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- From: carl@Cayman.COM (Carl Heinzl)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
- Subject: Re: Packard-Bell or LASER PCs- Why not?
- Message-ID: <CARL.92Sep15115427@atlantis.Cayman.COM>
- Date: 15 Sep 92 15:54:27 GMT
- References: <1992Sep14.160217.4366@gtephx.UUCP>
- Sender: news@cayman.COM
- Distribution: na
- Organization: Cayman Systems Inc., Cambridge, MA
- Lines: 48
- Nntp-Posting-Host: atlantis
- In-reply-to: riechertg@gtephx.UUCP's message of 14 Sep 92 16:02:17 GMT
-
-
- >I'm looking to buy a 486SX PC for home use. Locally, I see various
- >stores advertising Packard-Bell and LASER brand computers for what
- >appear to be pretty good prices. These are obviously oriented toward
- >the "unsophistcated :-)" PC user in that in one package you get
- >pre-installed DOS, Windows, mouse, modem, VGA monitor, and other
- >software such as Microsoft Works.
-
- >What I want to know is why one of these isn't the good buy it seems to
- >be. Is it service, non-standard hardware, reliability or what? I'm
- >interested in all opinions pro and con.
-
- Unless they've radically changed, virtually everything is non-standard
- in a Packard Bell (I don't know about the Laser). I am in the process
- of repairing a Packard Bell machine that is 15 months old. An
- extended warranty was purchased and the company that sold the warranty
- went belly up (gee, I wonder how many times that scam has been
- pulled). It's only 3 months out of the original warranty and Packard
- Bell is letting her hang out to dry. The motherboard is completely
- dead. Packard Bell wants $500 to replace a 386/SX motherboard !!!
-
- Now, the motherboard has one slot which has a passive backplane
- plugged into it. The actual cards plug into this backplane (thus
- they're parallel to the motherboard. The case and power supply cannot
- be reused due to this strange configuration. The only things that are
- salvageable are the floppy drives and hard disk. The keyboard is a
- PS2 type keyboard and so will require a $10 adaptor to be used with a
- "standard" motherboard.
-
- Tieing yourself to such propritary hardware may seem like a good deal
- now (because it's cheap) but it can cost you big time in the long run.
-
- In addition, this motherboard has the VGA, IDE controller, and IO
- cards on the motherboard. So much for changing or upgrading video,
- switching to using a caching IDE controller, or a 16550 serial chip.
-
- My advise (as if you couldn't tell) would be to run, not walk, away
- from any such systems. They seem like good deals to the uneducated
- but there are many more honest dealers out there, probably a couple
- that are local to you.
-
- There are many such dealers out there (such as myself) that will
- install and preconfigure software for you. I even deliver and install
- the system up to 25 miles from Boston (oh, you're in Phoenix, sorry)
- and will give some amount of tutorial on computer usage.
-
- -Carl-
- --
-