luis@hermes.Berkeley.EDU (Luis Miguel) (04/15/91)
I am on the market for a powerful (386 or 486) PC system, and today at the Price Club I saw a brochure for systems from POSITIVE Corp. The price performance ratio of their systems is pretty impressive (A pretty loaded 33mh 486 for $4000). I would like to know what peoples experience with this brand and Company is. Thanks, /Luiss -- Luis Miguel Computer Science Division 570 Evans Hall University of California
dtl@hpcuhe.cup.hp.com (Dean Lindsay) (04/18/91)
I purchase a Positive 33MHz 386 in October 1990 for $3000. It had 2MB RAM, 106 MB SCSI disc, MS-DOS 4.01 and Windows 3.0 all loaded. The system ran out of the box, with no setup hassles, which was nice. The system runs fine, as far as I can tell. The Genoa 6400 SVGA card and ?? monitor have met my needs. The monitor can do 1024x768 interlaced. I run it 800x600 with 256 color Windows 3.0 drivers. I have been able to get to the service department with usually a 24 hour wait for them to return my calls. When I had a boot flaky, the tech support department was very willing to swap the hard drive. I decided to not have them do it, and have lately decided that the problem is related to LPT1 and boot interaction. I can't boot sometimes if I power up the printer before booting. Things that I am not so pleased about: 1. The manual that came with the system shows a different mother board than the one in my system. They are apparently related, except that my motherboard has 2 serial and a parallel port, which the manual does not show. Therefore, I don't have documentation on the switches on my motherboard. There has apparently never been a manual printed for this motherboard, since they never seem to be able to supply one even though they will accept an order for one. 2. Getting info from Positive to upgrade the RAM to 4M in December was a hassle. The first guy gave me wrong info. I found a tech who knows what he is doing, and he was able to tell me what PALs to change to go from 256K to 1M SIMMs. 3. They didn't provide the Windows manual set or the original discs with the package. They provided a book about using Windows 3.0 instead. I prefer to have the software manual set for any product I use. I have discovered that the Positive box is made by Eltech Research of Fremont, California. The manual says copywrite Eltech Research. And when I went to willcall to get the PALs for my memory upgrade, that is where I was sent. One nice feature about buying at Price Club is you can return it within 30 days, no questions asked. Things are working fine for me right now. I am a little concerned about long term support -- what if the motherboard dies in 5 years? Will there be anyone to fix it? On the other hand, will I still want to use the system in 5 years? Maybe it will look like a dog in 5 years, and I would just throw it away. Right now I am a happy customer, with only minor hassles. Dean Lindsay