Old news.
New news is, their 7200.8 with native serial ATA interfaces and other nifty tricks are coming out in September. Be afraid...

What's your point?
Anybody else out there offering a 5 year year warranty on their stuff? Geez, your tough to please. 😏

With the neverending advancements in the home computer field, it's nice to see a company that actually gives a damn about customer service and building customer loyalty. We all know that there is more than enough crap out there, including OS's, software, and game requirements.

Understand, I am not a mouthpiece for SEAGATE, however, this just may be the beginning of a trend of more 'user friendly' manufacturers. What with tech support moving overseas in droves. I have nothing against global trade; my only bitch is that I can understand the person on the other end of phone line. 😒

I like Seagate.
Their hardware is reliable, though they use less error correction than I'd like (compared to other manufacturers, though this may again be because their stuff is just more reliable!).
5 year warranty = win. (Definitely solidified my newfound loyalty with them. 😀)

Seagates the bomb, Im using an external 80gig to run all my EMU stuff because they are so solid!!! 😁

I agree Seagate is about the consumer and not out to make a crap HD thats gonna last about as long as a cold! Not to dog or anything but Maxtor ain't got nothing on these guys when it comes to reliability!

Now with the new 5 year warranty, I think I know what type of internal HD I will invest into when I need a new one! 😀

😵 Waxxxz018 😵

Uh, Do we have a consensus'ssss on SEAGATE HARD DRIVES ?

Oh how I love VOGONS!!! 😁

Now, if we could only settle the ongoing debates:

Intel or AMD

nVidia or ATI

XP or not XP

etc., etc., etc.,... 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕

Close the thread, I think my brain is going to implode!!!!!

AMD. Even the older Opteron 150s kick Intel's not-even-released Xeon's ass. That's very telling. (Same thing with their desktop processors, especially with the 64-bits that Intel is still struggling with releasing "IA-32e" shit.)
(the jury is still out on nVidia v ATi)
XP. ("But Windows 2000 is better" = "But Windows 2000 doesn't make backups of my registry so if it gets corrupted I'm fucked!")
nuff said.

I'd have to go with ATI, based soley on the fact that they don't sell their stuff to vendors who then give you a bunch of shit when you call for tech support. F- nVidia! 😜

ATI ROCKS!

Oh, uh, and the fact that nVidia bought out VooDoo and then shut down tech support for the VooDoo cards! What a bunch of dicks! All this bulshit in an attempt to corner the vid card market. Sounds alot like MICROSUCK!!! 😜

Carry on, I have wiped myself! 😁

How bout this...

The standard warranty on all hard drives used to be 5 years

Then there were lots of press announcements about dropping the warranties to 1 or 3 years.

Then they reintroduce the 5-year warranty like its something new.

Yes both Western Digital and Seagate are guilty. The only two brands of hard drives as far as I'm concerned.... Big Blue's lil bytch Hitachi can suck it... And Maxtors are the scum of the earth.

Seagate 200gb SATA's and WD's 10000rpm Raptors. Best of Breed. =D

yanker2112 I don't know where you got the impression that ATi doesn't sell its video cards to OEMs. There are millions of HPs, Gateways, and Dells that have ATi video in them. ATi laptop video is more popular in major OEMs than nVidia video today. Please do not spout lies.

As far as Western Digital, you would not believe how many of those drives I see that are bad. If you've got a WD drive with a yellow label, it's almost certainly either failed or going to fail before its published MTBF, from my experience (and failed hard drives are one of the top 5, if not top 3 problems I see as a repair technician). IBM hard drives were always absolutely fantastic, and I have no reason to believe that Hitachi are any worse. IBM had one bad line of drive out of hundreds of others. Maxtor's certainly had a bad run of things; not quite as bad as WD, though. Samsung drives are absolute shit.

And there is no comparing Seagate's 5-year warranty to Western Digital's warranty. WD warranties ONE line of their hard drives, the 10.000RPM Raptors, with 5 years. ALL OTHER LINES ARE ONLY 1 YEAR. Seagate gave ALL their drives, including laptop drives, 5 year warranties-- RETROACTIVELY.

P.S. Still waiting for !@#$ 7200.8s. First it was Sept, then Nov/Dec, now it's Dec/Jan.

Seagate is #1... but there screwing up right now.

They already have 2-platter 15,000 rpm SATA drives at alpha stages and 1-platter at beta. There 10,000rpm SATA drives are at the testing phase.

Niether will be released anytime soon....

This is where there screwing up. Unlike Western Digital, Seagate has a SCSI business to protect. They should realize that if they just cut there losses, and use the knowledge they've acquired from thier SCSI business, and direct the future of SATA, they'd stomp all over WD's raptors, and anihilate SCSI altogether. They've had NCQ for years. It's a native SCSI feature they pushed way back when. Seriously, they need to implement as many of those native-scsi SATA-II supported features as fast as they can.

If you had two choices for the high-end.... High rpm Seagate or high rpm Western Digi.... which would you choose? SATA is a hybrid of IDE and SCSI, and Seagate has experience in both.

As for that Deathstar line.....
I hold a particular hatred because we had an entire array of em fail all at once. Right after a slacker admin had left..... 1600 man-hours lost.... would have been 4000 but luckily, unlike that dumbass IT monkey, I was making backups when I rightfully should have been at home sleeping. And do I get a bonus or raise? Hell no. Above and beyond the call of duty for a damn vampire industry.

XP's registry backup is shit. ERUNT is where it's at! 😁

XP's registry backup works as it's intended: it creates backups of the registry. What qualms do you have with it -- or are you thinking of exporting the registry using regedit?

Snover, You funny guy!:lol:

I never said ATI did not sell their cards to OEMS! How dare you assume! 😳

...(nVidia) vendors who then give you a bunch of shit when you call for tech support.

I have no need to spout lies; I am merely stating my opinion of a few nVidia OEMs. 😳 Perhaps next time you will read the entire post? 😜

Beware of moose droppings! 😦

On nVidia: My beef with nVidia is that they're falling prey to the same practices that caused them to win out over 3dfx - namely, using their market dominance to strongarm game developers into spending extra development time and money to add specific support for their (nVidia's) cards. Fortunately, they're neck and neck with ATI and can't afford to be too stupid.

Now if only someone would give Creative a run for its money...

On Seagate and WD: I'm glad Seagate is so highly regarded - I just bought one of their 160GB drives for $100 (plus a $50 mail-in rebate, so it'll only be $50 plus shipping in the end). I've had good experiences with WD though (only two dead drives, both of which died within weeks of purchase so that replacement costs were minimal).

On Samsung: I like Samsung's CRTs, but I'm wary of the rest of their products. They seem to me to be the Panasonic of computer parts - that is, the best of the low-end cheap stuff.

On ATI: Their cards are great, their drivers are great, their tech support sucks ass. I talked to two people about how their TV application was muting the line in (or was it the whole sound card?) on my roommate's computer (w/Radeon 9800 AIW Pro 128MB AGP); one guy was totally stumped after running through his checklist, and the other guy (who barely spoke English) was a jackass who obviously thought I (a professional software engineer with BS degree in computer science, and have been building my own computers from parts for at least 10 years) was stupid for having this problem that he couldn't replicate or solve. Most tech support is retarded though.

What about motherboard brands? What is everyone's favorite and least favorite board and chipset brands? Personally, I like Gigabyte's boards the best - never had a serious problem with them. I really don't care much for VIA chipsets, as they always seem to have quirks and instabilities. I'm buying a Gigabyte nForce2 motherboard (I know, I said nVidia rubs me the wrong way...) in the near future to replace the MSI/VIA KT400 board that I'm using now. My roommate has an ASUS A7N8X variant (don't remember which one - there are many) with an nForce2 chipset, but it has bugs.

One thing I've learned with motherboards: if you get a newer model, it'll almost always have quirks. If you buy one that's been out at least 6-12 months, you'll likely get a later revision of the board with many of the hardware bugs fixed. This is a big reason why I'm steering clear of PCI Express for a year or so even though I'm doing a major upgrade to my system right now (actually I'm borrowing 90% of the parts from my roommate, and he wants them back now that I got a real job).

My next board will definitively be an ASUS. I have seen at my job that their boards are always rock-solid (except when overclocking early revisions, but BIOS updates have always taken care of stability problems over time). We have multiple A7N8X-E Deluxe boards at work and they all work flawlessly. Even their low-end -X boards are great. VIA chipsets somehow manage to continue to get a bad rap, even though I've never experienced major problems with their products and they are of fairly excellent quality. Now, SiS and ALi...don't get me started. But the nVidia nForce chipsets are, quite frankly, awesome. (I can't wait for nForce4.)

My current board (the MSI KT4V/MSI-6712, VIA KT400 chipset) won't run AGP at 8x without locking up in 3D games. I've heard that this is a widely-experienced problem. I know VIA learned from their past mistakes, but I guess I'm still not over their AMD K6-2 chipsets (the Apollo/MVP?) *shudder*. I've since talked my friends and relatives into buying nForce, Intel, or at least later-revision VIA chipsets from reliable motherboard manufacturers like Gigabyte.

ASUS has a good reputation, but I'd avoid getting an early revision of any of their boards if you can help it.

I'd get an nForce3, but it doesn't have SoundStorm audio. If I'm going to give up the kX drivers that I'm using on my roommate's Audigy 2, I at least want to have something cool to show for it (such as Dolby Digital AC3-encoded 5.1 SPDIF output). I'll almost definitely slap my old SB Live in anyways though, so I can do SoundFonts for Cakewalk.

It looks like I'll probably be getting an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum with my new system, since Creative really bungled up the Audigy 1 (which I currently have -- the A2 is what the A1 should have been). I would never in a million years use onboard audio, even nVidia's SoundStorm.
There is a certain distaste I and my colleagues share about Gigabyte boards. I can't quite figure out what it is. I'll try to pinpoint it and get back to you. 😀

Yeah let me know what's behind your gut feeling on Gigabyte - I'm curious to know. As for onboard audio, I would have shared your concern a year ago, but I've since realized that onboard audio is rapidly catching up to the capabilities and performance of add-on cards - the main reason being that there haven't been any significant innovations in add-on sound cards in the last 5 years (at least). All creative has done since the SB Live is add more internal resources to the cards and play with the supporting hardware and gizmos. They still use their silly proprietary digital audio connector setup because as big as they are, they still can't buy Dolby (it seems like they won't use other people's technologies unless they can buy that company and thus be the only one with access to it and/or avoid licensing fees).

Both of my roommates currently use on-board sound and it works great, even with movies and recent games like Doom 3. One of my roommates (as I mentioned) has an nForce2 and the other has one of those mini/portable rigs with an Intel chipset and CPU (pretty sure the audio is Realtek).

For their next-generation on-board sound chipsets, VIA is supposedly teaming up with QSound, who used to make arcade machine sound hardware (and probably other stuff). Should be interesting.

The principal problem with onboard audio is that it has no dedicated processor and offloads basically all of its functions to the CPU. Add-in cards have their own dedicated hardware processor for audio mixing, which maximizes the resources available for other things.