HanJammer wrote on 2023-05-31, 00:12:
... proceeds to agree on every point made? :]
1 pcpartner was a budget manufacturer
2 VT82C693A sucks, is unreliable, and its AGP implementation is broken
3 its ok it you only use some minimal subset of computer capabilities
ediflorianUS wrote on 2023-05-30, 08:37:
BitWrangler wrote on 2023-05-30, 01:19:
For me, it's because some of the low end stuff seems to have the survival potential of cockroaches, where some higher end stuff dies in mysterious ways that eternally confound fixing. Besides, as mature PC users we can step out of the "utterest piece of crap in the known universe and gave my gerbil cancer" mindset of describing how it was a couple of percent slower on a review back in the day. Also not expecting anything and futzing around with a cheapie and getting it running sweet is far far more satisfying than the equivalent amount of time "fighting" something high end until it works how it "should".
I Agree with that statement , since I moved onto brand's (compaq/hp/apple/dell/etc/etc) I never ever looked back.
Dell never touched VIA. Neither did HP, in fact HP mainly shipped OEM Asus boards 😀 Those companies specialized in B2B with support contracts, best way to lower your support cost is by shipping reliable hardware. There is one item not like the others on your list. Compaq was dabbling in everything, sis, via, cyrix, k5, k6, 5.25" Quantum Bigfoots, pathetic integrated graphics (selling "3D accelerated" Ati Rage LT with no AGP slot in 1998), anything to flood supermarkets with volume of crap. Unsurprisingly they went out of business in 2002 and sold itself to HP.