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How Much Are You Paying For A Nameplate?
Matey-O writes: "I realize most of you built your systems youself (with mad overclocking style) but if you've purchased a fully built system receintly from Compaq, Dell, HP or Apple, you may have a computer built by Quanta, a very quiet, very successful Taiwanese manufacturing company. NY times article here." (This is true at least of notebooks.)
Having run tools like dmidecode across a lot of systems the laptop market definitely has a lot of rebadging going on. Taking apart other devices shows its nothing new. HP printers are full of canon parts, HP's early digital cameras are Konica, Dell laptops don't all seem to be made by Dell. Most vendors desktops at the lower end are handled by big .tw build to order houses.
Its not cost effective to run a computing hardware company in the USA
One of the other big names is Compal.
Read this for more information and specific model numbers.
I just bought a "Toshiba 3005" from them, and since they don't come default operating systems I didn't have to may the M$ tax and get an extra battery instead.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
The story, no registration required.
And before someone tries to scold me for this again: This is from a partnership that NYT has with Asahi.com, and it adds Asahi.com's ads to the page. Instead of "paying" with your registration, you're "paying" with the act of barely glancing at Asahi.com's ads for a split second before moving on to the actual story. And the New York Times seems to be fine with it, because they set the whole thing up.
I worked for Dell, specifically in the Latitude Home / Small Business division, back in 1998 and was shown all the different models on the market released by various OEMs. Then I was given a spreadsheet with system specs which included a column for 'manufacturer' - Quanta and a couple of other names were listed.
:)
Working with the latest laptops, hardware still in beta testing, helped me understand the relationship Dell had with the Taiwanese manufacturer. Dell engineers worked very closely with the engineers on the other side of the world, and we changed specifications when necessary. This is, of course, to be expected - hopefully an OEM doesn't just buy a few hundred thousand laptops without testing them first
One item we changed comes to mind immediately - the rubber feet on Inspiron 7000's were originally made of a material that marked nearly every surface we set them down on. Many people had multiple black spots and marks where the systems sat on their desk. Ick.
Another important matter is support - some people might know that the same company makes systems for multiple OEMs and might even release systems under their own name with the same specifications, but I'll take the system with OEM hardware support that rocks - every support system might have glitches, but after working in Dell's support division, and using them in my current position for three years, I'd prefer to stick with them. I won't say no one is better, or dell never screws up, but they support their product well, very well, in my opinion. Overnight parts when available, Complete Care for LCD breakage and spills that can turn in a system into a paperweight very quickly.
And as far as OEM designs go, the Latitude base framework is hard to beat - there are perhaps a dozen models with interchangeable batteries, optical drives, floppies, power supplies, etc. Supporting them in the office is pretty simple - even if you've been buying the newest models for three years you can use the same spare parts for each as parts wear out. Every office has the same stack of power supplies - sales dorks always leave home without them. Support staff in each office has a very common experience. I don't know of another OEM, perhaps Sony, with such similarity between models. If there are, hey, hit reply.
In addition to the name plate, you are also paying for support. I doubt that the service is as good when you buy computers direct from the manufacturer at a discounted price. Laptops, in particular, tend to break and usually cannot be fixed by swapping out parts, like a desktop system. I've had to return my DELL Inspiron 7K two times (once for a keyboard problem and once for a display problem). In both cases my laptop was returned to me in two days. For desktop systems, the support is not important to me as I can fix 'em myself.