Thursday, September 4, 2008

Cheap is better, right?


So what are we looking at in this picture (and how is it relevant to this Blog)?

This is one corner of a room full of dead computers. The majority of these are eMachines. You can clearly see a Dell, a "whitebox" system and a couple of HP/Compaq computers.
Most of these computers were just over a year old when they "died" (just outside of the manufacturers warranty). They are also mainly the least expensive (ranging from $399 to $599). Most of the consumers that purchased these systems brought them into one of our offices for repair and were shocked that it was a catastrophic failure (most of these had failed power supplies, motherboards and CPUs upon arrival). They also received no help from the manufacturers tech support because the systems were out of warranty.


Is there a lesson to be learned here? Are the larger desktop makers making cheap computers to meet the public's demand or is the consumer caught up in a price war and ultimately paying the price? Am I being biased due to the large number of these "value" machines that I see come in for repair?

4 comments:

Travis Erwin said...

I'll be in the market for a desktop soon. I'll have to came talk to you.

Travis Erwin said...

By the way are you planning on answering questions here and providing some of that missing service to your readers?

Ray Wilson said...

You nailed it. My hope is to provide exactly that... "missing service" and maybe learn something along the way. I hope this blog become a place where people can ask questions, get answers, sound off and learn.

Thanks!

Danh said...

Bout time you got this blog thing going. Looking good!