'm not fond of integrated parts, either. Screwdriver shops that push all-in-one boards are just not to be trusted.

CougTek

01-31-2002, 10:00 PM

http://www.abuckaday.com

Click on the TV ads button. Half hilarious, half pathetic.

CougTek

01-31-2002, 10:06 PM

Microstar is the third or fourth biggest motherboard manufacturer in the world (they exchange rank with GigaByte from quarter to quarter).

I'm not fond of integrated board either, but for browsing the Net and light Office applications, an all-integrated mobo is enough.

Mercutio

01-31-2002, 10:25 PM

Microstar is the third or fourth biggest motherboard manufacturer in the world (they exchange rank with GigaByte from quarter to quarter).

Doesn't mean a thing to me if I've never seen one. It's one of those mystery brands, like Soltek. People on SR talk about them. That's all I know.

As far as size of companies - I'm guessing PC Chips and FIC are bigger?

time

01-31-2002, 11:06 PM

ECS and Asus are supposedly about equal size.

Gigabyte and MSI are roughly equal size but significantly smaller than the first two. MSI had some OEM wins that moved it ahead of Gigabyte last year.

After that we're talking second tier. This includes FIC, Epox (remarkable growth), Shuttle and one or two others I can't remember and couldn't be bothered looking up.

Then comes the third tier, consisting of companies like Soltek (but they are growing incredibly fast), Iwill, Tyan, etc.

I think AOpen has slid from second to third tier, but I'm probably wrong.

Feel free to correct these loose recollections.

Mercutio

01-31-2002, 11:22 PM

I'm under the impression that PC Chips (is that ECS?) is biggest. Maybe because you can't go to a computer shop without stepping on one.
And I got some literature from FIC a few years ago indicating they were the largest motherboard vendor.

Where are these figures coming from?

NRG = mc²

02-01-2002, 10:05 AM

No active cooling? Celeron 1000 Tualatin would probably be your best bet. But what heatsink would do the job? If you want low noise you can get the Molex Radial Fin coolers (I have two (dual cpu) and they cannot be heard over my three fans at 7v and my Enermax PSU with a couple of D740Xs. They keep my overclocked p3-667s (@735) at just under 40C full load, celeron should be cooler than that still.

Tannin

02-01-2002, 10:31 AM

FIC used to be the biggest, but then PC-Chips (about #5) and Elite (#2)merged. I think FIC have lost some market share this last year or two.

Dunno where ASUS get their size from, or their market share come to that. Their cheap boards are crap, and their half-decent boards are far too dear. Soltek make better boards than ASUS these days, and Solteks are 2/3rds the price. Ditto Epox. And MSI. Only ASUS product I really like these days is their video cards.

Mercutio

02-01-2002, 11:11 AM

I can say with authority that Asus boards aren't used in any tier-1 or -2 named brand PCs. I remember seeing them in Zeos machines ages ago, and in ComTrade machines many times (ComTrade makes everything, EVERYTHING look good in comparison), but that's about it.

Maybe Asus gets all its size from screwdriver shops. That would be odd. Most of the shops I know of stick with PC Chips or FIC or Gigabyte. Observation here leads me to think that's probably true everywhere.

CougTek

02-01-2002, 11:11 AM

After that we're talking second tier. This includes FIC, Epox (remarkable growth), Shuttle and one or two others I can't remember and couldn't be bothered looking up.
Chaintech is also in this group, don't remember any other that is comparable.

Mercutio

02-01-2002, 11:14 AM

No active cooling? Celeron 1000 Tualatin would probably be your best bet.

From what I've seen, the best bet for no active cooling would probably be a Via Samuel chip. I think they top out at 700MHz, but they work just fine in BX motherboards and they run so cool my distributor says they don't really even need heatsinks.

Vlad The Impaler

02-01-2002, 11:47 AM

Tea,

The same scenario was applicable with us. The MSI kit was not RMA'ed, it just made us a little nervous!

Tea

02-01-2002, 11:22 PM

Just so, Vlad.

And naturally, when it came around to time to order another box of motherboards, I ordered Epox. They have been utterly trouble-free for me. The Solteks too. My seat of the pants nerve, for some reason, tells me to use the epox boards for more mission-critical jobs, but I have not the slightest shred of evidence to support that judgement. I've had a 100% success rate with both brands so far. Plug in, work. I like plug in, work!

Vlad The Impaler

02-02-2002, 07:23 AM

I am so glad that others operate in the same way as I do when it comes to selecting hardware. I always thought that 'gut feeling' was a little bit lacking in professional credibility!

Any board maker who crosses me had better watch out, cos I don't forget easily...... :evil:

Santilli

02-02-2002, 02:10 PM

Ok. If I use a cooler, what are the quietest ones on the market?

By the way, turned out to be a dead monitor.

Still, I have a feeling I'll be building the rest of the box soon...

gs

Santilli

02-02-2002, 02:11 PM

Never heard of that chip.

I was hoping to stay with a mainstream, maybe BX chipset, and Intel cpu...

gs

Vlad The Impaler

02-02-2002, 02:42 PM

The chip is more commonly known as the VIA C3. It is Socket 370 compatible running at 1.7/1.8V. It has a crappy floating point unit but it is very cheap.

Vlad The Impaler

02-02-2002, 02:47 PM

Santilli,

If you want cheap Intel kit, IMO you should try an SIS chipset with a Celeron. The Asus TUSI-M is one of the best. I have sold 100 or so these recently with a 4% failure rate. It also supports the latest 0.13 Micron Celerons and is about £50 trade in the UK. In the US it will be half that I have no doubt......

NRG = mc²

02-02-2002, 03:57 PM

If you're going for a cool running chip you can try the Zalman Flower with a 92mm slow fan or without one at all, depending on the CPU and case you will use.

I use the Molex Radial Fin coolers ( www.quietpc.com ) and they are very very quiet - and they keep my overclocked P3-667s@735 at 40C full load (thats about 18C above case temperature)

They should work very well with Tualatin CPUs.

NRG = mc²

02-02-2002, 04:11 PM

[/quote]From what I've seen, the best bet for no active cooling would probably be a Via Samuel chip. I think they top out at 700MHz, but they work just fine in BX motherboards and they run so cool my distributor says they don't really even need heatsinks.

Sure, but the performance is absolutely terrible. (though it might not be an issue)

Mercutio

02-02-2002, 05:40 PM

So? Business Computer. If Word runs fast and Outlook runs fast...
A Celeron 400 will run Word and Outlook fast. Particularly paired with a decent amount of RAM.

CougTek

02-02-2002, 06:10 PM

So? Business Computer. If Word runs fast and Outlook runs fast...
A Celeron 400 will run Word and Outlook fast. Particularly paired with a decent amount of RAM.

Be aware that you'll be flamed by Tony to have dared to write that a Celeron can run business applications fast. He'll tell you at lenght how much a Celeron is puny compared to his dear K6-III.

I can already fell your pain. Quick Mercutio, run, RUN! before Tony sees this. ;-)

time

02-02-2002, 06:28 PM

Sorry, I am not the Teaminator.

But a C400/66 running Outlook fast? Isn't that poetic license, Mercutio? 8)

Corvair

02-04-2002, 03:06 AM

Be aware that you'll be flamed by Tony to have dared to write that a Celeron can run business applications fast. He'll tell you at lenght how much a Celeron is puny compared to his dear K6-III.

I've witnessed sluggish Celeron-based systems with adequate RAM get a noticeable overall boost just by having their "economy" model 5400 RPM ATA hard drive replaced by a top-performing 7200 RPM ATA drive.

time

02-04-2002, 05:46 AM

I agree. It's one of the reasons I have trouble with any benchmark that shows little difference betweem 5400 and 7200rpm drives. But that raises the whole question of what benchmarks are actually measuring, and I'm too tired to go into that right now :-?

Tannin

02-04-2002, 07:01 AM

Confession time. I have never liked Celerons. Come to that, the only chip in the whole damn P6 family I have ever remotely enjoyed using is the P-III. The real P-III, I mean, not that slug-like P-II dressed up with 512k external cache they started the P-III name with. The EBs, though, give that "instant snap" feel to the desktop that is the one thing I crave above all others - and something that no Celeron has ever been able to deliver.

I vividly remember putting a P-II 300 into my burner box at the office one time. OK, it was only a 300, but it had all the right goodies: Intel chipset, plenty of RAM, nice little Quantum hard drive. I ran it side by side with another machine, a K6-2/300 - a chip that it should have blown into the weeds if even half the PR bullshit spouted by the Intel supporters was true. Yet, despite twice as much RAM and a far superior hard drive to the elderly 1GB unit in the K6 box, despite numerous clean installs and as many tweaks as I could think of, the P-II was a slug.

Not the only time I've tinkered with the dark side. Those P-III 600EBs and P-III 1000s I've built this last year or two were very nice, almost in Athlon territory. But there are no two ways about it. For desktop apps, AMD chips rule. They have done since ... well ... since Cyrix's glory days of the 6x86-200 - and that was a long time ago indeed.

Tannin

02-04-2002, 07:02 AM

Tannin

02-04-2002, 07:03 AM

Tannin

02-04-2002, 07:05 AM

Well, that's one way to get my post count up!

Every time I hit "Submit" I got a nasty-looking error message:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare server_parse() in /home2/handruin/public_html/phpBB2/includes/smtp.php on line 36

Had no idea that it was registering. Still, I guess you all have a complete understanding of my lack of love for Sluggerons by now.

Mercutio

02-04-2002, 09:07 AM

I always liked the Celeron. Unlike the K6-2/3, there were plenty of very good, inexpensive motherboards out there for them (did Socket7 ever get a fully functional AGP implementation?), they were easy to cool, and they provided more than adequate performance for the money. they also forced an upgrade to ATX. Much as I don't care for the soft power button, I really did appreciate losing all the ribbon cables of AT form-factor, and it was clear that the entire market was moving that direction, anyway.

I sold lots of K6-2 machines, then just as many Celerons, and now I'm back to the Athlon. I try to build systems based on what I think the best value for my customers is. For a certain period, the Celeron was absolutely the best value.

Tannin

02-04-2002, 09:12 AM

For desktop apps, AGP performance is a non-issue.

NRG = mc²

02-04-2002, 12:37 PM

I always found that Celerons were more responsive than 512k half speed cache CPUs (PII, PIII), and K6's couldn't do anything multimedia related properly (eg some videos never played properly on a K6-II 350 whereas they have on a P2-350, same thing with most games.

Big deal, you might say. Well I don't quite remember how much more celerons costed in respect to the K6, but I would take a nice stable LX or BX board with a Celeron than a K6 and its socket 7 board any day. I've just seen so many unstable and buggy ones, even with Asus and Soyo boards it makes me sick.

Vlad The Impaler

02-04-2002, 01:24 PM

I agree completely. Once upon a time we had to replace a batch of K6-2 450s with Celerons. They all went to different customers, but they all had random crashing problems. Mixtures of video cards O/Ss and apps. Even mobos and chipsets were different; we tried them all. That was the start of our falling out with AMD.

Vlad The Impaler

02-04-2002, 01:28 PM

Tannin:

What you said may well be true, but a lot of customers wanted to play 3D games on their new PCs. AGP performance is a major issue in any circumstance when you sell a PC as a 'do it all' home computer.

LiamC

02-07-2002, 05:16 AM

Confession time. I have never liked Celerons. Come to that, the only chip in the whole damn P6 family I have ever remotely enjoyed using is the P-III. The real P-III, I mean, not that slug-like P-II dressed up with 512k external cache they started the P-III name with. The EBs, though, give that "instant snap" feel to the desktop that is the one thing I crave above all others - and something that no Celeron has ever been able to deliver.

Tannin,

my experience is slightly different. I look after a few small business networks and (as with most small businesses) $$$ are everything. I've found that Celerons teamed up with SiS or VIA chipsets to be slugs, but I personally had a Celeron 300A and BH6 450 :) - and that simply put faster C's to shame. Some of it could have been the faster FSB but some of it was probably the BX chipset.

I've just completed an upgrade of one clients network and even a 733MHz Celeron with SiS chipset and unknown HDD is a dog. I think that half the reason the AMD platform is so good is that (VIA nothwithstanding) , it has reasonable (and always has had) reasonable chipsets and motherboards to go along with it.

I'm still using the SlotA 550 you sold me as my server and it performed much better than the Celeron 450 - more than the 100MHz would suggest.

I was fooling around with it a while back and disabled the L2 cache - and I didn't notice for a week until I was running a couple of benchmarks and I thought the numbers were a bit low! Still much faster than 66Mhz Celerons :)

I think the system as a whole has a lot to do with things as well as the chip - and the tweaks of course...

PS Nice place you have here...

Tannin

02-07-2002, 06:08 AM

Hi LiamC! Good to see you here!

Yup. Put a Celeron A a decent BX board and it was a whole different banana. That 100MHz FSB was the secret, I think, plus all those extra MHz. But for us that was a non-starter: we could never sell overclocks as our mainstream systems, no matter how solid they might have been. The PR factor would have been a guaranteed deal-killer in this small, conservative country town. A decent product, a 300A on a BX board, but an unsalable one in my market.

Of course, we do (and did) have computer-savvy custmers too, and one or two of them asked us to build them a C300 at 400ish, or just sell them the parts. But even here, outside the hard core gamer, they were not all that attractive: the cost of the CPU was higher than an AMD, of course, but the cost of the board was a bigger factor, and the cost of an ATX case added on to that. As a rule, people want MHz for the money, and whichever way we sliced it, the Celerons did not compete. As much as any other factor, the lack of a SIMD instruction set killed them: 3DNow is small beer these days, but it was enough to sway many a buyer in the AMD direction.

All of which was fine by me, as there are three or four local shops that used to sell decent Intel kit in those days, but no-one except us had nice AMD systems back then.

-------------

Ahh! The monster Athlon 550 Classic! I remember it. You know, I think the key thing that made the Athlon (and AMD chips in general) so competitive was the size of its primary cache. If it hadn't been for that masive 128k primary, the higher-clock Athlon Classics (the 950, say) would have been absolute dogs.

You say your cacheless Athlon is still much faster than 66MHz bus Celerons? Sure it is. But then, so is molasses. :wink:

(One day I really, really must sit down and do some proper reading again - why is it that the P-4 can perform quite decently with a piddly little 4k primary? It seems to fly in the face of reason.)

LiamC

02-07-2002, 07:06 PM

Tony, anyone,

are more people buying whole new systems or are they upgrading? I know I haven't bought a whole system since 1995 - just upgrade a CPU/motherboard here, vid there, disk, monitor etc

Mercutio

02-07-2002, 07:50 PM

I'm not a computer shop-owner. I sell maybe 45 systems a year, which isn't that bad for something I do as a hobby.

An awful lot of my sales come from people who either have never owned a computer, or bought a computer so long ago there's no reason to attempt an upgrade. Can't say how many times someone has asked me to take a look at their 486.

There's also a market of idiots who buy a computer because the shortcut to IE disappeared; that is, they figure some silly software problem is a sign that their computer is dying, or don't understand the distinction between hardware and software problems. I try to avoid those people, but they are out there.

I like dealing with anyone clueful enough to ask for specific parts, but those aren't the people I deal with.

Personally, I work on a continuing series of cascading upgrades... but since I'm always buying new hardware for someone or other, I pretty much upgrade my PCs constantly, too.

Tannin

05-07-2002, 11:13 AM

Tannin

05-07-2002, 11:28 AM

Now the real machines again.

A few changes over the last few months. We still can't get Honeywell (i.e., Keytronics) keyboards and stuffed about for ages trying to find a decent substitute. Went with Cherry for a while - German made, not bad, a bit dear, various others, eventually got onto Samsung. These are really cheap for a quality keyboard (no dearer than a lot of really crappy things) but (as Kristi and I see it) of equal quality to the Honeywells. Better in fact - they have a nicer feel than the over-light Honeywells of the last year or so. As good as the old Honeywells.

Dropped the Panasonic 48X CD drives in favour of Mitsubushi 52X ones. We had - must unusually for Panasonic - quality issues with two or three shipments, and the Mitsubushis are cheaper too. Only 12 month warranty instead of the 2 year Panasonic one, but the failure rate so far is really, really low and we figure that the saving we make will more than make up for the chance that we wil have to replace the odd one out of pocket in 18 months.

1: The business system is almost unchanged: only a different brand video card - a SiS 8MB now instead of S3.

2: Professional system: 40GB 7200, Matrox 16MB G450. Unchanged.

3: Cheap home system: Unchanged. Still a 32MB TNT-2 M64, 40GB Samsung 5400, half-decent 380W speakers. Stil a big seller too.

4: Bigger home system: Still 60GB 5400 RPM but 64MB Gforce II MX-400 now, instead of the 32MB MX-200. Sold a few of these in the old config earlier this year, which is unusual.

5: The more games oriented: one is still 40GB 5400, no longer a 64MB MSI Gforce II MX-400, now a GTi with DDR. Sold these too lately - which is also unusual.

6: Bumped the top one up to a Gforce III Ti200 the other day. But looks like I'll have to change it again soon - I'll start another thread to work out what to.

7: Stopped playing cricket.

Buck

05-07-2002, 11:58 AM

I just spent a good half hour re-reading this thread. It's a darn good one, and I think it's worth reviving. There are about six or eight issues arising that I haven't dealt with yet - hell - I haven't responded to Cougtek's question in about the fourth post yet! - but seeing as Tea has half done this already in another thread, I'll start by just bring the hot sellers list up to date.

1: The integrated-everything Celeron has gone from 900 to 1100MHz, otherwise it remains a 15 inch monitor, 20GB hard drive, 128MB. Still no-one buys it. Which is good.

2: The integrated-most things Duron has gone from 900 to 1000, still has the 17 inch monitor, 20GB drive, 128MB SDRAM, on-board sound and video, but full-size case and quality power supply. Sold zero of these too.

Yes, this is a good thread – today is the first time I’ve read it.

1. The integrated-everything Duron @ 900 Mhz with a 20 GB drive and 128 MB SDRAM with onboard video, audio, and LAN has been selling.

2. The semi-integrated system: Athlon XP 1600+ with integrated sound and modem (riser card) has been selling too. As of late, this has been the ECS K7VTA3-2 board with 20 GB drive, 32 MB GeForce2 MX-400 video, NEC 16x10x40x CDR-W, WindowsXP Home, 3 Com NIC ... oh yeah, 256 MB of DDR memory (decent case, of course). I can usually get by selling this box with a nice Keyboard and mouse for under US$960.00 after tax. Darn good system too, I’ve contemplated making one for myself and selling my dual Athlon MP system.

CougTek

05-07-2002, 05:05 PM

Dropped the Panasonic 48X CD drives in favour of Mitsubushi 52X ones.
Tony, you really won't attract many BSD users with your featured configurations. As I once told you, the Panasonic CD-ROM drives are problematic for FreeBSD and OpenBSD has issues with the driver of the Mitsumi! I'm sure you didn't know, but it's funny to see that no matter what you choose, it's always problematic for potential customers who would like to install a BSD OS on your boxes.

But since I'm sure there's a lot of BSD users among your customers...

Pradeep

05-07-2002, 06:45 PM

I'm sure the only BSD they have contact with is the win98 BSOD. ;)

Tannin

05-07-2002, 07:04 PM

Pradeep is right, big CT. In fact, I can think of exactly one BSD user among my customers. No doubt there are others but I only know of one. But they are Mitsubishi drives, not Mitsumi. Quiet, seem fast enough, no failures out of 100 or so ... Hard to fault really.

CougTek

05-07-2002, 07:16 PM

And since you don't know much of anything about BSD (sorry if it's false, but I don't recall you to be very familiar with most Unix OSes), if that customer has troubles with his system, he will be Sol (http://www.storageforum.net/phpBB2/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=61), isn't he?

Sorry about the confusion regarding your CD-ROM brand. I remember now that you wrote you replaced the Panasonic by Mitsubushi. Is it a regional brand of Mitsubishi for the Australian outback? ;-)

Tannin

05-07-2002, 07:32 PM

I have many faults, and my spelling is formost amongst them. :(

Or should that be "foremost"?

Nope, not Sol. But you are quite correct, I know little of Linux, BSD or any other 'nix.

James

05-08-2002, 04:54 AM

I've essentially stopped selling systems, because the things that people wanted to buy got gradually less and less fun to build, and just repetitivve instead. I only sell systems to people who want top end gaming systems/bragging rights, and I don't do much volume. Maybe one a week is all, if that, and my margin on it is hardly anything - I do it mostly for fun, which is why the fun factor of getting to see new hardware bought with someone else's cash is the important bit to me.

Lately we seem to have reached a point that for even the most advanced system the configuration has essentially plateaued - Epox or occasionally ECS (SiS based) mobo, Athlon 1700 or 1800 XP, GF 3Ti200, 7200RPM IDE HD (either a D740X or a B IV), 256-512M of DDR RAM, C-Media 8738-based sound card, Realtek LAN card, Pioneer 16x slot load DVDROM, and maybe if you're lucky a Lite-On CD writer. It's been like that for more than six months.

No one, even the most hardened gamer, seems to be willing to step up to the plate and buy a GF4 (I haven't been able to get the 4200 model yet, and that's the only one that I think will sell). 24X writers are more than anyone really needs, the 32X and 40X stuff seems to bear no interest for anyone. No one is interested in the Audigy. The system described above will run 99+% of the games out there at blinding speed and should continue to give good performance for at least two more years, even for the most frantic parts-upgrader.

I do sometimes have a bit of a hankering to build a P4-1.6G system and overclock it to 533MHz FSB on one of the SiS645-based boards, but then what would I do with it? The last Pentium system I used apart from in a laptop or a server was a Celeron 300A @ 450, which is still running happily in my father's main machine. That was perhaps 4 years ago. I still have a P166 I've turned into a FreeBSD box at home and use as a SMB file server, so I can sell my Sun box to buy a digital camera, too. But that's it.

CougTek

05-08-2002, 08:13 AM

Lately we seem to have reached a point that for even the most advanced system the configuration has essentially plateaued - Epox or occasionally ECS (SiS based) mobo, Athlon 1700 or 1800 XP, GF 3Ti200, 7200RPM IDE HD (either a D740X or a B IV), 256-512M of DDR RAM, C-Media 8738-based sound card, Realtek LAN card, Pioneer 16x slot load DVDROM, and maybe if you're lucky a Lite-On CD writer. It's been like that for more than six months.

You are right. The system you described is similar to my own main home computer and I built it back in September last year. The most powerful graphic cards I sold have been GeForce 3Ti200. I sold a few Radeon 7500 too, but no Radeon 8500. Until the GeForce 4 Ti4200 arrives on my lists, I won't sell any GF4 for sure unless someone with too much money to burn tells me that he wants to have the fastest possible gaming system. But that doesn't happen very often (usually once or twice a year).