#Packard Bell
9 messages in this thread
Thanks for the support, Jim!
Packard Bell PC's are so bad, my company refuses to service them (and we are a
major retail chain). I can't believe anyone would willingly buy one. Heck,
they even put a 'Warranty Void' sticker on the case, so you void your Warranty
if you try to take the case off to install a card or memory!
I don't like Gateway PC's, either, but they are a little better than Packard
Bell PC's. Compaq makes a decent PC.
Rick Green
Via AutoPilot
Rick –
Packard Bell has to have the worst service I've ever had the unfortunate
experience of attempting to contact. 40+ minute waits on hold…but at
least it wasn't one of those snazzy new 900 tech support lines. <g> Even
Commodore's service department was faster!
My brother bought his DX2-66 minitower last August ('93) for $1800 from
Damark; it looked like a bargain since other brands of DX2's were going
for $2500 or so at the time. Well, the first thing that happened was that
we found out Windows 3.1 wasn't included (why not include it with the
high-end system when it's included in _all_ the other ones?), so he had to
go buy a copy (student discount ;); we used Win3.0 in the interim.
Next we had to download the required video drivers off the Packard Bell
BBS! The stupid thing didn't even include a floppy with drivers! (That,
BTW, was the first time I ever used a modem. 🙂 Anyway, we ended up
downloading the _wrong_ set of drivers (confusion in descriptions),
wasting about an hour (the fastest modem we had was a 1200bps at the
time). So then we finally got the thing running. It was _much_ faster at
PageMaker than the 286/20 he'd been using for the past few years.
The next thing we discovered was that we couldn't disable ROM shadowing,
so no TSR's could be loaded into high memory. We had to make boot disks
for all our games. In fact, we can't even get Gunship 2000 CD to load
anymore; it needs 580K free mem and the most we can possibly squeeze out
is 570K.
He bought a Compaq 486SX-33 with integrated VESA video for his girlfriend
earlier this year. It was redrawing windows MUCH faster than his DX2-66.
Then we looked at our old CompuAdd 333 Tower with their special Hirez
video board — even it was faster than his! To top all that off, his
computer is just an ISA machine, so he can't take advantage of any
accelerators.
Then, this past summer, he bought a 540MB hard drive to supplement the
meager 160MB one that the system came with. Guess what happened when we
installed it. Nothing worked. I took the 540 off and just put the 160
back. Nothing. My brother went out and bought two different IDE cables.
Still nothing. I took the 160 off and tried the 540 by itself. Nothing.
Desperate to get all the data off, I opened up the 333T, took out its SCSI
card, reinstalled its original IDE card, and tried it out. It worked
(after flipping the cable a couple of times — why don't they put a red
dot on the pin corresponding to the red line?). I got the files off with
a Syquest and then tried reinstalling it in the 486. Still nothing. So,
he took it to the local (across town) Computer City to have it serviced.
Fortunately, it was still under warranty, so they exchanged the hard
drives at no charge. Then they installed the 540 and formatted
everything.
BUT…no video drivers again. Sooooo, I had to call up the BBS again
(this time with a 14.4kbps modem on my 4000) and download the drivers.
Except there was a problem — the colors weren't right (Jupiter from
Microsoft Scenes had bad green fringes, among other problems). So I
looked and downloaded again…nothing changed. So we called them up and
got them to send us a driver disk…still no better. So we're just living
with it now.
Also, we had to reinstall Windows several times during the course of all
this. Sometimes the video driver list wasn't updated correctly; sometimes
the apps (like ATM) decided that they didn't like what we did and had to
be reinstalled as well; and the stupid driver kept changing the _default_
colors every time we selected it!
Then, the day before the warranty expired, the mouse went out.
Fortunately, we got them to send out a new one (it works much better than
the old one ever did, BTW.)
Oh well. If he ever buys another PC, I'll make sure it's an Ocean DCA-2
(EDRAM) Pentium.
You don't like Gateway? Why not? How about Dell?
– Jim, on AutoPilot!
Sounds like you'd have been better off building one from scratch! I've
actually found it better to buy PCs from dealers who assemble their own – you
get a better machine for a lower price, and when something goes wrong, they fix
it – it doesn't have to go off to some distant service centre for several
months.
The only real problem I've had taking this route was a hard drive that gave up
after 6 months – probably more to do with being posted to England and back a
couple of times than any original fault!
Mal
Binary Dreams
>> Sounds like you'd have been better off building one from scratch!
We almost did…but then decided it would be easier if we just bought a
pre-configured one. (Yeah, right. 😉
Damark's price also undercut the local dealers. Price was probably the
determining factor in this case (my brother likes to buy the store-brand
stuff instead of name-brand to save a couple of bucks ;).
The primary problem I have with many of our local (West El Paso) PC
dealers is that they tend to come and go rather quickly. I can only think
of one that has actually stayed in business at least eight years. Of
course, our only dedicated Amiga dealer (in East El Paso) opened in
November '92 and closed in January '93. 😛
– Jim, on AP!
Your story should be published in all of the PC mags! :^) It's amazing this
machine sells so well, isn't it?
I don't like Gateway's because they cause me headaches in my job. I work for a
Reseller, and our Sales Consultants (I like to call them 'Order Takers') put
the customers Gateway machines on a Service contract. I have found that
Gateways, although very nice in appearance and quality of the keyboard, case,
and options, has major problems with the system board (The onboard serial ports
are constantly going bad). Thats when they find out that only Gateway can
service Gateways. This is a major drawback, to me. They do not authorize any
service centers to service their PC brand. To get one fixed, the customer has
to call Gateway. Then, the representative will use the customer to try to
debug the problem (and most customers know nothing about PC's). Then, Gateway
will send them the part to install. Now, in some cases, a Gateway
representative will come onsite to do service, but that could take time. That
is downtime that could have been avoided.
I am mostly talking about machines that are still under Warranty, which is the
case on nearly every service call I get for Gateways. This is the only reason
I don't care for Gateways.
Rick Green
Via AutoPilot
>> It's amazing this machine sells so well, isn't it?
That's not so amazing; it's cheap, it's preconfigured, it's cheap, it's
extremely visible (in every department store, electronics store, computer
chain store, and discount store), and it's cheap. <g> It's sort of the
C-64 syndrome. Maybe that's a lesson for CEI.
Actually, I remember that a few months after the A2000 was released, I saw
a small (about 1/32 page) Dilliard's ad telling people to come see it. A
few months later, I was in the store, and I didn't see any. I guess
that's Commodore for you. 🙁
Well, anyway, thanks for the warning…back when my brother was mad at
himself for getting the Packard Bell (a few months ago), he was thinking
about getting a Gateway P5. I guess it's a good thing he didn't.
– Jim, on AutoPilot!
Jim,
> It's sort of the C-64 syndrome.
At least the C64 was a good computer and you got EXACTLY what you thought
you were buying. Not so for the PCs!
Malcolm
>> At least the C64 was a good computer and you got EXACTLY what you
>> thought you were buying. Not so for the PCs!
"Yep" to the first and "Double Yep" to the second. 🙂
(BOY, that sysop moved these messages in a hurry! <g to sysop>)
– Jim, on AP!
>> C-64 syndrome
Thats also how the CD32 did so well in the short time it was on sale. C= UK
managed to get it into all manner of stores in the UK. I've heard figures of
100,000 units in 4 months. If thats true, its a shame the bankruptcy happenned
when it did!
Mal
Binary Dreams