BOGUS hardware list. add your LEMON!

[statuspending]

since many of us are planning to put together new computers and are about to make some purchases, it would be great to make sure we don't buy any crumby hardware!

let's start a list of crappy hardware that you have had nothing but trouble with. hate via chipsets? what about wd hard drives?




i have had three WD hard drives...all three broke in the same way. click...click...click.... one 1.0 gig and two 13.0 gig. the 1 and 13 are generations apart, so the problem persists! never getting another one!

my plextor 40x scsi cd-rom drive went out... damn thing "fails to auto-adjust the offset." i ordered a new one anyways...because i think it was a freak accident

never seen a good ide cd rom drive

my delta 12x ide dvd-rom drive blows... rips at 1.2x

just for kicks...my power supply went out kinda... went from atx to at. have to power on using the switch on the back, but the computer won't actually boot until hitting the power button on the front... still runs fine though. just kind of annoying!

[statuspending]

c'mon kids

[Mirror_Image]

When I have bad hardware, I gripe to the seller, not to people that can't do anything about it.

[statuspending]

ya see...

here's the thing.

i can do something about it. i can advise that you not buy western digital hard drives. i can learn about who i should give my money to if i want a quality device, instead of a bogus piece.

what's wrong with you?

[thehutt]

Ok, but....maybe you just have some bad luck.

I have 2 Western Digital hd's in my pc right now....a 60 gig and a 120 gig......verdict....never had a problem with either one.

Don't like your Plextor drive....arguably the BEST CD drive there is....Mine has NEVER given me a problem.

Maybe you are doing something to **** things up.

[WildParadise]

creative 50x cdrom, choked, cheked on website, manufacture problem thy all choke

[statuspending]

Maybe you are doing something to **** things up.

ok.

let me change my story. of myself, and the other two people i know that have wd hard drives, all three malfunctioned independently in the same manner.

[James_T_Kirk]

Oh - changing storys huh -

Anyways - NETGEAR fa311 NIC didn't work in my AMD 1ghz with XP pro. found out that others had the same probs with the same card - took it back and got a seimens NIC and it works great

ATI TV wonder VE doesn't work well with XP either - took it back and got a WINTV GO and it works good

Creative CD rom drive never has worked well - it works but fucks up every once in awhile - i dont use it anymore and it was very cheap so im not worried about.

haven't had any other problems - crossing my fingers.

As for your hard drives - i have WD drives - never had a prob with them.
in fact i heard Maxtor was the bad HD's - go figure.

[thehutt]

ok....I guess no matter how good one person thinks a product is there is definately someone else who has had a problem with it.

For me....I bought an 80 gig Maxtor hard drive last year and although I cannot remember exactly what the problem was...I think it basically just crashed.....I returned it and got a WD and have been fine since.

So, my theory is if this thread went on long enough there would be a complaint about everything!!

[Thorn]

Western Digital drives were complete crap until about a year ago (or something like that) when they started getting some better ratings... I think technology has come a long way lately and WD as well as Maxtor are reputed to have produced very good drives. I always stuck to IBM and had no problems but I guess I'll have to switch brands next time I get a HD (they sold the HD division...).

On that note, cheaper old stuff isn't necessarily a bargain since quality could have been revolutionized in a 6 month period.

Mirror_image: the point is to find what hardware is defective by design (not damaged in shipping). The manufacturer will never tell you that kind of stuff, so word of mouth is important. Everyone just needs to learn that you have to ignore half of what people say and look at the aggregate (like if everyone says a certain product always breaks).

[Draw3D]

Hey everyone, I'm the new guy.

I too have had a lot of problems with WD. Years ago, I used them exclusively, now, the're crap. I went through 3 HD's in 3 different pc's and all 3 took a dump. I will never buy another WD.

I have had good luck with IBM and Maxtor.

[musher70]

DONT FORGET THE EXTENDED WARRANTY.........

[Faceman101]

Iomega Buz

HAHAHAHA

[Mirror_Image]

Mirror_image: the point is to find what hardware is defective by design (not damaged in shipping). The manufacturer will never tell you that kind of stuff, so word of mouth is important. Everyone just needs to learn that you have to ignore half of what people say and look at the aggregate (like if everyone says a certain product always breaks).

In that case, the methodology of data collection is highly suspect (to put it mildly).

[Xanthas]

I, myself use only WD drives. I have WD drives ranging from 1.2g to 100g. Never had a problem with any of them. I have 6 computers in my LAN room and all are filled with WD drives, both IDE and SCSI, except 1, it has a couple of 3.2 gig Seagates in it. All computers are frequently used. The server, gamebox and videobox getting the most heavily used, of course.
I personally can't bitch about the quality, or lack of as the case may be, as I have had only one bad drive that I can remember. It was a Fujitsu drive but I couldn't complain about that either because it was a freebie, given to me by a friend who upgraded.

I have heard that Maxtor drives are the problematic ones, but I have never used them so I wouldn't know first hand. So until I have actually had one go bad on me, due to workmanship, I will keep an open mind about them.

Sorry about the rambling.

Xanthas

[statuspending]

aight.
i have had great experience with seagate, ibm, and hitachi hard drives

as for the iomega buz.... jah.
i had so many video cap problems, but then convinced myself that it was because i was using a p2-300.... even though....my computer was more or less state-of-the-art pc when the buz was designed. i actually may try my old buz again once i put together my xp machine.

[LanceSteel]

I had a problem with a WD 120GB drive. On installation it would click while booting. Once in windows, you could write to it fine but reading from it was another matter. I contacted WD and got it replaced within a week. The new drive worked fine. Their customer service was top notch!

[YngwieJM]

My 80 gig external firewire Maxtor hard drive made funny noises right from the get-go and disappeared from My Computer for minutes, hours, sometimes days and then would show up again. Blue screens during transferring files, scan disk found so many errors it wouldn't run and then everything would be fine (for an hour or 2). Then it died- I lost hundreds of mp3s, etc. Maxtor sent me a new hd and everything was great- for a few months. The second drive started disappearing and showing back up. Yes- I did buy another firewire card and changed it's pci slot several times during all this. I also tried several firewire cables too. Finally I pried the case open and disconnected all the firewire stuff and threw it all away. Now I use the hard drive just like any other ide hd and it works ok now. BUYER BEWARE!

[sterno]

Quantum IDE drives - Old Quantums were some of the best drives you could get, the more recent models are complete garbage. Among a set of less than 20 computers at my last job I saw 5-10 drive failures in one year, and the machines were less than 2 years old.

Cheap Kensington mice - Bought a Kensington wheel mouse, USB/PS2. It worked reasonably well, until I dropped it once. It only fell about 8 inches, and it landed on carpet, but one button no longer worked. It could just be that it happened to land badly, but since it was for my notebook it would be reasonable to expect minor abuse now and then. Since my Logitech had seen much worse and never given me a problem, I bought another Logitech and have had no problems since.

Basic Microsoft mice (2btn or wheel) - The older MS mice were very durable, typically lasted for years of hard use. I can't speak for the fancy ones, but their current crop of basic models tend to fail within a year. They either stop working altogether or the movement becomes erratic. I saw this behavior in two places, and the stories from a few people I know match.

Arcus (Delta) 15in monitor - OK, it's old, you're not likely to have to decide on buying one. But the same company might still be supplying monitors to OEMs.... After I'd had it for a couple years, one night I heard a funny click from the monitor. The image slowly stretched in the middle and squished at the edges. It's now 2-3 years later and the monitor still works, but it's still distorted like that. The distortion is less at higher resolutions, since I normally keep it at 1024x768 it's acceptable.

16x-MAX IDE CD-ROM (OEM made by Delta) - No cache, terrible access time, did badly reading cheaper CD-Rs that work fine in every single drive I've used since. It could read my Memorex burns (this was back when Memorex still sold good quality CD-Rs) but the generics with the light-green burn surface often caused errors.

Generic CompUSA dual-CD jewel cases - The hub locks are a bad design, they put too much stress on the CDs if you put two in the case. If the hub was already weakened (which can happen just from the pressure of putting the CDs in the case), the CD will crack.

Video cards with Trident chipsets - Not really a lemon, I haven't had any problem with failures. It's just that they're not a good buy, and I see lots of cheap online vendors putting them in computers. Trident is a true bastion of mediocrity - their cards are acceptable, but for the money you could generally get a better card (like an older Matrox).

Network cards with RealTek chips - Usable but mediocre, like Trident video cards. They generally work, but unless it's for an old P90 or something just go ahead and spend an extra $5 on a better card.

[statuspending]

aight

let me add to that imagic monitors.... what pieces of shit. i bought one when i didn't know what i was doing.

ok....all sun servers.
every other week at work....servers are down because they're replacing processor #x.....memory module #y......
POS.....(....no...not product-of-sums....)

so check it out... just got my replacement plextor 40x scsi cd-rom drive since the last one ran dry.... the damn tray won't even open more than a quarter inch! seems like something is jammed in there or something, and it was sealed!

[arealgijoe]

After WD tried to stiff me on a warranty I no longer buy their drives.

1. Couple yrs ago I had a 8gb drive fail/crash big-time. I went out and bought a new drive right away so I could keep going while waiting for a replacement from WD. I bought a new 10gb drive retail at a local computer store.

2. I called WD and they refered me to their website, the website refered me to call them (pingpong anyone). They tried to sell me an upgrade, ie instead of swapping my dead 8gb under waranty. Sounded good until they said that will be $129 + my dead-underwaranty drive that had a mfg date less than 12 moths before.

I asked the lady; why sould I pay them 129 to upgrade from 8gb to 10gb when I could just buy a 10gb drive outright RETAIL for the same money.

NO way! what a RIP OFF! I took a series of photos of the drive BEFORE packing and shipping it back for WARANTY replacement.

I offered to sell the lady a new car for $20k and when the first problem occured with it I would be willing to upgrade her into the next years model for her 1 yr old car plus full current retail price of a brand new car. She would not take my offer. Gee, wonder why, that was the deal they were offering me.

Long sory short; I did not let them RIP me OFF, I got my dead 8gb drive replaced under warranty plus I (already) a brand ne 10gb drive for teh same dollars as their upgrade offer. or a total of 18GB between 2 drives.

Not a dumb fool.

[baker]

BEWARE OF SAMSUNG

They created a dvd-rom drive a fwe years back called the dvd612. Mine chooked EXACTLY after two years. Done a quick search on the web and it turns out that samsung put a mech into the drive to help it burn out ater 2 years.

BASTARDS!!!

Baker

[Digitizer]

I agree on WD drives. They work ok if you don't use them much. If you use them for heavy-duty video capturing, they are bound to start clicking. I had one fall apart pretty quickly. They are fast but not reliable at all.

Also, SAMSUNG VCR's. I had one that I bought 5 years ago, another is brand new DVD-VHS combo. Same problem - picture "blinks" as if there is not enough power. Same design problem that Samsung never fixed. Panasonic's and JVC's work fine in my place, for the record. Also, the SVHS play is screwed up (it's in the specs). It puts a reddish line on top. Byatch.

The DVD part is great though. It can play VCD's SVCD's, porn, and even DVD's.

[statuspending]

waaaaiiiitttt a second. your dvd player supports porn? is that in the specs? i couldn't find that feature in the dvd player list on this website.

i have an a-trend 440lx board with a p2-300mhz cpu. i don't know if it's my usb controller, or if usb is just like this, but i have so many problems. i can't use two devices through a hub at a time. i have a scanner, video camera, compact flash writer/reader, and my canon a20 digital camera.

i cannot use two devices at a time if they are connected to the same belkin 4-port hub. i believe that if i use one device from each usb port on the mofo'n mobo, it does usually work though.

is usb bogus? or could it be my little belkin usb hub? or my controller?

thanks

[thxkid]

hey you cheapskate just buy a warranty for a few dollars more and never have to worry if the damn thing quits of what, they will just exchange the hard drive my dad has a 3 year warranty and in the last 2.5 years has gotten 2 new hard drives each being a different brand but each being higher in gigabits went from a 13gig to 18gig to now a 30gig, do the same on motherboard and CPU combos, I can't believe how many spend hundreds even thousands of $ and never buy an extended warranty, Hey just but a DVD home recorder for $700 and gladly paid the $80 for the extended 3 year warranty. Now what works.

HP burners have 2, one now for 2 years works perfect.
Pioneer 16x DVD player works great and rips at 8x
Creative Labs Sound Blaster live 5.1 great
Eithernet card stay with D-link
Have Epox motherboard upgraded to use 1900+ processor
have AMD 1600+ Quadspeed never failed
Useing Toshiba PC133 Ram - 2-256megs
VooDoo 5500 blows away any Nvidia G-Force 2 card stay s up with 3's

[statuspending]

cheapskate? check it out. hard drives come with three-year warranties... that's been standard for several years now.

i have an extended warranty on my dvd player... first had a philips... i kept taking it in because the picture would fade in and out. then i found out what macrovision was....i was one pissed puppy, esp since i need a vcr to modulate the signal for my tv. then got an apex660 and 100bucks in change from that one. it finally pooped and made some really loud scraping sounds. took that one back and got my apex 3201, which is really smoov so far.

sup

[next]

I'm not trying to throw a left curve into the thread but to the original poster - you just may have a dirty power scenario. Because you seem to have problems and it does not seem to be brand specific I'd try some power protection. The bad power supply "kinda" may be a clue. Maybe the power supply. Or the power itself.

[mbellot]

I can only add one comment to this discussion:

"Dude, don't get a Dell"

They used to be a fine company, but recent experience would tend to suggest otherwise.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Stay away from electronics made in Mexico and Indonesia,poor quality
control.

[statuspending]

i got my stuff on an ups now...1st one did go out actually, but i think it was because i stored it on its side....not good to do to lead-acid batteries...heheh

i think part of my problem is that i do too much with my computer perhaps

p2-300 mhz, 384 mb ram

12x ide cd rom
internal zip drive
3.8gig maxtor ide c drive
13gig wd ide data drive - MIA

9gig scsi seagate drive, great
18gig scsi hitachi drive, great
24x scsi panasonic cd-rom
40x scsi plextor cd-rom - MIA
8x4x32 scsi hp burner

usb compact flash card reader
usb scanner
usb digital camera
usb video camera

parallel port printer

adaptec2940uw2 scsi card
d-link pci 10/100 nic
cybertainment vid cap card
iomega buz vid cap card - never really worked very well
sb live value w/ fiber optic 3rd party digital io card

creative labs isa 56k hardware modem



with that much shit on a computer....something's bound to break eh? esp when it runs all day and night finding me divx movies =)

oh well... the price one has to pay to get his money's worth.