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Hardware companies to avoid
Author
After having the second Abit component in my computer go out on me recently (First was a video card, second was a mobo), I've been thinking about companies that I will not buy from, ever again. Currently, Abit tops that list for me.
How about you? Any tech horror stories? Companies with really bad reputations?
For that matter, share your really positive tech experiences. (I.E. buying 30 HDDs and having no failures, etc.)
I just avoid the hyper-cheap manufacturers. Chaintech, Apollo, Biostar, Jaton, etc.
Odd that you've had problems with Abit though. They're an Asus sub-brand.
Odd that you've had problems with Abit though. They're an Asus sub-brand.
Author
Quote: Original post by PromitOdd that you've had problems with Abit though. They're an Asus sub-brand.
I know. I haven't heard of anything similar, but my brother's Abit motherboard also went bad about a year ago. I just thought of something: Our Abit products are both product samples from our aunt, an international sales representative for some tech companies. There might be issues with them that were resolved before the final production run.
Regardless, I'm going to buy from Asus or Gigabyte after doing a lot more research than I did last time.
Creative since they are hit or miss and still haven't fixed "the screech of death" that various soundcards they produce make.
I"d recommend Seagate any day since every HDD I ever bought from them is still working flawlessly to this day!
Can't say the same thing about my WD or Maxtor HDD since they seem to have a max lifetime of 3 years excluding WD raptor drives(I have a 36GB one that's made it over 3 years).
I"d recommend Seagate any day since every HDD I ever bought from them is still working flawlessly to this day!
Can't say the same thing about my WD or Maxtor HDD since they seem to have a max lifetime of 3 years excluding WD raptor drives(I have a 36GB one that's made it over 3 years).
I've had decent luck with Samsung and WD hard drives (especially raptors).
I like Asus. I also like Intel over Athlon, after having gone back and forth several times. (My current CPU is Athlon X2; next will be Core 2 Duo or better).
I like NVIDIA, and have had both hardware and driver problems with ATI.
I can never get accelerated drivers to work with Soundblasters -- when I use Creative cards, I turn off hardware acceleration in the control panel.
I don't like FIC motherboards, or anything with a VIA chip on it.
I like Asus. I also like Intel over Athlon, after having gone back and forth several times. (My current CPU is Athlon X2; next will be Core 2 Duo or better).
I like NVIDIA, and have had both hardware and driver problems with ATI.
I can never get accelerated drivers to work with Soundblasters -- when I use Creative cards, I turn off hardware acceleration in the control panel.
I don't like FIC motherboards, or anything with a VIA chip on it.
I've had good luck with segate drives, and horific luck with WD ones.
I agree with the driver issues on the ATI cards.
Though I am still an AMD fanboy (mainly due to mobo driver issues on all my pentium computers)
I love the soundblaster line, and havent had a single issue with it, but I have had issues with all the build-in Intel/Nforce sound chips.
I agree with the driver issues on the ATI cards.
Though I am still an AMD fanboy (mainly due to mobo driver issues on all my pentium computers)
I love the soundblaster line, and havent had a single issue with it, but I have had issues with all the build-in Intel/Nforce sound chips.
Why do people say Abit and Asus are related?
ASUS was formed in 1989 by former Acer employees, (AOpen IS an Acer group, ASUS is just a group formed by FORMER Acer engineers).
Abit was also formed in 1989, a totally seperate company from ASUS that was actually one of it's fiercest competitors in the mid 1990s, when both ASUS and Abit we're still boutique and cheap taiwaneese companies.
ASUS was formed in 1989 by former Acer employees, (AOpen IS an Acer group, ASUS is just a group formed by FORMER Acer engineers).
Abit was also formed in 1989, a totally seperate company from ASUS that was actually one of it's fiercest competitors in the mid 1990s, when both ASUS and Abit we're still boutique and cheap taiwaneese companies.
I've had MAJOR problems with Creative brand sound card drivers since things became windows based and not "Sound Plaster compatibility" based. They bought EMU who had better windows sound blaster compatibility than the current sound blaster, but it has never been right since. Creative LIVE drivers always screw up stuff in windows, the Audigy was much better luckily, but now I have weird X-Fi problems. This card plays fine in every game I have except Guild Wars, which for no known reason just completely locks when I have the X-Fi enabled. I have to actually switch to my integrated sound to play it. And this problem has not changed in over 14 months of game patches and driver releases.
I've had good luck with nvidia reference drivers, with only 1 case of a driver obviously screwing something up that used to work (1 bad install out of about 15 total), with ATI drivers I've had that happen 3 times (3 bad installs out of about 9 total). But mostly they both work fine lately.
I used to hear people complain about Maxtor drive quality, but I've never had 1 fail, and they amount to nearly 50% of my drives over the last 10 years (6 maxtor drives out of 14). Then again, for both memory and hard drives, I've had only 1 failure each, while my friend who lived at a house with bad power regulation burned up 3 HDs and 4 sticks of memory in 2 years.
Only thing that generally sucks is ALL brands of CDROM/DVD ... but they only cost $31 now, so who cares. And the those damn little fans on everything, video cards, northbridges, etc. They always fail about anywhere from 6-24 months. Which risks taking the whole computer with it if you run your computer 24/7 and don't notive.
Oh yeah, 1 more thing, the most important too. Power supplies. Cheap power supplies have accounted for something like 30-50% of all problems me and my friends have experienced over the past 5 years, always check the power quality before wasting time with anything else. Better yet, but spend the money and get quality power.
I've had good luck with nvidia reference drivers, with only 1 case of a driver obviously screwing something up that used to work (1 bad install out of about 15 total), with ATI drivers I've had that happen 3 times (3 bad installs out of about 9 total). But mostly they both work fine lately.
I used to hear people complain about Maxtor drive quality, but I've never had 1 fail, and they amount to nearly 50% of my drives over the last 10 years (6 maxtor drives out of 14). Then again, for both memory and hard drives, I've had only 1 failure each, while my friend who lived at a house with bad power regulation burned up 3 HDs and 4 sticks of memory in 2 years.
Only thing that generally sucks is ALL brands of CDROM/DVD ... but they only cost $31 now, so who cares. And the those damn little fans on everything, video cards, northbridges, etc. They always fail about anywhere from 6-24 months. Which risks taking the whole computer with it if you run your computer 24/7 and don't notive.
Oh yeah, 1 more thing, the most important too. Power supplies. Cheap power supplies have accounted for something like 30-50% of all problems me and my friends have experienced over the past 5 years, always check the power quality before wasting time with anything else. Better yet, but spend the money and get quality power.
My Abit Radeon 9200 SE went bad after ~2 years when I did a driver update. The rest of my computer is crappy, so I want to get a new one this summer. However, I also want an Xbox 360, because right now I'm sharing one, and it's annoying having to either 1) go to their house on weekends to play, or 2) wait until it's my turn to have it. I must say, it's a tough choice, having played the Crackdown demo yesterday :)
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