Seagate ST32550N vs Quantum XP32150 - which is better?

From: jpero_at_sympatico.ca <(jpero_at_sympatico.ca)>
Date: Sun Dec 30 06:12:11 2001

> > because our customer base are still using 486, pentiums and older
> > machines, and many are unwilling to jump for low-end 20GB for their
> > machines
>
>
> Maybe you need to explain to them that if they don't pay the
> fiddler, they just might have to sit this dance out.

I did touch on the issues w/ drives greater than 8GB on older
machines including that older pentiums. I have seen that even 10GB
made machine's bios choke (lock up) or bizzare compatiablities.
Promise fasttrak ATA100 PCI costs about $60-75 here. AT to ATX
transition is still ongoing and new AT surper7 w/ AGP is about 120
and cpu for it if customer wants bit of upgrade is about 70-100 (P5
233mmx thru AMD K6-2 500, $15 ball bearing fan/heatsink, $40 for
128MB SDRAM. Don't forget we charge fixed servicing charge of $35.

Basically, new body car rolling on 4 10" tires w/ tired parts from
other old car stuffed into it pulling along that heap with screaming
Geo's 1.0L 3 cylinder engine. Got the point yet?

Recently lot of people broke out of woods after we started selling
special package that supplier unexpectedly found susplus of their
unsold stuff. ATX case w/ 250W PSU, K7M w/ onboard audio, yes that
crappy but good enough for them! :-)), heatsink, Athlon 800 for $220.
Does work w/ original win95 if you don't mind no USB. M$ bastards
:-P We have seen that same thing happen with late amd 486dx40 and
SP97-V era when prices on cpu and board become reasonable. Not
anymore now thanks to ATX cases and lack of socket A and 370 for AT
cases except for horrible pcchips boards that we don't touch.
Average upgrade prices customers pays is about 300 which is about
right for their income tax refund.

I found out soon after (we were straight Award bios user for eons,
FYI.) on K7M's AMI PnP is broken but we managed to expect that. :-)
No small wonder AMI is still minority because they didn't clean up
their "broken" PnP. Award got it right in 486 PCI era, no wonder
Asus didn't went for other types of bios. Here's the typical
situation: A happy AMI machine, simply add a PCI card will upset all
other attached resources means we had to go though hardware detection
all over again on everything else not just that new part recently
added. Award corrrectly functions and winblows detected just that
new hardware we added, easy life.

Spending new parts (over $100 and up) on $200 beaters is same idea
for older computers.

I't all to do with mystries of the customers' brains and we can't
bend their ears around reality or else some of them may spook and
ruin our reputation.

> > Makers should have kept selling 5GB to 15GB range
> How many people would expect/demand a lower price on these than
> a 20 Gb just because they're smaller. And if that price level
snip

Hehehe... I don't mean lower prices. Say, same price point on that
range as 20GB for little new ones. Heck, when we had reseller who
sells pulls we had brisk business there and everyone are satisfied.
I kept bugging my boss and boss knows we need another source to buy
those pulls.

> jpero_at_sympatico.ca wrote:
> >
> > > I prefer Quantum drives myself, but I guess it's more like the debate
> > > between Ford and Chevy. I have only one Seagate, in this Linux machine
> > > Gary Hildebrand

When we said selling Max for years we mean that because we depend on
reliablity and compatilbity to keep our reputation. Seagate is being
kicked for screwing around with bios on Barracuda IV that gave awful
performance in raid array. WD is thrown out also because we had
compatablity problems earlier on last year and this year on and
most recently people is beating up WD for screwing them w/ a bad bios
mid way on current drives that had good bios.

In a nutshell, we have been doing fine w/ Maxtor for 4 years so far
and RMA on those is very low per year, say 1 to 3 per year. Recently
we started selling IBM drives because prices became reasonable that
what customers is willing to pay for.

Don't forget that along with this fuss, we sell new machines along w/
new monitor and all that trimmings also.

Cheers,

Wizard

PS: Cirrus logic is still a problem on some hard drives especially
if HD makers bios is not done correctly, what a POS.
Received on Sun Dec 30 2001 - 06:12:11 GMT