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Tom's Hardware Investigates Michael's Computers
cojsl writes "Tom's Hardware has an extensive article raising questions about Michael's Computers and their claims of a laptop with a "3DMark03 Average Score - 15,417"." It gets funnier as you go along.
it surprised me that after all the work they went through, the conclusion is simply "make your own mind up". Now *that*'s being cautious!
Or maybe I'm just a cynic by nature....
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Now I know where our friend Orlando Soto buys his computers.
Hmmm... has anyone ever actually seen "Michael Gonzales" and "Orlando Soto" together? Put glasses on this guy, and he looks an awful lot like this guy...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Ok, kiddies, the important lesson of the day is: When you want to scam people into buying your product, try to advertise a product that exists. Then it'll always work. So...ummm...*shuffles feet*...who wants to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?
"Neighbors confirmed that Michael Gonzales used to live there, but moved out after a divorce."
Maybe his ex-wife was an unsatisfied early user?
Trolling is a art,
Sociopaths are dangerous people. Tracking them down is fine, but be careful if you decide to tangle with one. Some will dedicate their life to revenge.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
Never buy a computer from some guy named Michael. You're better off buying a Dell. Oh, wait.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Michael must have come from the future, with his Windows XP 2004 and currently non-existant hardware! I bet you could haggle with him and get next year's Super Bowl winner, too.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Michael found that Tom's the stories are often riddled with errors and false claims that favour their advertisers.
0.19 dB? A ticking watch is about 20dB, and it's a log scale.
Its amazing how far something has to go for a business to be considered fraudulent. Is it possible to get warnings like this before they end up in court or handcuffs? If all of this investigation only garners a buyer beware warning, what does it take to get a do not buy warning? I can understand the aversion to calling out fraud, but THG can only build the credibility by taking a stand and telling people don't buy from these guys.
I'm not trying to be overly harsh on THG. I applaud them for being willing to investigate like they did, the industry can only benefit by removing fraudsters. A few bad mechanics have given most mechanics reputations that they don't deserve, and the computer industry needs to avoid this.
Review sites, remember that your job is as much about telling people what they should not buy as it is about what they should. How many people stopped respecting PC World (once upon a time highly respected) after they endorsed Windows Me?
You seem to be confusing 3DMark03 with 3DMark01. The system you described would be lucky to get '5000' in 3DMark03.
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My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
He'll add "As mentioned on Slashdot" to his page to add to the hype...
"it's basically the best way to make money, next to taking advantage of lonely guys (pornsites, strippers) and taking advantage of lazy people (remote control, clapper)"
Tell me about it! I made an absolute fortune off my clapper-controlled porn site!
Which also finally answered the rhetorical question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
Back in '96 I made a fake web page(on my university account) that sold hacker/phreaker gear. Red boxes, blue boxes etc. I did my best to make it look legit. I also had some more obscure items, like Game Boy cartridges that did red box tones, and other fun things I could think of.
Mind you the product drawings were almost MS paint quality.
One of the items I sold was a "katana" laptop computer, with CPU speeds about twice of the fastest CPUs of the day. Also, it said you could buy the laptop in person at our outlet store in New Tokyo.
Needless to say regardless of how amateur the page looked, I got emails every day from people who believed it. Most of them wanted the price on the katana. To think if I was a shyster I could have been swimming in credit card numbers.
Great site...
:o)
what struck me as particularly funny, is that with only one exception ("Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity"), every single one of those points describes behaviour exhibited by Darl McBride in public!
Wow... it explains so much.
I was wondering, since you are a well established and reputable hardware site
Why do sites insist on splitting articles into separate pages?
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It's even worse when the pages are short.
Hell, they often have only a few paragraphs per page.
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Some sites are kind enough to at least offer a "print article" link.
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Others don't.
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It's obvious what they're trying to do.
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They want to generate ad revenue.
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But really, the joke's on them.
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Because I use Privoxy.
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And so they don't get any ad money.
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But still have to spend money on the extra bandwidth it costs...
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...to split up the article into separate pages.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
[quote]it's basically the best way to make money, next to taking advantage of lonely guys (pornsites, strippers) and taking advantage of lazy people (remote control, clapper[/quote]
Uhm, isn't the point to provide something useful for people (creating value for them)? So strippers, pornsites, remote controls, and the clapper don't take advantage of people.. they simple provide a good or service that people find valuable.
Scamming people is a whole different story.. This guy is a scammer, he doesn't appear to even have a PRODUCT.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I sometimes wonder the reason I've been so lucky buying things online. I've gotten some pretty good deals from cheesy looking web storefronts. One thing to consider next time is to check out a store's ratings at http://www.resellerratings.com/
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Do the computers come bundled with Duke Nukem Forever?
Maybe Tom's Hardware should hire John Stossel if they are going to do these kinds of pieces.
Alienware comes to mind. Their machines are pretty cool. Lots of high-end equipment that is pretty to look at, but the prices are a touch high.
If you really want the uber game machine you probably want to build it yourself. Maximum performance doesn't ALWAYS have to cost you stability if you buy the right parts from the right vendors.
You're right about local stores, at least in my area, they are very delayed. I can usually order the latest online and get it in the mail before any local chains get it in stock. As far as I can tell, the local mom n' pop stores are always the most cautious to get the latest hardware. Try the gamer franchises, like EB Games. Best Buy, Circuit City, CrapUSA never have a good enough selection of products. (They might only sell PNY Nvidia cards, when you really want the Hercules.)
That's easy: FAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAP...
Oh, you said clapping. Sorry, I don't know.
15,000 is a very reasonable score for a decent system in the 2001 version where the world record is a few points over 30,000. It's very likely that the marketing guy just made a simple mistake.
3dMark2003 is a whole different ball game however, and a score of 15,000 is clearly impossible. The world record is just over 10,000 points (trivia: made by finnish overclocker 'Macci' with a p4 3.2 EE clocked to 4.5 ghz and a Radeon 9800XT clocked extremely high).
Extreme overclocking has gone a long way. Macci cools both his cpu and gpu with a cascade system which is two phase change coolers (like the Vapochill) connected together in some cool way I don't have the technical know-how to describe. It cools both his cpu and gpu to -100C.
Boening, US Marines, US Air Force, Coke, City of Orange, etc etc.
How much do you want to bet that those 'clients' are his in only the loosest sense - someone that works for the USAF bought a PC, so now the whole USAF is a client. Someone from boeing bought a PC, and had it delivered to their work address - all of a sudden Boeing as a whole is now a client hehe.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
It has been up for like 3 minutes and is already slashdotted..... Unfortunately, the pictures are pretty integral to the article....
.19 decibel rating - a computer from Michael's Computers cannot be beat," or so Michael's Computers' claims.
Too Good to Be True: Michael's Computers
Introduction
"I don't care what kind of computer you have now, but it CAN'T be faster than one from Michael's Computers. You may think your PC is the best in the world, but you are wrong. With a boot time of 4 seconds, a 3dMark 2003 score of 17,000+, and a
We usually don't do investigative articles, but the claims coming from Michael's Computers were too good to ignore. A deluge of discontent expressed in emails and discussion forums further prompted us to look into a deal that seemed to good to be true.
Evidence was gathered from numerous phone interviews, countless emails and several visits to alleged Michael's Computers business locations. To top it all off, we tracked down Mr. Gonzales and interviewed him ON VIDEO, which can be viewed/downloaded at the end of this article.
So, is Michael J. Gonzales, the owner of Michael's Computers, misleading consumers by posting false information? Is he using proprietary logos without permission, and operating without the necessary business permits? Read on and decide for yourself.
The Buzz About Michael's Computers
I first heard of Michael's Computers on Feb 25, 2004 when THG received this email from Ryan Sanders.
I was wondering if your site has ever had any news on Michaels Computers (www.michaelscomputers.com). His site has been a swirl of controversy over the last week on many a message boards due to claims of hitting 17,000+ in 3DMark03 from their desktop, and 13-15,000 for their notebooks. On top of that, they claim to have a "AMD FX51 3400+ CPU". As most of us know their are 2 different CPU's that fit that description (The Athlon64 FX-51 and then there is the Athlon64 3400+), but when contacted about that, he claimed it was in fact the correct title for the CPU, and that it was some sort of specially optimized CPU.
I was wondering, since you are a well established and reputable hardware site, if you could look into this, or request a sample product for Review? I, along with many others, believe this site to be a joke, or hoax, and don't want to see a bunch of people buy into the big numbers of the benchmark scores. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Ryan Sanders.
I was thinking, "WOW!!! I want this laptop!" so I searched for more information on discussion forums and Michael's website.
Just before this article was submitted, I received this email from Chuck Davis:
A year ago I called them on the phone and talked directly to Michael. He totally sold me on his stuff and therefore I continued to follow his site. I ordered an am MX51 back in Nov. and waited two weeks with no computer. We were emailing each other with ?s and responses during that two week period. On a Sun. he said the MX51 would be shipped that week and he would send me a tracking #. On Fri. still nothing and I emailed him and nothing so I cancelled. Luckily I was able to use my credit card and had no problem with a refund. Since that time he has stopped accepting emails.
Truthfully, he is a complete liar. He told so many lies about the MX51, I am so glad I was able to get out of it. Almost every claim he made was false. If you need more detail I will give them to you later. Stay away from this company.
Discussion Boards
I browsed a few online discussion boards such as Futuremark, Sharky Extreme, and IGN. Each time Michael's Computers has been mentioned, the boards have been flooded with responses. Some of these discussions have generated HUNDREDs of posts, like this discussion from the Sharky Extreme Forums.
I hope you have a lot of time available to read the 470+ posts on that particular discussion.
The notebooks featured on Michael's site are actually Clevo (http://www.clevo.com.tw/) notebooks. They are sold in the US under the brand name Sager, available from (among others) pctorque.com. I have the 17" model (tricked out w/ P4 3.2, 1gig RAM, ATI 9600 128MB, DVD burner etc etc) and it *is* bloody quick, but not that quick (about 20 sec to boot XP to usable state). I got it to run 3D CAD/CAM, which it does, like a dream. The only downside of this is it also runs Q3A amazingly well too, so I never actually get any work done ;).
a guy in South Florida who used to sell (back in the day) PC clone computers where it was trendy to have a "turbo" button and an LED on the front panel showing the CPU clock speed.
Some of the cases simply had three 7-segment LEDs with jumpers to select what was "displayed" when the "turbo" button was pressed.
This guy was selling "100 MHz" 80486 computers back when the top speed available was still 33 MHz, and it took awhile before anybody called bullshit... the amazing thing is that people were willing to believe that their computers really were that much faster, just to stroke their own ego.
A little background: About a year and half ago I found myself needing/wanting a monster PC, P4 2.8, 5 WD drives, 4 in a raid 10 array for photography, music, video, etc. Gotta protect all those thousands of pictures. For fun I also wanted a gaming config as well, Radeon 9700 Pro, DDR 400, etc. Long story short, I wanted a top of the line Voodoo PC or Alienware, or Hypersonic, custom built for me, not built by me. But in NO WAY did I want the silly paint job or the price that came with it.
I also do enough hardware fiddling at work that I just didn't want to deal with it at home (busy + lazy). I wanted Uber Box to show up at my door. Go ahead poke fun, I wanted it, I could get it, so I got it.
Back then his site was much less over-the-top, he had a 7 year warranty, etc. I dealt with Michael over the phone and we came to a price which was quite agreeable for the parts and labor. I knew the pricegrabber price for every part in there, MB, sticks of memory, etc. The spec sheet he sent was right on.
The PC is great, nice build, no widgets, no crapware, XP Pro with all MS-Phone-Home-ware removed or disabled, all those services in XP that most of us know to turn off, he had them off, etc, etc. When I had trouble with the Firewire ports, he walked me through the pin-outs on the Audigy 2, when that didn't work due to meager support from Creative, he overnighted me a firewire card. He has been outstanding as far as customer service is concerned, I'm quite happy with the "uber-box", yes it's over the top, but i like it that way and in a few years I won't be aching for a complete replacement.
I always ignored his marketing. He's a VERY exhuberant fellow in person, and it shows! HA. He's a one-man-show. He knows how to build a nice PC, and is willing to do it, where I am not. I disapprove of the direction his marketing has taken (who wouldn't). Because of it, I've taken to sending folks here and elsewhere who want a PC built for them.
It's sad because if you remove the marketing aspect, and of course haggle on price, he DOES do just as good a job as the Alienware / Voodoo PC folks. Actually better because I hate that tricked out case stuff, and I have yet to hear of Alienware calling or emailing you back in 5 minutes with a fix or a tracking number to a free replacement part you haven't asked for yet.
Just goes to show that running a [Widget] business takes a lot more than being a [Widget] expert. You've got to have your marketing, order processing, legal angles, etc., all figured out as well.
Maybe this "expose" will help him improve. I wish him luck. He's a real nice guy.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Or whatever investigative reports the US has - because clearly standards are slipping. Not with the investigators, but with the scamsters. It used to be you could tune into Roger Cook's Cook Report or Watchdog (UK shows, folks) and the scamster could be watched, on camera, doing a runner, slamming a door in someone's face, while the interviewer tried to get answers out of them. This 'video interview'.. it's just.. unnatural.
Not only it achieves a stunning 17108 in 3DMark '03, but it also came bundled with Duke Nukem Forever, running at 138fps at full details.
Signatures are for stupids.
My great-grandfater actually bought the Brooklyn Bridge (OK so he paid for it). This was about 1910 or there-abouts. He was living in Little Italy with his sons and daughter. They were out making a living, by being sand-hogs (digging the subways for those of you who don't know) or tailoring/seamstressing, but Great-Grandpa wasn't working, evidently he got out of practice while still in the Old Country and never really got back into the swing of it (that's a separate story). So while wandering about the town, he comes into the proverbial huckster selling the Brooklyn Bridge. As this is a limited-time offer, he has to put the money down right away, i.e. before talking to his sons who have a better command of the language and know about this particular con. So that night, over the family dinner table, he say to his brood that their money troubles are over, he's just bought the bridge outside the window for $500. All they have to do is put up toll booth and they are set. At this point the kids pick up their jaws from the table and figure out how they can get Pop out of the City pronto. The next morning, they go to the train station, go to the end of the line, and find a place to move the family. So that's why my relatives live where they do. i figure out that I can tell this story, any gullibiity genes involved have been diluted 8-fold by know, so I'm probably OK.
This Michael guy is a 100% liar.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
If you go to www.michaelscomputers.com they reveal that they have increased both the speed AND stability of Windows! They did it with their "years of experience". Michael's Computers are truly heroes.
.)
(The claim is in the translucent slideshow. Wait for it. .
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
How about "Featured on Slashdot"