mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (03/17/89)
>Does anyone have experiences - good, bad, or indifferent - with PC Brand >hardware? I'm considering the purchase of a PC Brand 386-20. The reviews of >the product are good, but I've been mislead by good reviews before. So if >you've been disappointed, incredibly pleased, shocked, or merely satisfied >with PC Brand hardware in general or their 386-20 specifically, please e-mail >or post you comments and opinions. > I've posted this before, but it is worth doing again: I am in a large Chemistry department with oodles of computers. We have, so far, about six 386 PC's, all from IBM or Dell. EVERY single one arrived broken! All were under the appropriate company's super duper (no joke!) on-site service contract. One or two new motherboards cured the computer problems. Every single IBM 8513 monitor died within 24 hours of being turned on. After seeing the serviceman several times, I asked about the replacements: "Oh, we get a bunch in, and I turn them on overnight to see when they go." (The monitor problem may be fixed - we now buy multisync monitors.) Apparently, 386 motherboards have some sort of problem. Maybe they don't test them. (I mean REALLY test - the on board diagnostics are a joke. I suggest running Autocad release 10 and doing a "hide" on the house (site-3d). Microsoft C 5.1 is also a good test, but not as good as Autocad.)