home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
-
- On 26 Jan 1996, Michael Kraemer wrote:
- > Of course the A4000 is a wee bit expensive. On the other hand the 586 you
- > mention doesn't impress me at all. With 8MB you can't do much beyond
- > booting those bloated PC OSs. The monitor is probably a cheap crap 14".
- > HD and CD are probably the cheapest crap IDE drives instead of expandable SCSI.
- > And don't forget: according to a recent report in a german PC mag even
- > brand name PCs (Compaq et al) have a failure rate of 40% within the first
- > 6 months, ESCOM (!) PCs even 60% ! Mostly monitor or HD. I find this incredible !
-
- Yes, people tend to compare the Amigas with $4500 IBM-built workstations,
- then quote the price of a cheap, poorly-built system. I have personally
- bought two PC systems (and various peripherals) over the last five years,
- and had problems with both. The first was a 386sx/16, which was sold to
- me with a 1MB SVGA card for $1800. About a year later, I discovered there
- was only 256k on the card! Took it back, and the guy where I bought it
- told me it wasn't even a 1MB card, and said the best he could do is put
- 256k more on it. I then bought a SoundBlaster for the new games (at
- $160), which repeatedly crashed the system with 'parity errors' unless I
- ran it in AdLib mode (ie, no digital sound). I later traded it for a
- ProAudio board, which worked fine. I then bought a new motherboard to
- upgrade the system to 4MB SIMM + 40MHz AMD 386 (cost = $600). Had this a
- while when I found it was only running at 33MHz.. Sure the chip was a
- 40MHz version, but the motherboard couldn't be clocked that high! Another
- rip-off. Finally I bought a 486DX4/100 with local bus accelerated
- everything, 2X CD-ROM, 8MB, etc for $2200. Well, the 1024x768x8bit
- Winblows driver crashed the system consistantly, so I was forced to use
- 640x480 (since the refresh on 800x600 was horrible). The motherboard is
- so horridly designed that three of the five expansion slots are unusable
- except by half-length cards because of the CPU fan. I installed one
- version of '95 after another, ending up at the final CD release version,
- which is installed now. It won't let me hook into the school's network;
- tech support have been trying for 5 months now ("I don't understand. This
- works on _almost_ everyone else's systems.."). Occasionally my mouse
- will stop working for no reason until I 'reinstall' it. The system
- thrashes the hard drive for a good ten seconds just to load the piece of
- shit text editor "Notepad", and crashes consistantly.
-
- So, I've spent nearly $5000 to end up with a slow, crappy, unstable 486
- '95 system. In the same time, I've spent ~$1500 total on my 3000T system,
- which easily runs circles around the '486, and is about 10X faster than
- the PowerMac 7500/100 machines (takes over 2 minutes just boot, I timed
- it, 32MB and all) that I'm forced to use for one of my classes here.. The
- 'T is also German-built with American-built 040 and video cards and has
- never been in the shop (even though it runs 24/7 and has for nearly three
- years). You can't really compare that with cheap crap from Malaysia or
- the Philippines..
-
- > My A3000 I bought 3 years ago was DM 4000,- ($2700) and I never ever had any
- > trouble with it although I use it nearly daily.
-
- Are they that much more expensive in Europe? I paid $1199 for my 3000T
- (030/5MB/240MB) in March 1993..
-
- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
- |Jeff Bender, Electrical Engineering & German at Oregon State University|
- |bender@engr.orst.edu http://www.orst.edu/~REAL_SOON_NOW!|
- | AMiGA 3000T/o4O: 12MB + 1.4GB SCSI2 + CyberGraphX GVP Spectrum |
- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
-