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'White Box' Makers Take Up The Slack
n3hat writes: "This story in the business section of the Baltimore Sun points out that the 'pooter bidness isn't as bad as the publicly-traded companies report. Seems that as much as 45% of systems are assembled by screwdriver shops and other white-box makers, not the big guys." No huge surprises here.
OEMs are still cheaper for the public by far...retail has too many useless software bundles that jack up the price.
You control all your components and the way they're installed. I've seen too many of these boxen have loose ribbon cables impeding air flow, insufficient heat sinks, cheap PC Chips motherboards *shudder*, and any number of other problems. Even the good pre-built deals have a catch somewhere.
Build your own, learn something about hardware and software, and feel more confident to upgrade it. It's only slightly more difficult than putting together Ikea furniture.
the word is usually spelled "surprises"
sean
When you see the price tags, you understand why...
Sure I would prefer a Sun or IBM box, but my wallet is not ok.
And guess who decides! Me or my wallet?!
A part's a part. Intel should be overselling its predictable sales by 100% if half the computers are jobbed. AMD's doing no better (and may be losing market share, meaning it's losing unit sales even faster than Intel).
These guys have no real competition.
So if the market's still so healthy, why can't they sell parts?
This is quite understandable, considering the increasing population of computer-confident consumers, who are no longer worried that they don't have 80 years of tech support and a pretty logo (though some of the white boxes come with pretty logos now). My father is convinced that for his needs, a big national manufacturer is the best way to go, but as for me, I want more bang for my buck, a sentiment I think is becoming more common.
From the article:
"Plexus built 20 machines, each with 2 gigabytes of processing speed and the ability to run the thousand-dollar video card needed for the engineering program"
I wonder if he put 900MHz or memory into the machine?
With the (United states) economy the way it is struggling to stay out of a recession this is a natural step.
A good computer can cost as much as $4000 from a large computer corporation. If you buy the same PC you could expect to pay less (in the range of 250-500). This is quite a sum of money and most people will jump at the chance to save this on their new PC.
What the large computer companies need to do to stay competitive is find way to cut corners like the smaller companies. Skipping the $300+ dollars a box for M$ would be a natural step.
Medevo
'White box' makers fill niche, fuel optimism
Jay Hancock
Originally published Jun 23, 2002
by Jay Hancock
I BEGAN to worry about the technology industry and the American economy until I talked to Daniel L. Holt, office clerk, chief technician, general manager and owner of Plexus Computers LLC, in Millersville.
Plexus is not listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Plexus could not have swung an initial public stock offering even on the most drunken days of the technology investment binge. On a good day, Plexus has two employees.
But Plexus is helping to fuel the regeneration of U.S. commerce in an old-fashioned, surefire way, filling crannies in the world's vast menu of products and services, adding value to Maryland's gross state product and keeping Dell Computer and Hewlett Packard a little worried.
Plexus is one of hundreds of American companies that make no-name, "white box" servers and personal computers.
I guess I knew this industry existed. But I had no idea it was so big and important until two weeks ago, when IDC, a technology-research firm, was obliged to sharply increase its estimate for global computer sales last year because of surging white-box volume.
Industry analysts had long noted a discrepancy between reported sales of assembled computers and sales of components such as Intel Pentium microprocessors and Western Digital hard drives. Shipments of the parts often seemed to add up to more than shipments of the wholes.
IDC says it solved the mystery. The extra components were not revenue-inflating fictions or obsolete scrap. Instead, the parts were making their way into millions of machines flying way under the radar of analysts used to thinking that Dell, IBM, Hewlett, Acer, Gateway, Samsung, Toshiba, NEC and Fujitsu owned most of the personal computer business.
IDC had to raise its global shipment estimate for 2001 by a surprising 8 million personal computers, or 6.3 percent, to account for previously uncounted white boxes. And those were just machines the analysts had missed. All told, white boxes account for as much as 45 percent of PC sales, by some estimates.
Last year, the world's homes, businesses and governments bought roughly 60 million personal computers adorned by no recognized brand or no brand at all.
Plexus Computers made 150 of them.
Ex-real estate agent
Plexus, which started a year and a half ago, grew from Holt's experience with a previous white-box maker that he helped run. Once a real estate agent, Holt found himself in the mid-1990s assembling computers and fixing hardware and software for employers and colleagues.
He started assembling, selling and servicing machines for real estate offices, and the business expanded to title companies, small defense contractors and government agencies. Those organizations were often too small to employ computer-tech staffs, and they frequently had needs that weren't met by off-the-rack Dells and Hewletts.
Looking for bargains
Holt operates the way most white-box makers do, sifting the market for bargain motherboards, chips, disks, drivers, software and cases, assembling the parts into custom computers and staying close at hand for trouble and upgrades. In this fashion, he can often beat the Dells and Hewletts on price and says he always beats them on service.
One example: A local defense contractor bought dozens of name-brand computers that turned out not to support an expensive engineering program the company owned. Plexus built 20 machines, each with 2 gigabytes of processing speed and the ability to run the thousand-dollar video card needed for the engineering program.
About half of Holt's customers are government, 40 percent small business and the rest home users. He had about $350,000 in sales last year, and the computers he built ranged from powerful $7,000 servers to sub-$1,000 home units.
Ain't America great?
The Atlanta-based Association of System Builders and Integrators, the trade association for the white-box industry, has more than 8,000 members, says chief executive Douglas Daniel. Another Maryland white-boxer is Arundel Computers in Glen Burnie.
These companies, makers of what we used to call IBM clones, look very much like Dell and Compaq - lately bought by Hewlett - in their early days. Now Dell has a more potent PC brand than IBM itself, but it has matters of overhead and volume to grapple with and is dogged by new generations of nimble cloners.
Learning about the scale of the white-box industry, which is even more vibrant overseas than in the United States, was as surprising to me as finding out that half of the cars on the road are made in, say, Antarctica.
Outdoing brand names
Plexus Computers is probably not the next Dell, but it and other white-box sellers, though they have had their problems, generally did better last year than the name-brand makers, IDC reported. Among other things, they had a field day buying cheap components in the glut that resulted from the economic slowdown. Holt says he saw no sign of recession in his volume.
For all of its strength and success, Dell, whose stock has fallen 60 percent since 2000, holds only 23 percent of the U.S. market and 13 percent of the world market, according to Gartner Dataquest.
The lesson: Publicly traded companies are not the whole computer industry, and the publicly traded stock market is not the whole economy.
remember, no matter where you go, there you are
No huge surprizes here.
/. readers have a white box computer? Were there any significant issues regarding warranty, price, or component quality? And most importantly, would you recommend a White Box over a Big Name for people looking to purchase a new computer?
Well, ignoring the spelling error, I am still pretty surprised. Among my friends, nobody has ever had a "local shop" assemble our computers - Theyre either HPs, Dells, or DIY projects. Of all the people I have helped get computers, They never go with the local shop - They seem more comfortable purchasing from a big, stable company, like Dell. I do not know anybody that has a local shop computer, and yes, I do live in an area where there are local shops. But I have never seen anyone with a White Box computer.
However, I can see how a local shop computer might be cheaper or more reliable. So that said...Do any
when this article talked about "white box" makers, i thought they were talking about dtmf tone boxes:
http://www.kontek.net/pi/boxes/white.gz
makes me feel old.
'pooter bidness
:)
No huge surprizes
What's with this new ghetto Slashdot?
I think this story takes the cake for worst spelling. And it's not even by Taco.
45% of the machines sold do not come with windows
unless the buyer actually wants to pay for it.
... considering that I can build a machine that easily ties and/or outperforms a Dell and has better components for several hundred ($CAN) less than a Dell. A few months ago I couldn't beat them on low end systems, but now I can by the above margin. The margin increases as the performance goes up (I heart Athlons).
It's quite easy to see that small local stores can easily out price the big boys right now, and at the same time make a tidy profit too.
My other sig is funny!
This article is interesting in that it talks about "... surging white box volume" and the industry taken as an aggregate -- because Plexus' stated 150 units by themselves aren't going to impress anyone but Plexus -- is an ever-more-important market for components manufacturers and for customers in the position to consider alternatives.
But I don't think anyone really ever disagreed with his final point: "The lesson: Publicly traded companies are not the whole computer industry, and the publicly traded stock market is not the whole economy." Was this ever a source of controversy?
The reason Dell and Gateway and large manufacturers are so important have to do with the support contracts they offer, the shipping options, the warranties, the phone support, the willingness and ability to ship next-day in the event of component failure: In short, the security blanket that makes department managers at large companies feel comfortable purchasing those systems.
Now we could argue back and forth about how you know some guy that purchases systems all the time from Little White Box Manufacturer and they're great and cheaper and you don't know why everybody doesn't do it, and that makes sense because to the Slashdot community those white boxes are very, very important. For many of us it's our job and for the rest if it isn't directly our job then it's an important facet. But for the typical purchasing manager the irony is that they are just white boxes. If he feels he can *safely* cut costs he might, but he will check on the support features and he might not want to be bothered with long term concerns about equipment. Not that small manufacturers don't have excellent support. But he doesn't know them and here enters the important issue of brand value, identity, and leverage.
Not to mention that the Dells and Gateways can, in fact, ship in the hundreds of units per day, manufacture in the thousands per week and purchase components in the billions of dollars per year. That's why they're important and has that really ever been a mystery?
This reporter got a good story and then took the wrong angle.
I want to be able to choose what's in my system, I want to choose every component individually. I take it 45% of computer users in general feel this way. On top of that, I don't boost M$ sales numbers by purchasing an OS I'll never use...
... "Two gigabytes of processing speed".. ???
I stopped reading at this point!
This isn't an article. It's more of an ad that resembles an article. Why?
They take 1 example from some defence contracter. So what. The next thing they praise themselves doing is making computers cheaper than what the big boys sell. You either buy parts and assemble it yourself or buy buy service and parts from big comp store. That works out as follows:
parts(cost) + your time(no cost) = parts(cost) + their time(cost)
No big secret. Now my big question: How is this news? Please respond Timothy. I'm sure you've made a computer from parts and noticed how it was monetarially cheaper and better in quality than the big boys do (your time is another matter).
And no I'm not trying to be flamebait to the slashdot article. Slashdot just is a reprinter, like all news sites do (most via Reuters or the (dis)associated press). I am amased how this crap of an article(at sunspot) got through the reporters.
45% custom built. That number to me is a bit hard to chew. Yeah, most geeks are going to build there own systems and even build them for their friends. I used to to this but gave up b/c I became tech support and started to lose my social life so I quit. Now I've got a Dell sitting on my desk, a POS compaq as my token winbox and a franken-clone as my wall to the outside world.
Now back to that 45% number, go into your friends houses, or better yet friends of your kids; go into virtually any business that employs more than 100+ people and you'll see a plethora of Dells and IBMs. Besides one friend of mine and the one sitting on my floor, I have not seen a custom built machine out in the wild for 4+ years.
Disclaimer: I don't hang out with too many true geeks
Plexus built 20 machines, each with 2 gigabytes of processing speed
Can somebody explain to me what 2 GB of processing speed is?
Enigma
Interestingly, if Microsoft Windows comes on almost all OEMs (~50%) of the market, then what happens with the rest? Can you validly argue that
reason of Microsoft's (supposed) monopoly is
OEM equipemnt with Windows?
I laugh at you. I unclog my nose in front of you. I fart in your general direction.
With http://www.pricewatch.com/ out there to help folks find the best deal on a Whitebox, pricing has even become competitive in that field. Having had a number of folks who look to me to help them find a good deal on a PC, I've done lots of shopping and talking to people. I would suggest that it comes down to a couple of things.
1.) How much can you spend?
2.) Avoid such and so, who have bad track records.
3.) Does the local shop/whitebox builder have good support, if we have a problem?
If you get #3, and they don't use questionable hardware, then usually the'll have a fair price. Anywho..just my $0.02.. (which is probably only worth a red cent.)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
2 gigabytes of processing speed
This is not a typo. It's a new technology. Humans have had speed for a while. Take some and it's speeds up the heart rate and some other things.
CPU's are now taking advantage of digital speed. These new white boxes have 2 GB of processing speed. You just need to set up a cron job to realease a couple bytes of speed into the CPU every few hours. It'll give it a wonder boost in processing power. Be careful, give the CPU too much at once though and you'll fry it.
I'm sorry, but that just makes me piss myself when I see you Yanks complain about such editorial content.
The words are colour, initialise, and patronise - in addition to the little one you seemed to choose to notice.
No 'zees' in there in English, my donut eating burger friends, no sir-e.
If we are going to complain about such grammar and spelling, why dont we grab ourselves a copy of an English dictionary, my little Ronald McDonalds?
I think you're just making shit up now. The cost of a high-end computer is quite a bit less than that $4000 figure and the cost savings for doing it yourself is nowhere close to $500. Large companies also spend $30-40 for a copy of Windows, not $300.
A good computer can cost as much as $4000 from a large computer corporation. If you buy the same PC you could expect to pay less (in the range of 250-500). This is quite a sum of money and most people will jump at the chance to save this on their new PC.
I think that you probably ought to qualify your statement by defining a "good computer." At the company where I work (45,000+ desktops) our standard PC is an IBM Netvista, and they usually run about $1000 each without a monitor. We do have a very limited number of Intellistation workstations that we use for financial modelling and forecasting, but even those don't cost us $4000.
If by "good computer" you mean a multiprocessor Pentium 4 Xeon system with RAID 5 Ultra160 SCSI, gigabit fiber NIC, 4 gigs of RAM, and a 128MB Nvidia super-duper-ooper video card and a DVD-R, then I could see your point. But I've seen systems advertised with an Athlon XP 2200+, 256 MB DDR RAM, 64 MB Nvidia card, 80 GB hard disk, a DVD-ROM, CDRW, and a 17" LCD display for around $2200, with an inkjet printer thrown in for kicks.
Back in 1993-1994 it was not uncommon for a "top of the line" desktop PC to cost $4000, but of course the "average" PC cost $2500-$3000 at the time. Nowdays the average PC retails for under $1000 with a monitor, and "top end" consumer or business models rarely go over $2000.
..propietary name brand boxes doth well and truly sucketh, especially to work on. I HATE the propietary crap you have to wade through and attempt to find on their alledged so called "help" pages. BIOS from the hot place and other weirdo stuff. How bout all them compaqs out there with strange-o hard drives and propietary expensive ram? Ain't that just speeshul! With roll your own or whitebox, at least you can put a quality fan on them and a decent power supply. How many cheap failed fans have ruined running computers so that bigbox company can save TWO DOLLARS on the difference in bulk from a crappy fan and something that will last? Stuff like that is what is hurting the big boys.
The best deals out there are to be happy with top of the line LAST YEARS hardware, get it cheap, build same.
Nothing I say applies to hardcore gamers, I think that's a waste of electrons, but, to each their own. Most any other purpose, last years or two year old tech is more than ample. Most apps anyway.
its better than my dad you calls gigahertz jigaboobs.
In the past year I have worked for a university's help desk and I see plenty of white boxed computers. Most of the white boxed computers I have seen however suck ass. Usually people (at least students) by the cheapest POS they can find, so those types of computers tend to have a lot of problems.
Personally I have never owned a big name brand computer (except for a 386 sx16 from IBM, but, well it wasn't really mine it was the family computer) since I was 12 I have built my own computers. I find that by building my own PC I get several benefits a) quality components b) upgradability c) lower cost.
Not all white boxed computers are shitty however. Before working for the University I worked for a small computer chain (well, if you consider 7 stores small). If the customer was willing to pay for a nice system, they would get an extremely nice system. Nicer than anything that has ever come from dell/compaq/gateway/IBM. The company I worked for built computers just as nicely as I did for my home computer(s).
... well, maybe not always, and 45% is even higher than it used to be, but I remember in the early nineties a study showed that at that time screwdriver shops accounted for 30% of all PC's, making them collectively bigger than any single computer company.
This is a systemic problem with the trade press, which has blinkers in a number of ways. Some are related to who buys advertising (Dell was a slightly iffy outfit back in the days when they called themselves PCs Limited; they basically bought their way into respectibility via advertising). Some are related to the mystique of bigness (reporters would rather rub shoulders with a captain of industry than with a little storefront operator).
I live in a town of 40,000. It has about three screwdriver shops within the town itself. The closest other places where you can buy computers are: one Staples within the town; an OfficeMax nearby; and a number of electronics retailers nearby (Best Buy, Circuit City, some department stores).
ALL the screwdriver shops have been in business, same location, same management, for over ten years. Common sense says they must be reasonably successful, and a reasonable important element in local computer sales.
(And, no, I don't work for any of them--and, as a Mac user, I've never bought from any of them...)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Sorry was thinking in CAN dollars
A $4000 can computer would cost about $2500 American
Medevo
Those goons wont' be in business long. There are plenty of "screwdriver" shops that actually know what's going on.
AMD and Intel have to make certain targets on Wallstreet. Wallstreet knows how much demand is out there based on what HP, IBM, and DELL can sell. So that means that AMD's and Intel's stock prices are tied to those companies.
Now what if Intel and AMD say that HP, IBM, and DELL only account for 65% of computer sales? That means they have more of a market and Wallstreet can start raising AMD, and Intel's stock price!
It's really the same thing as Open Source, stated in hardware.
If you've the time/interest/skill to cook from scratch, you may well save time and money.
Then again, the lack of professional integration might wipe out whatever savings you thought you were going to realize...
I priced out two boxes, a DB and a web server, something like 1GB Athlons with 1GB ram and suitable drives, with supporting cast, at ~1,500.
Running Linux, I think I'll be set for graduate studies.
Can't say I'd take the same path with mission-critical stuff, e.g. the billing system at my vapor-ware outfit...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I laugh at them. I unclog my nose in their presene. I fart in their general direction.
Everyone was complaining on here about the lack of being able to pick up a computer without the "Windows Tax." I live in a strange alternate universe where we had white boxes available for at least the last 12+ years (bought an unbranded 386 way back when), but now that these white boxes are everywhere, Linux will take over, just like everyone predicted here in Slashdot! Has it happened yet? Any day now! Ooooh, I'm so excited!
Frankly I wouldn't mind seeing RealPlayer dragged into the street and run over repeatedly by a half-track, but an out-of-date version of that comes free with many OEM bundles too.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
My computer 6 months ago consisted of an AMD-K6 300 processor, 64MB of SD-RAM, AWE 64 sound, an ATI 3D Rage Pro 4MB and the rest of the usual suspects (CD/Floppy/etc).... now it consists of an AMD-K6 300, 256MB of SD-RAM, AWE 64 sound, and a Hercules Prophet 4000XT 32MB gfx card. Have you got it yet? **Upgrade as you can afford it** Owning a "white box" has brought the greatest amount of computing pleasure and none of the headache's that a pre-built Compaq clone would. Now on to the OS ::cough:: =o)
[JJ]
"Insert Dead Smart n Clever Sig Here So I Look Brainy"
The only thing that surprises me is that decision makers still take these "analysts" seriously, even though it has been demonstrated time and time again that they are laughably out of touch with what is happening in the real world (outside the endless insular boardroom/trade-rag circle jerk that seems to provide all their data).
A reasonable $1,100?
$4000 Canadian? Isn't that like $0.25 American?
The fact that white boxes are at 45% would seem to me to indicate that the PC market is indeed in the toilet, as they should probably be less than 20% in a healthy market. They aren't doing more business, they are just doing a bigger percentage because the industry's total volume has shrunk.
If you want five PCs for your plumbing supply company, that looks like a good deal. Buying your own machines at Costco means figuring out how PCs work, which is a distraction from plumbing.
No huge surprises here.
So why bother telling us?
For a reasonably brave person, building your own system is certainly the way to go. Compaq has come a long way in business models away from the proprietary format but its home models will probably stay the same, especially since being acquired.
Now for larger scale installs, I stay away from the white boxes for one single reason: different hardware. Time and time again I've seen orders filled that all have different hardware even though it was asked of them to use *exactly* the same in each machine. This creates a nightmare when you are trying to clone a large number of machines for things like labs, or even in a large scale deployment in an office. While drive space is cheap enough to store different images, it still takes unnecessary time to prep all those different configs.
The other upside to buying business class computers for large organizations is getting replacement parts pretty quick. I deal with Compaq a lot and their turn around time is less than 24 hours on parts ordered by a certain time. Plus I don't have to go through hoops for them, we order then all online. No phone time with a tech or anything. I'm sure there are a few white box vendors out there with good support like that, but I doubt its a high percentage.
I have seen more Dell systems fail than any other. I once had a new given to me for a job a had, that shipped with a Dud MB. They shipped it, DOA, even after several visits by techs they never got it to be a table system.
When I worked as a consultant, I retired a Dell poweredge dual PIII-450 Xeon a little over a year. It wasn't because they needed more power, but because the f-ing thing failed weekly. We had to keep 2 extra Backplanes for the thing just so it wouldn't stay down for a week at a time. This was an $8000 server, maintaining a database for an insurance company. Dell support sucks too. In the end after one weekend, that cost them $12,000 of my time restoring their data after the raid failed, they had me build them a new server.
Now the Dell sits in the corner of the server room below a pile of its own spares. the new server hasn't been down in over a year and half (running NT if you can believe it). They love the way I made it very quiet using PC power and cooling fans.
I have an Austin Healey 3000, it is allowed to have good and bad days. PC's are not.
'nuff said.
Believe me I am not defending Dell. They make true shit. IMHO. Read my comment below "Dell Junk . If you are deadset to get the best bang for you buck and you aren't building off own, I have had decent luck with Gateway. Just saying white boxes a cut rte boxes usually have cheap-brand micro-atx integrated everything 5400 RPM drives lousy ram, etc. You can get good white box stuff but you will pay for it.
One point I think a lot of people are making on this thread is that we can fix most stuff ourselves, and we will tolerate the downtime of having a box built by some random Joe rather than HP/Dell/Compaq/etc - what you miss is that if you are in a bank or other corporate shop, and your user is earning 100k a year, it ain't worth the company's while to shave a few pennies off to get spotty support. They *need* the good support and will be *happy* to pay for it. To them it does make sense.
Or 1000000000 American if you mean Pesos. It's about $2500 USD, I have no clue what currency is "american" though.
that both Dell and Gateway started out as "White Box" system builders. I wonder at which point they became important enough to be counted?
The dogcow says "Moof!"
Random thought - previously a lot of the local box builders could build kit and sell them without an OS installed, thereby saving a few MS bucks, as they knew their customers would just borrow a Win98 cd and install that. Now that MS's registration scheme is more fancy, and should lock some users out from installing WinXP all over the place (though not Win98 of course), will we see more local places under MS's grip and installing kosher copies of WinXP (or whatever) or will that cause people to look at other OS's ?
Then again, the original ghetto slashdot has got to be Afrodot
Not quite, but $5 American goes amazingly far in a Canadian strip club.
Not only that, but based on the rest of the title, I figured these things would be running slackware!
Please, learn how to use an apostrophe and/or 's' for everyone's sake:
Usage: Possessive
Example: Mary's coat.
Explanation: The apostrophe and 's' here are used to indicate that the coat belongs to mary. Leaving the apostrophe off would indicate that there are several Mary and they are some sort of coat, quite confusing if I might add.
Usage: Plural
Example: Leaves on a tree.
Explanation: The 's' is used here to indicate that there are several leaves (more than one). Please note that there can not be an apostrophe on leaves, since the verb 'on' is usually not used possessively (as most verbs are not used possessively).
Usage: Contraction
Example: It's a nice day today.
Explanation: Notice in this expample that if you think of the apostrophe 's' as a possessive usage, the sentence is quite confusing (the object 'it' has an 'a' which is then the object of 'nice day today' - huh?). The 'It's' is part of a special family of words called contractions in which two words are shortened into one word (for pronuciation purposes I believe - such as in Spanish and the combination of 'de el' into 'del'). Only certain combinations of words can be shortened under this contraction method, and generic nouns typically can not be shortened. I believe proper nouns such as AMD and Intel can never be contracted. Also not that when using a possessive 'it' the additional 's' does not include an apostrophe.
Your paragraph should have been:
A part is a part. Intel should be overselling its predictable sales by 100% if half the computers are jobbed. AMD is doing no better (and may be losing market share, meaning it's losing unit sales even faster than Intel).
These guys have no real competition.
So if the market is still so healthy, why can't they sell parts?
Basically what you're saying is "people already have computers that are good enough". This was exactly the situation ten years ago when the first wave of personal computer purchases was dying down and everybody had the DOS machines they needed. Nobody needed to run WordPerfect faster. Then Windows came along and shortly thereafter the net entered the public conscioussness and there was a real reason to upgrade. We'll see if something like that happens again.
Miko O'Sullivan
RTFM, idiot. You are a retard and have no business working in the computer field. I've never seen a "strange-o" hard drive in a Compaq. Here's a clue, dumb fucker- Compaq buys hard drives from the same companies everyone else buys them from. Get it?
Paaaaaaaaaaaaaarrissssssss
The article IS from Ballllmore, hun. 'Nuff said.
Linux at home
Dude, Fry's had an ad in the other day's Fry's section of the newspaper, where there was this cool laptop for a cool grand. Actually, it was for eleven hundred bucks, but there's an automatic hundred clam rebate, so that brings it to like a grand, plus tax, of course, cuz we want to support our cool country and stuff. That's why we pay taxes, you know. Where was I? Oh yeah... anyway, I showed this to someone, and they said, "But what name brand is that thing?" I said, "Who the fsck cares?!?!?! It's got an AMD processor, the same damn chips present in every other computer out there, I'd bet the shmoes that designed the damn thing know how to deal with EMI/RFI, cuz they do this all day, every day, and they prolly put tog3ther tha same damn comps the name brand comps sell, so what flippin' difference do it make anywho?! It's not like your name-brand IMB or Hewlett Paqard or whatever isn't put together by the same people! Seriously... I'd bet the damn thing will work fine for years. The last time I baught a noname brand laptop was years ago. It was a 486, and it still works fine now! So damn it, who gives a rat's donkey about name brand, it just adds like 500 bucks to the price for the cheap model and like 2000 bucks for the expensive model with all the unnecessary funky dials and switches that Lummox doesn't support anyway, so what diff do it make?
The reason is quite clear: big brands use different pricing strategies outside the US, they usually are much more expensive, while 'white box' makers go shop their components directly from Taiwan and pass on the savings to the customers. I am pretty sure big names have given up the home and educational markets here.
So this 45% mentioned in the article seems quite believable from here, the figure seems to me even low!
Lets screw supermarkets next :)
A blog I run for the wealth
The last pre-made computer I purchased was a 286 from Televideo. Since then it has always been parts, parts and more parts.
But, then I am a lawyer.
You would fully expect a lawyer to roll his own, not?
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
Just as a note, I've had some very good and very bad experiences with White Box systems, although I'd never buy a pre-fab machine despite the bad. The ability to pick what goes in is more than worth it. However, it's all about where you get it from.
Personally, the biggest mistake I ever made was to buy a custom box from CompuSmart (for all of you Canadians out there). They originally were good on price but the system was a nightmare. The power supply was wrong for my Thunderbird 800, and consequently burned out the motherboard and processor. Of course, this was only on the fifth trip into the shop that they discovered this. Unfortunately, all my parts were on warranty there. They kept telling me it was either the RAM had slipped out or that it was somehow my fault that the system wouldn't boot. Then, they took an agonizing four weeks to get a replacement motherboard (and wrote nasty messages into their in-store computer system about me when I kept coming in and checking up on it (yeah, I saw those messages, Jerks)). Finally, once the four weeks were up, I took it home and couldn't get the network card to work, combined with the machine sporadically restarting and giving me registry errors. Another trip to tech support and they diagnosed that the processor was screwed (way to check that out the first time, guys). Another SEVEN WEEKS later, I got my new processor. Luckily I got a replacement/loaner or I would have snapped. Then they tried to tell me that it was my fault that the network card didn't work, despite the fact that it had been sitting on THEIR DESK for the four weeks that the motherboard was out they were the only ones who touched it during that time. Only a fresh reformat fixed the problem.
At this point, I swore never to buy from them again. When the SAME PROBLEM came back two months later, I took it to another local small-time business who diagnosed it correctly and fixed the power supply in three days. I will definitely be buying my next system from them (PC-Place (the small-time shop in Saskatoon, Sk)).
So as a lesson, white box is the way to go, make sure you know who's building your computer, and NEVER BUY FROM COMPUSMART!
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
I would have to disagree. I just installed a GB of RAM in a Dimension 4400 which we just got at work. The thing is a piece of work. The case is a blatant rip of the Apple minitower (blue-and-white, graphite, quicksilver) and folds out just like that beauty. The cables are mostly routed under the motherboard rather than out and in the way. It is a class act all around. I was very impressed by it. You can't run it open like you can a Mac, though.
s /u pgrade3_01_01.asp .
However, there is one fly in the ointment: their mobos and power supplies are proprietary. Here's the skinny on the power supply:
http://www.upgradingandrepairingpcs.com/article
I can also complain about another thing: price. You can still save money with White Boxen. Dell's cheapest refurbs are still in the $600 - $700 ballpark. However, if your boss is a "let's spend a little more money to save a lot of time" kind of guy, he could do worse than going the Dell route.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I know a fair number of "screwdriver shops" in the Baltimore area that do perfectly well. One of my best friends owns one, and he makes his living supplying high-end custom servers to academic institutions and government agencies.
Interestingly, 95% of what Joe sells runs Linux. If we saw accurate stats from all the small boxbuilders like Joe, I suspect we'd see a lot higher percentage of Linux use than we see in most popular surveys and analysts' reports.
Joe has never been featured in the Baltimore Sun, a newspaper that has gone downhill to an alarming degree in recent years (I used to write freelance op-ed for them, but now I don't even bother to submit any). I must admit that I am surprised and glad to see an article in the paper's business section that goes beyond the basic "rewrite the big company press release" level.
Daily journalism -- especially newspaper business journalism -- in this country is in sad shape. Maybe someday I'll get tired of the online rat race and apply to a small daily or two, but chances are they'd turn me down. The newspaper business is not only contracting, but is becoming increasingly insular.
Isn't it sad that an article like this is rare enough to deserve a Slashdot mention? Not that anyone in the newspaper business is ever going to listen to me (sigh).
- Robin
Sometimes home built is the best - other times?
I was a white box maker, oh, 10 years ago, and still deal with one now
If you find the RIGHT white box maker, you sit down with a parts list of say 20 cases, 20 motherboards, etc, and spec exactly what you want. Most of the vendors I deal with will do everything from cheap no name parts to top of the line name brand
Sometimes it just pays for them to put them together - you have to know your vendor. I've paid as little as $20 over the price of the parts to have a PC put together - and they did a nice job. My time is worth more than that
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
<asbestos suit/>
Last fall, ComputerUser magazine published a Gartner Group study on where all PCs sold presently come from. As best I can reproduce the numbers from memory (but this is real close):
44% clones (white box/local shop)
23% Dell
18% Compaq
7% Gateway
6% HP
2% others
Clones were holding steady, Dell was growing, all other OEMs were losing market share (down by an average of 20% or so from the previous year).
Doubt all you like, but the numbers are real, and are dead-on with what I see in Los Angeles.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
BTW just for S&G I counted all the complete, working systems in my house, and of 14 live computers, 12 are clones. (Plus there are enough odd parts to build 8-10 more.) My OEMs are a 14+ year old PS/2 and an 8 year old Packard Bell. Also, of my regular SOHO clients, only three have OEM systems (two EMachines and one HP).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It counts for more then 75% of the market!
Cheers...
P.S.- Of course... numbers are worth just what "they" want them to mean... (i would suggest an analysis of cpu productions with the production of branded machines... due to low rate of cpu failure... you can grook the number of white boxes produced).
By making custom machines, local integrators do not have to lock themselves into those mass quantity deals that they need in order to make sure their huge volume stays consistent. This lets them pick and choose what's cheaper today, while Dell and the other big computer makers are stuck taking shipments from their long term contracts. Only if there comes to be a parts shortage will the situation reverse.
As for the service part, the one thing you left out is that when the local integrator does send a tech out for on-site service, it's more often the very same guy who therefore knows more about the problem history the customer might be having, and won't start over from the beginning every time like you'd get if Dell sends a different sub-contracted tech out each time.
Also, if the problem is due to some incompatible piece of hardware, the local integrator is much more free to use some different brand or model of part to replace it and get things working, while the sub-contracted tech from Dell has to stick with the Dell brand products (so the next tech will understand it).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Much nicer if you decide to upgrade or otherwise change hardware.
Tech Public Policy stuff
For years, I have purchased computers from Uptime Technology (
http://www.uptimetech.com/) in Seattle, Washington, one of the few computer stores around where the people know more about computers than I do. I have only had to return something once, and that was a disk drive that croaked (after 9 months of service) and that was no problem.
The problem with little computer stores is that some of them are good, some of them are bad, and some of them are crooks. It's hard to know which are which, especially since my favorite crooked computer store has yet to go out of business (although I keep hoping).
We just bought 20 computers for a cluster, and we bought 3 machines with 16 IDE disk drives (the biggest PCs I'ver ever seen) and we were completely happy with them.
Jeffs.
As a independent system administrator I always bought my own parts and either put them myself together or ask the supplier to do this.
The advantages were obvious:
- standard parts: Dell & Co regularly change the hardware inside their pc's without notice. So if you order a second batch of the same computer you are very likely to get something different: not what you want as a system administrator.
- quality: once I found out that a whole shipment of 6 Dells had a defect second IDE port. No problem as it was supplied - but when I added a CD-rom I had to call Dell. There they tried to stonewall me with technical questions - if I hadn't known my stuff I doubt if it would have been repaired. My second experience was with a Dell server. It came pre-installed, but when I wanted to add a harddisk to the RAID I had to reinstall it because they hadn't done it right (yes, they told me to reinstall).
- price vs performance: you can finetune the computer to get optimal price/performance: a cheap video card because an office doesn't need much, more memory because that tends to become the biggest problem in older computers, no scsi, mice and keyboards that you ergonomic people like and your favorite monitor.
obviously not a whole lot of u have looked at the websites for the "big guy" computer builders; they sell systems for alot less than u can build for (especially if u purchase a monitor). now i don't know about u, but i would rather buy a system than scavage through pricewatch waiting until an ok cpu, mbd, ram,etc. become available.. sure u can build it urself and spend time, money and possibly bad components. in short i would much rather buy for cheaper and safe my self the hassel, because i don't have to have a warm fuzzy by proving that i can return parts and troubleshoot incompatible parts.
Yep. I paid about $120.00 for the Win2K Professional that was bundled with my new white-box PC, but I assume the vendor had the favorable OEM pricing.
Win2K Professional is about $300.00 retail in a typical mail-order catalog.
Granted it's not Microsoft's low-end operating system, but the point is that yes, you can pay $300.00 for just the OS now, on a single PC.
Yeah, especially when you pay out those huge bonuses and stock options to your executives, even when supposedly not making money. ;)
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Honestly, other than 12 year old homosexuals, who uses "pooter"?
....but it's fast enough for me and it does what I want it to do. I don't feel the need to upgrade to "the next best thing" just for the hell of it unlike some people do because a) I'm married with kids and I can't afford to and b) I don't want to!. Computing's a hobby and should be treated as such, flaming people over the speed of their processor is quite lame and really uncalled for. How many FPS you run Unreal Tournament or Quake 2 with is really not my concern but I like many other "under-powered users" are happy with a 640x480/16 at 30-40 fps, why should I not be happy with that? I grew up with the 8 bit machines of the 80's with tape loading! Now that was slooooow!. Speed is relative, you've got a computer and your used to it and your happy with that, but for a man in my position anything more than I've got now would be complete overkill and not to mention what the missus would say if I spent our money on more silicon!
[JJ]
"Insert Dead Smart n Clever Sig Here So I Look Brainy"
What's the name of Joe's place?
I "was" the proud owner of a Dell pc. Then my graphics card went bad. Happens right? SO, upon trying to replace it, by way of freak accident, my mother board fried. No biggy, I went out and bought a brand new one. And, since I was buying a new board I figured why not upgrade to a better one? So I did. Then I went to put it back in. As it turns out, the power switch and the power supply were both proprietary. I had to buy a new case and new power supply to accompany my new motherboard. Next computer I get I'm building myself. I would suggest that the average user go to the small timer who builds their machines using all standard parts. Then upgrades are possible without paying through the eyes for the proprietary part. My new motherboard is twice what the old one was, at half the cost (and the replacement Dell was refurbished too). I used to be a Dell fan...
This is a backwards place but I don't feel like driving in reverse.