Counterfeit DFI Motherboards Surface In Indonesia

crazyeyes writes "Those crazy counterfeiters have done it again. First they made counterfeit Intel boxed processors, now they are counterfeiting DFI motherboards! Quoting: 'The detail to the packaging, documentation and the motherboard printing really makes you wonder if the people responsible for this have only limited their activities to DFI motherboards. It's quite possible that there are fake ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards in the market as well.'" Update: 04/15 12:59 GMT by Z : As noted in the comments, the articles offer no speculation as to the origins of the counterfeits. Updated to clarify that.

Comments

Prejudice?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The crazy Chinese have done it again

Neither article presents proof (or even speculation) as to the origins of the fakes.

Re:Prejudice?

[dfgchgfxrjtdhgh.jjhv]

yes its clearly racist.

Re:Prejudice?

[Lussarn]

Neither article presents proof (or even speculation) as to the origins of the fakes.

And ten sources back the article was about growing banana trees on the pole. Got to love modern media.

Re:Prejudice?

[smittyoneeach]

The world belongs to technically competent madmen and their madames.

Re:Prejudice?

[aurispector]

you mean web 2.0?

Re:Prejudice?

[Anonymous Coward]

The proof is simple; with the exception of Taiwan, China is the only country left with the engineering capability to do this. India hasn't yet caught up and the US has long forgotten. Now, according to their own definition, Taiwan is a part of China. Thus this can only possibly be done by the Chinese. QED.

Re:Prejudice?

[kampangptlk]

I'm Indonesian Chinese, you insensitive clod

Re:Prejudice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tibetans use AMD and Linux, FREE TIBET!

Re:Prejudice?

[Ngarrang]

The parent wrote, "yes its clearly racist."

The Chinese are not another race, they are humans like the rest of us. Can we please come up with a different word? Maybe "Anti-Chinese" would be a more accurate description?

Re:Prejudice?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Open Source Tibet?

Re:Prejudice?

[Dog-Cow]

From m-w.com:

2 a: a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock b: a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics According to that definition, the Chinese are most definitely a separate race than western Europeans, and by extension, the vast majority of Americans.

The term race is not a biological distinction, so stop being a stupid, politically correct ass.

Re:Prejudice?

[Ungulate]

Serious question - where else could they have been made? Every motherboard I've handled has been made in Taiwan/China.

Re:Prejudice?

[gEvil (beta)]

Free as in beer? I'll take it!

Re:Prejudice?

[drinkypoo]

The thing is that it's virtually certain that the fakes are coming from China, which has always been the most aggressive thief of IP (whether that's a bad thing or not is a separate argument.) Sometimes it seems like China spends more on stealing designs than on R&D. There's been literally thousands of tons of machine equipment coming out of China that is simply stolen from another company's design; the duplication is so faithful, so anal-compulsive that they actually duplicate the flaws in the designs they copy, therefore proving not only that they have stolen the design, but that they do not understand what they are copying.

I used to work for a company called Silicon Engineering (nee Sequoia Semiconductor) and numerous designs were stolen by various Chinese companies and resold as their own chip. And we're talking about a pretty minor design house on a global scale, although they did do work for big companies.

Most of this stuff is made in China and it seems likely that the fakes are being made there too; often on the same assembly line the real things are made of, but with cheaper components and no warranty protection.

Re:Prejudice?

[crazyeyes]

The crazy Chinese have done it again Neither article presents proof (or even speculation) as to the origins of the fakes. It does now. Refresh the article and read at the bottom. There is also page 2 which IDs the company as a major NVIDIA partner in China.

Re:Prejudice?

[CommanderIsm]

and i thought it was the awful microshaft o/s that was causing the problem - no it has turned that the motherboard is genuine - what a surprise ...it turns out that the software is shite after all.

Just how counterfeit are they?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

In the small island of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (where some people might be surfing from this at this moment), they have slave labor factories for designer apparel makers like Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger, and J.Crew. The price of the merchandise is pretty steep compared to what you can get at Target, but some people really like to spend a little extra to look good in the latest duds from these designers.

On Saipan, though, you can get knock-off Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger, and J.Crew clothes for really cheap. Almost cheaper than the price of materials. These knock-offs are so good that even an expert wouldn't be able to tell a real one from a fake one.

The reason is that they are all real ones produced by the same factory. The only difference is whether the apparel was passed through proper distribution channels or swiped from a table at quitting time.

So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy? Why can't I save a bit on the mobo and splurge a bit on something else? The design and manufacturing knowledge to build them is out there, shouldn't anyone be able to replicate the boards? And if they come from the same assembly line, what differentiates a real one from a fake one? Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers?

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[LordVader717]

I find the line "the crazy chinese have done it again" funny. They're the ones that make them in the first place! It would probably more fitting to describe them as "trademark abusing" or whatever. I'd guess it's probably a bit of a challenge to "counterfeit" all parts of a motherboard.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Other then paying for the materials, labor, design and research ... none.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Christophotron]

I agree with you in theory, but in practice...um...not so much. You're going to skimp on the most important component of your system? A counterfeit motherboard might look the same but you have no way of knowing if it REALLY IS the same. Also, you would get no warranty from the manufacturer unless you lied and defrauded them yourself. How much are you really saving?

You may want to risk frying your new shiny 9800GX2 and your 4GB of DDR3, but not I, sir.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Freexe]

> Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers

No. They might make their 10-15% profit, but that is reward for the risk and hardwork they put into the R&D that goes into making those chips/boards.

You are IMHO robbing from society as a whole by buying stolen goods. Sure sometimes it's for the greater good, breaking the rules is a good way to influence change. But you can't do it forever. Someone has to pay for the R&D.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Wouldn't these companies be producing chips whether they were getting paid or not? Real chipmakers do it because it's what they love to do.

I wasn't going to pay full price for a super-duper chip anyway. It's not like they lost a sale on me.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[dreamchaser]

Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers?

Wow. Just...wow. A proper distribution channel exists so a company that spends money on R&D, engineering, manufaturing, etc. can turn a (relatively low margin) profit.

I just love how you rationalize that it's OK to buy counterfeit gear just because it's cheaper. Cutting out the 'evil capitalistic profits' eh? If it were not for profit there would be no incentive for DFI or any other company to make any product in the first place.

You show either a very shallow understanding of economics or a strong Marxist bias. Or it could just be you didn't have your coffee before you posted, or you just want to rationalize your purchase of low cost counterfeit products so you don't feel guilty.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You sure about that? DFI may contract for these boards, but the manufacture, test, and packaging is all done by the factory. What exactly is DFI providing?

Perhaps they could assert that buying a "genuine" DFI motherboard provides extra peace of mind and a valid warranty, but if all the parts come from the same materials and the same manufacturing techniques (in fact the same exact production line), then the difference is the label and warranty, right?

Or is the knowledge to build chips somehow purely DFI's to own?

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[servognome]

So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy?

Same as printing your own money... alone you won't break the world economy, but if too many people do it the system falls apart.

And if they come from the same assembly line, what differentiates a real one from a fake one? Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers?

Assembly lines create rejects... most often the "knockoffs" taken from factories are those that don't meet assembly/reliability standards and are "liberated" from the reject bin. Proper distribution channels is not just to bilk customers, it's also to control the quality of goods shipped to customers.
For example leaking capacitors and exploding batteries are the risks of poor control in the non-proper channels.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Bert64]

It's not easy to produce a motherboard, you need specialist equipment and trained staff. It's not like digital media where anyone can produce a free or extremely low cost copy.
If the prices of the branded goods weren't artificially inflated, it would be harder to produce cheaper copies. Similarly, if the cheaper copies are actually inferior they will soon earn a reputation for being so, unlike digital media where the cheap copies are often better (removal of unskippable commercials and forced activation/code schemes).

The problem is even worse with designer clothes, these clothes are mass produced in the same factories that produce bargain basement clothing... But the selling price is massively and disproportionately higher, opening up a huge hole for cheap copies. If designed clothes were sold with low profit margins, like regular affordable clothing, it wouldn't be profitable to counterfeit them so it wouldn't happen.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Icarium]

The design and manufacturing knowledge to build them is out there, shouldn't anyone be able to replicate the boards? On the point of copied products (not stolen/diverted goods):

And when the company that spent money obtaining the design and manufacturing knowledge (ie: R&D) goes under because they couldn't compete with the barely above cost copies? The company that invests in designing the next generation of a product is gone, and the company that's producing the cheap knockoffs doesn't do design, so where do the next set of improvements come from?

Expecting a company to simply write off its design costs and compete purely on production costs is unworkable.

I know here in slashdotville anything related to IP is treated with scorn, but despite the undeniable increases in abuse IP does serve a valuable purpose when applied correctly.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[gutnor]

They counterfeit aswell. I guess if it was the real thing "stolen" from the factory that make them in the first place, that would be more or less alright.

But if you are going to do something illegal why not try to maximize your profit: there is more money to be done by just copying only the visible markings and slam it onto the cheapest hardware as possible.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[apodyopsis]

Basically R&D.

Any firm subsidies the R&D spend by selling their current range at a competitive profit. Any one line only stays in the field for a limited length of time and by then a new product must be ready to roll or the company folds.

This goes double for "arms race" technologies like the IT field, where a mobo will be deprecated in ~8 months. They NEED to sell a certain number in order to fund the development of the next model and so on. Every new fork in the technology will leave a few smaller companies on the graveyard because they either backed the wrong branch or will not have the capital to change.

So along comes a knock off firm who takes the whole IP without doing any R&D and pushes it out at a lower margin and steals profit from the designer. What happens? the original firm suffers and the balance is risked. A similar situation exists in patent car parts and 3rd party parts - when you buy original manufacturer parts you are helping design the next model of car. Without that income the whole system hangs in jeopardy.

Take a step back from your naive, narrow minded viewpoint and try and look at the market as whole. Apart from the legality of the issue Chinese knockoff invariably add nothing to quality, save little on price and carry far greater hidden risks then most people think.

The trick here is to mentally predict what will happen in another 15 years if this continues. My opinion is based on experience and facts as I see them, and yes - I traveled to china 6 times a year for >5 years when working in the CE industry so I have some limited experience in this.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason is that they are all real ones produced by the same factory. The only difference is whether the apparel was passed through proper distribution channels or swiped from a table at quitting time. They're not always swiped from a table. Sometimes the same factory produces the "fakes" in bulk.

They do that so they can get a sizeable cut of the fake market: they're first to market, even with the fakes, so they corner the "fake" market.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Similarly, if the cheaper copies are actually inferior they will soon earn a reputation for being so [...]

This is where you argument falls down.

The fakes are (allegedly -- TFA offers no facts) being sold as "genuine DFI(TM) motherboards". Now if they were sold as "genuine ChinaCorp Fake(TM) motherboards" then you could consider the reputation of DFI versus the reputation of the fakes, and perhaps the fakes would be just as good. That is not possible if the fakes pretend to be a DFI motherboard and the consumer can't tell when purchasing which reputation they are choosing.

This is why trademark laws are actually a mostly good sort of monopoly protection.

Rich.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[zakezuke]

So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy? Well... You would have to show me a case where you actually save 80%, as in a $150 motherboard for $30. I'm not talking surplus or last years model here.... things released in the $150 bracket for $30.

Second... how reliable do you think a 80% cheaper board is? I know during the 486 era I was hip to buying some cheap arse boards. We're talking rebranded PC chips crap. Even the socket 754 line which was designed to be the cheap line... even true blue asus boards had a high return rate. I'm sure other /. users could tell us of their horror stories. A board failure is bad enough, not to speak of damage to other parts such as cpu and memory odds are you spent more than $30.00 on.

And third... support from a counterfeit board. Bios updates are ultra handy. Even from a non-counterfeit board i've seen a lack of updates in the pentium III class where win2k or xp refused to work (I forget the issue, but something MS and intel hashed out). Imagine a pirated bios with no chance of an update.

And lastly... let's say you "could" get a $30 motherboard. Odds are you're going to have to replace that sucker relatively soon with another $30 board because of failure, lack of updates, or whatever. You're out $60. You might as well have bought a $60 board, which to me represents an older model, overstock, or closeout deal.

So to sum up

1) 80% savings is too good to be true for new gear.
2) You risk failure or damage to your equipment
3) Lack of support and updates make it a headache
4) Under pretty ideal conditions, you'll likely be better off with a realistic discount for a realistic reason.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[luke2063]

exploding batteries are the risks of poor control in the non-proper channels.

Looks like there was a run on forged Sony laptops last year...

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[JonathanR]

Same as printing your own money... alone you won't break the world economy, but if too many people do it they get together and create a central bank to support their "business". There, fixed that for you.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Sockatume]

Well, if you're the only one who does it, then it's not a problem. If half of DFI's customers walk off with motherboards at cost price or lower, then the company stops making motherboards. The tragedy of the commons, I think.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Keys1337]

Same as printing your own money... alone you won't break the world economy, but if too many people do it the system falls apart.

Ahhh, If only the central bankers were concerned about the system falling apart from printing funny money...

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference here is that Sony and Toshiba have recalled and replaced the defective batteries, whereas DFI will not be inclined to even touch the 'fake' boards.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[betterunixthanunix]

Since these items are generally produced by the same factories and from the same designs as the originals, it is not very likely to cause a problem. No more than the originals are, anyway.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[servognome]

Ahhh, If only the central bankers were concerned about the system falling apart from printing funny money...

Actually they are - which is why they are pseudo-governement entities. For the finanical market keeping big government in check is just as important as anybody else, and traditionaly governments had the power to print money at will.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[zakezuke]

You sure about that? DFI may contract for these boards, but the manufacture, test, and packaging is all done by the factory. What exactly is DFI providing?

Perhaps they could assert that buying a "genuine" DFI motherboard provides extra peace of mind and a valid warranty, but if all the parts come from the same materials and the same manufacturing techniques (in fact the same exact production line), then the difference is the label and warranty, right?

Or is the knowledge to build chips somehow purely DFI's to own? Reputation. That's really the big deal about buying a name brand board. Reputation that the company in question has some quality control standards, builds their product within specifications, will provide bios updates, and replace the product in the unlikely event that it is defective.

A counterfeit board might have the following issues:

1) Counterfeit bios, or a poorly implemented one.
2) Inferior parts... voltage regulars that overheat, under rated caps, shitty resisters, fuzzy silk screening, poor materials.
3) Mislabled parts... claims to use one chipset but really under the heatsync is another.
4) Dummy parts... looks like a slot, but ain't hooked up to anything.
5) Unknown factor. I can read reviews on Brand X's 123 board vs Brand Y's 123 board. Each model will have it's own features, and performance benefits. Counterfeit 123s may not even share the same attributes (jacks, ports, slots, layout) as a genuine board.

But what does DFI provide? They provide a product worthy of putting their label on it. They accept responsibility for it. They might not even have designed or manufactured it, but it bears their brand and at the end of they day they are accountable for a product they sold. A good reputation is what people pay money for... assurance that they won't get stuck with a product that they'll have to return or lose their money on.

It doesn't matter if we are talking lightbulbs, toasters, motherboards, macrame coat hangers, if you put your brand on a product, you take the blame if that product is crap.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[arivanov]

Why knock offs? They are often real. Surplus or night jobs depending on the way the manufacturing is set up.

For example, all of my suits for the last 5-7 years are YSL or PC in anything but a label. I buy them when on holiday in Bulgaria (and I know where to buy them from). When YSL, PC or any of the other usual suspects orders a batch to a specific design the factory always makes 10-20% surplus to ensure that enough of them survive through quality control.

The surplus is after that sold unlabelled on the local market. The resulting product has different buttons, zips, etc which in the original are branded. For the surplus the factory uses generic analogues instead. As there is no branding visible the label is not bothered to make the factory destroy these if they are not sold for export.

End of the day you get a proper suit and it costs a fraction of the cost of the crappiest Chinese slaveshop P.O.S. sold in Walmart.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[pla]

A proper distribution channel exists so a company that spends money on R&D, engineering, manufaturing, etc. can turn a (relatively low margin) profit.

For motherboards, your argument works. For handbags made by slave labor from $0.15 worth of raw materials that sell for a few hundred dollars, not so much.



Cutting out the 'evil capitalistic profits' eh? If it were not for profit there would be no incentive for DFI or any other company to make any product in the first place.

If the workers can't afford to buy what they make, you have an inherently unsustainable economy. Call it Marxism if you want, but output can't exceed input in a closed system. For most of modern history, that "worked" due to economic imperialism. In the next 50 years, that will break down as the "third world" ceases to exist (at least in an exploitable sense).



or you just want to rationalize your purchase of low cost counterfeit products so you don't feel guilty.

I'll pay for name-brand when that actually correlates with quality. When it comes to matters of "fashion", where people pay only for the name - I'd actually prefer to buy the knockoff at the same price, just to punish the idiots that really believe a name has value.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[KUHurdler]

or they could very well be the boards that failed tests, and were supposed to be disposed of.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Bert64]

Yes, that's a valid point..
However, so strong is the marketing surrounding the well known products, that a noname producer has a hard time getting any sales, even if their products are both superior and cheaper. The current system is geared up to keep incumbents at the top, while providing an unnaturally high barrier of entry.
Maybe sales and marketing should be banned, and accountable non profit groups set up with experts in particular fields independently reviewing and publishing the results. It should cut down on inferior overpriced products still selling if they're well marketed, and ensuring that the best value products rightfully succeed.
Far too often, inferior and more expensive products have succeeded when the only thing going for them was successful marketing.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This goes double for "arms race" technologies like the IT field, where a mobo will be deprecated in ~8 months. They NEED to sell a certain number in order to fund the development of the next model and so on I disagree.

In "arms race" technologies, emphasis on the race, they probably have the least need to prevent true copy-cats precisely because of the short duration of profitability. Copy-cats don't literally spring up over night, it takes time to reverse engineer the system, source the components and bring up the manufacturing line. By then, most of the profit from a true "arms race" product has already been realized.

Shoddy knock-offs are another thing, I'm talking about true copy-cats. Trademarks are generally useful to the public at large whereas my point is that patents and copyrights are not so utilitarian.

Similarly, there was a report that video games make 50% of their sales in the first month and 25% of their sales in the first week with 8% as pre-orders. Its a lot easier to pirate a video game since it does not require any reverse engineering and the production line can literally be started over night. Yet, a well managed video game developer ought to be able to preload the distribution channels to take advantage of having 'first access' to the product and monopolize the first few weeks of availability where most of the revenue is at.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers

No. They might make their 10-15% profit, but that is reward for the risk and hardwork they put into the R&D that goes into making those chips/boards. But, but... is it my job to reward those poor blokes for their hard work?
Do they reward me for my hard work?

You are IMHO robbing from society as a whole by buying stolen goods. Those goods aren't stolen -- just made at a night shift...

Someone has to pay for the R&D. Ahh. The poor corporations as benefactors of Humankind. Fairy tales and that.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[DrXym]

If you really want to plug an expensive CPU, GPU, memory, hard disk into a knock-off board, and run then run power said motherboard just to save maybe $50 then be my guest.

Personally I would be more concerned about frying my hardware, electrocuting myself or possibly burning the whole house down. It doesn't matter either if the mobo is actually genuine in the stolen sense. Who knows if the thing passed QC or not. For all anyone knows, it came out of the reject pile and has something seriously wrong with it.

It's not quite up there with knowingly using counterfeit drugs to save money, but its certainly a risk that I consider to be far in excess of any money saved.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[radagenais]

So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy?
Just because you cannot directly witness the results of your action does not make it right.

This is the same as people who uncap their cable modem at the expense of their neighbors' bandwidth.

As for your "cheap out on a motherboard" logic, let me know how that plays out in the long run... if you make it to the end of this sentence without blue screening.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Big Smirk]

You think you get a bargain when you buy knock-offs? So let me get this straight, the counterfeiter is going to sell you something that he made and distributed below his cost? Or is he/she actually making more profit, by selling crap at elevated prices - because of the 'good' name on the product? "Gee, I have this knockoff DFI motherboard that cost me $100 vs. $250 for the real thing. Should I sell it at $125 or $225...." "Because I'm so honest and I'm doing this for the good of mankind, I will sell at $125... no, $115..." Hah! Look at most technology companies, they claim 65% markup above cost on their products, but at the end of the year, the total profits are something like 5% The full cost of designing, manufacturing, supporting, and marketing products is staggering. I'm sure for some products manufacturing is the cheapest step.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, with the extra money you save by buying a counterfeit motherboard you can buy a counterfeit extended warranty, because DFI won't support it.

  You can also buy a stopwatch to show you how much time you waste looking for driver updates that won't work on your system. You will eventually reach a point in time where the time wasted equals or surpasses the money saved.

  I used to buy the cheapest part I could find, regardless of brand. I would buy cheap power supplies, cheap memory, cheap everything. I did this until I built a few systems for some of my family, which is a mistake I will never do again.

  I can't tell you how many hours I wasted trying to fix the problems caused by crappy components. When I started spending a little extra on name-brand stuff my problems went away.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Firethorn]

The only difference is whether the apparel was passed through proper distribution channels or swiped from a table at quitting time.

So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy? Why can't I save a bit on the mobo and splurge a bit on something else? The design and manufacturing knowledge to build them is out there, shouldn't anyone be able to replicate the boards? And if they come from the same assembly line, what differentiates a real one from a fake one? Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers?

Let me get this straight, you're advocating supporting theft by purchasing stolen goods. If you're talking about 'off the books' production runs - it's more than likely they're also using company materials to do it, thus they're stealing.

No, 'proper distribution channels' isn't an artificial construct to bilk you. It's to ensure that quality standards are met, as well as business expenses and profit*.

On the design end, I'll point out that R&D is a significant expense, and the company deserves to make back that money. In many cases, they also try to make a name for quality. Counterfeiters that imitate that name are trading off that quality, normally without meeting it, thus harming the company's reputation(which does matter).

If the counterfeiters went into legitimate business and didn't steal/infringe I wouldn't have a problem with them offering a cheap product at great prices. I'd still probably go for a higher quality company, but that's because I believe that quality is usually worth the higher price.

*No, profit isn't evil.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[jotok]

I'd give it more than 50 years. We still have South America and Africa to exploit (this time, with feeling!), and after another couple decades of the economy tanking, the US will itself be colonized, don't you think? Just because the bourgeoisie are no longer Westerners doesn't mean the system is going to change radically.

Also, "name" branding does have value. As with the appearance of the clothing itself and estimation of its "quality," it has a rather arbitrary value. With some goods the brand maps rather well to actual utility, as in, Mustang survival jackets are really warm. But this is not really necessary to sell.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[SharpFang]

10-15% profit?

More like 100-150%.

In case of designer clothes and perfumes, 1000-1500%. Often much more.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[aproposofwhat]

Great idea, but not one you'd ever get past the baseball / football / soccer / lobbies.

How else do you think the multi-million dollar salaries for overgrown rounders players are funded?

No marketing => little or no professional sport.

Not to mention the revenue streams of the media, Google, etc. etc.

You're especially right about the designer clothes, though - as far as I'm concerned anything that puts the designers' noses out of joint is a Good Thing(TM).

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[jamar0303]

Then why aren't they doing anything about it? It's all well and good to speak out against things like this, but there still aren't any regulations in place to prevent this. Place stricter controls on the factories, have regular inspections and irregular spot-checks on the factories, or better yet, move it all to a country with a bit more regard for IP rights if they really cared.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[SharpFang]

That is all assuming these boards come from a 3rd party that has nothing in common with the manufacturer of the originals.

The boards don't have to be sub-par. They might be substandard, as in 'failed to pass one of Q/A tests'. Or they may be run-off-the-mill standard devices, made at night on the same line as the originals.

They will run on exactly the same drivers as the originals.

You will replace your $150 motherboard in 2-3 years. That's about as long as your $30 one would serve you.

We're not in an era where guys with microscopes and diamond grinders would rub a layer by layer off a chip to copy the design, then manufacture a copy. They have the plans, they have the technology, they have all they need to produce exactly the same stuff as the originals, except of the management's consent (and even that sometimes they do... just in secret).

BTW, there are brand cameras at a local market. Official throw-away Q/A failures from major manufacturers. The faults may be like a scratch on the case, the battery hinges loose, dead pixels on the screen or such. You can get these for like 10% of the originals. The seller got them for free. You just bring your batteries, a memory card and test till you find one that is satisfactory.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Comboman]

So along comes a knock off firm who takes the whole IP without doing any R&D and pushes it out at a lower margin and steals profit from the designer. What happens? the original firm suffers and the balance is risked. A similar situation exists in patent car parts and 3rd party parts - when you buy original manufacturer parts you are helping design the next model of car. Without that income the whole system hangs in jeopardy.

Firstly, I doubt that replacement auto parts form any significant percentage of profits for car makers (as apposed to say, selling cars). Secondly, 3rd party parts are not pretending to be original OEM parts. Thirdly, most 3rd party parts makers do put significant R & D into their parts which are often superior (at least for specialized applications) to the original parts.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[LordVader717]

In which case the user would clearly notice a difference in the specs given and the performance, the drivers and support. Generaly the kind of customer to buy a computer motherboard isn't the kind that you can sell cheap knock-offs to.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Simon Brooke]

I'll pay for name-brand when that actually correlates with quality. When it comes to matters of "fashion", where people pay only for the name - I'd actually prefer to buy the knockoff at the same price, just to punish the idiots that really believe a name has value.

Ish. I'm sitting at my desk dressed head to toe in designer clothes. It's expensive. But the brand sponsor a team in a sport I support, and not being a mainstream sport, it needs all the sponsors it can get.

The reasons for buying a particular brand are not necessarily simply to do with what you get for your money.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[jamar0303]

I then have to say "maybe if you weren't trying so hard to cut costs...". There's a risk involved in outsourcing production; a risk that people will take your product, copy it, and you can't do anything about it because of a lack of means of enforcement.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Amouth]

i find it all kinda crazy when they loose sight..

anyone remember the outfit that completely copied NEC? to the point where they started developing their own products with their own inovation, not just ripping off NEC.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[jonnythan]

It's not about "proper distribution channels."

If the product is produced on the same production line but carted off and sold without the client's knowledge, it's tantamount to theft. It's a direct contract violation.

It's not like it would be actual DFI motherboards that DFI sold or shipped to someone. These aren't gray market motherboards. They're illegally produced and sold without DFI's knowledge by a factory who violated their contract to produce boards to DFI's spec without their knowledge or consent.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[LordVader717]

What I would like to see is a compulsory labeling of the Original Manufacturer, the same as we have for country of origin. With counterfeits the customer is deceived. But the widespread rebranding of products is also a case of consumer deception. Customers are misled over who makes the product.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[LordVader717]

Just out of curiosity, since you mentioned factory rejects being sold on local markets: In which country do you live?

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[JasterBobaMereel]

If it's the same product make by the same people with the same parts in the same factory then all this is not true ....in this case

What you are buying when you buy the genuine article is a valid warranty, and the ability to get some recompense if it is faulty and nothing more

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[elrous0]

You know that "These are the same as the real deal, we just swiped them from the factory that makes them off the books" line is an ancient con, right? When my Dad was stationed in Korea back in the 80's, they made a bunch of stuff there too (like Nikes). And so the street counterfeiters would use that "we get these from the same factory" line to sell their crap to American GI's. But their stuff wasn't the same. They were cheap knockoffs designed to LOOK like the real thing. My Dad fell for it and sent me a bunch of Nikes. But when you put them beside REAL Nikes, it was clear they were just poor knockoffs, with cheaper material and weak stitching. I didn't have the heart to tell my Dad he had been conned.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[JasterBobaMereel]

This is precisely what Japan was doing some years ago (to kick start their economy) it's when "Made in Japan" was synonymous with cheap rubbish and fakes, they slowly pulled their economy up until it is now producing state of the art originals and leading the market in many fields

China is just getting going but will probably take longer since it has a larger pool of cheap labour ...

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[SharpFang]

Poland.

But these come from Western Europe I think.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[drinkypoo]

So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy? Why can't I save a bit on the mobo and splurge a bit on something else? The design and manufacturing knowledge to build them is out there, shouldn't anyone be able to replicate the boards? And if they come from the same assembly line, what differentiates a real one from a fake one? Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers?

Since the manufacturer of the real boards is never inspecting these boards, and the manufacturer will never have to pay losses, they can run with looser standards and use cheaper components. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the pirate boards come out with the last stocks of bad capacitors soldered to them, so they work for a half a year or so...

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Icarium]

I'm not arguing that there is no risk, and I can certainly agree that international enforcement of trademarks and patent is difficult verging on the impossible. What I was taking exception to was the sentiment expressed in the parent post, specifically in the sentence quoted. Just because a company can replicate another company's product does not mean that they should be allowed, or even worse, encouraged to do so.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Chaos Incarnate]

Similarly, there was a report that video games make 50% of their sales in the first month and 25% of their sales in the first week with 8% as pre-orders.

That's in no small part because the video game stores/publishers don't keep older product on the shelves, unless it sold extremely well in that first month.

A product won't make more sales over its lifetime if its lifetime is artificially cut short.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[TheLink]

China will take longer as long as they don't take TQM seriously.

Anyway I think many Japanese companies have stopped taking quality seriously either - they just outsource the actual production to China and then they (and their customers) get "burnt" - e.g. laptop batteries.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real chipmakers do it because it's what they love to do.

I'm sorry, what? No, that's just not the case. It's time you stopped sniffing glue.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That's in no small part because the video game stores/publishers don't keep older product on the shelves, unless it sold extremely well in that first month. Regardless, it is an industry that sure seems to be thriving on a model where most of the profit is made before piracy can have a significant impact. Remember, copyright isn't supposed to be about maximizing profit above all else, it is supposed to be about encouraging the creation of new works. So it appears that copyright has only a minor role in the current market for games.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[LarsG]

If it's the same product make by the same people with the same parts in the same factory then all this is not true

Even if comes off the same factory line it does not guarantee the same quality. A considerable part of the cost is in product testing after manufacture.

Since the counterfeiters are (1) leeching on quality / brand-name reputation and thus have nothing to lose if the product is low quality and (2) want the product at as low cost as possible, there is an incentive to skimp on testing. They might even use cheaper components or components rejected for use in the official product because they are marginal. Or even motherboards that were dumped in the reject bin because they are unstable when doing a 10-hour stress-test in high temperature.

You see some of this in the RAM grey-market. Sticks sold by Crucial and by no-label/low-quality brands might actually come from the same production batch in the same factory, the difference is in the amount of testing done after manufacture to make sure that the chips are within spec.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Blitz22]

-----------> Whosh!!!!

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[LarsG]

Copy-cats don't literally spring up over night

Depends on the type. The "night-shift at factory" or "factory surplus" variety is up and running at the same day that manufacture of the "true" product starts.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is neither here nor there, but I just bought an MSI K8N Diamond (MS-7100) from NewEgg.com for $30 to replace a BFG nForce4 Ultra 939 motherboard (re-branded Chain-Tech, and incidentally crap if you want to know) that died on me recently. Been working great.

It was open box and obsolete, granted, but it was a pretty high end board in its day (SLI, tons of ports, including FireWire, a second Gig-E, two more SATA, and optical SPDIF). I wouldn't say you have to spend $60 to get a good motherboard, at least not with the kind of heavy discounting I lucked out on.

I don't consider myself an "enthusiast" by any means, either. (By which I mean I don't build a water-cooled inferno of multiple GPU madness.) It was just the cheapest 939 motherboard I could find on short notice (they're pretty rare, since AM2 has been out for a while now). I'm perfectly happy with a single PCI-E x16 slot, and my most (not very) extreme requirement is 4 SATA ports for my optical drive and hard disks.

I usually aim to spend $80-$100 on a motherboard; used to be less in the past before they started integrating so much crap into them. (Some of which is admittedly useful, especially later when the boxes get shoved in a corner, but can't help thinking the price is being driven by the extra features somehow.)

In my experience, $150 is usually the high end of the market. Those are the ASUS boards sporting the newest nForce chipset a couple months after release, with as many slots and ports and flashy features as possible. I never buy those, don't need 'em. And I know ASUS supposedly makes the best motherboards, but you can buy a quality motherboard that's about $20 cheaper than what ASUS sell by buying from other high-quality manufacturers.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[zakezuke]

This is neither here nor there, but I just bought an MSI K8N Diamond (MS-7100) from NewEgg.com for $30 to replace a BFG nForce4 Ultra 939 motherboard (re-branded Chain-Tech, and incidentally crap if you want to know) that died on me recently. Been working great. Hey, a K8n for $30, cool beans.

The whole Newegg open box can be a good deal, unless it isn't. I got a bum product through them. ATI 9600 based video card with an intermittent issue... same sort of issue an old TNT2 card had.

But the 939 is really a good platform to buy into on the cheap. You can buy into a high end board with all the bells and whistles and still get the warranty. But...

In your case, you bought into a lame board for I presume the $90 range, and shelled out an extra $30.

Don't get me wrong, I played the buy it as cheap as you can game.

1) Cheap arse memory. bizzaro intermittent problems with one simm/dimm that took forever to trouble shoot, and no warranty to replace it. Lifetime warranty is worth it, because at some point it'll hit the legacy zone and cost more than is reasonable to replace.
2) Cheap arse boards. Bizarro intermittent problems.
3) Cheap arse power supplies. Bizarro intermittent problems

There reached a point where I didn't want to spend my time troubleshooting.

I wouldn't say you have to spend $60 to get a good motherboard, at least not with the kind of heavy discounting I lucked out on. I'm speaking generally, but even with your deal... you spent I presume a reasonable dollar for a 939 board, and then replaced it with a $30 open box I presume no warranty board. What happens down the road in a year and that fails. Are you going to be able to pickup another $30 board or will it be in the legacy zone and actually cost a fair bit more to keep your older platform in service?

I know people who are happy with their socket A class machines which generally are still in service. But in the unlikely event of failure those boards are few and far between. Even at compgeeks they only have one which i'd trust (biostar m7vif) referb almost gone. Locally they have returned to if they have it top dollar status. Same deal with socket 754 which to be fair was always the cheap end of the the game. Good enough, but even with Asus they had high failure rate.

$60 represents a consistent price for closeout or overstock boards that still have a warranty, and are worth their salt. Not the latest and greatest, but something so close to current generation but not so old that it's already in the legacy zone. I'm not saying you can't find a stellar deal under that, but you lose some important perks.

You want to be that guy who upgrades and sells his old stuff on craigslist, to that other guy who was a dumb ass and bought a lame product that absolutely must have what you got. You don't want to be that guy who is stuck with an older platform that'll cost too much to fix and have to depend on the kindness of those on craigslist.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[zakezuke]

If it's the same product make by the same people with the same parts in the same factory then all this is not true ....in this case

What you are buying when you buy the genuine article is a valid warranty, and the ability to get some recompense if it is faulty and nothing more I listed the issues I've experienced with the super budget bargain bin. I stand by those statements. Even if we are talking about a 3rd party who actually manufactured the product... what assurance do you have that the bargain bin product went through the same level of quality control that the other boards did. And the sited examples use model numbers which are not listed on the website... so we still have that unknown quantity. And the chips may have not gone through the same level of finishing work that the main stream board has.

The warranty is more than just "recompense if it is faulty". It's assurance that in the unlikely event of failure, you'll get the same fucking thing you bought in the first place at no cost.

1) Card A might work fine in Board A, but board B has issues
2) Board B might have other accessories that require other drivers
3) Board B might be another chipset entirely.
4) Board B will likely trigger windows activation.
5) Board B will likely have different placement of ports, worst case you gotta buy power extension cables.

Getting the same fucking thing without a doubt will result in less downtime. This is not to say it might not be worth the change, but as a good rule of thumb if you want exactly a specific make and model, i'll cost you more.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[zakezuke]

You will replace your $150 motherboard in 2-3 years. That's about as long as your $30 one would serve you. You presume the $30 board will last for 2-3 years, and be reliable. A good rule of thumb, if it works for a year odds are it'll continue to work for years. If it's going to fail, it'll fail in a short period of time, or have intermittent problems that are always the worst to troubleshoot. The absolute worst is when you upgrade to the latest and greatest chip and suddenly what you had that worked well for a year doesn't work so well anymore.

My rule of thumb, buy something that'll last, not because i'm going to keep it for eons, but because when I upgrade I'm going to want to sell it at 1/2 or 1/4 the cost I paid for it.

While I have had some bad experiences with sub par boards (rebranded PC Chips), I have seen some that remained in service for years. So I'm willing to believe it is possible to get a stellar deal. But really it is rather a gamble.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[toddestan]

The thing is, I don't want to deal with sub-par parts. If you're computer is flakey and you have to spend time troubleshooting it, or you have to wait a week for the replacement to arrive meanwhile you don't have your computer, that $120 savings dries up quickly. To me, it's simply not worth it to buy the $30 knock-off board in hopes that it will work fine. More often than not it won't.

On the other hand, I've found that the "big name" manufacturers like Asus and Gigabyte seem to have some pretty spotty Q/A too, but that's another rant.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Depends on the type. The "night-shift at factory" or "factory surplus" variety is up and running at the same day that manufacture of the "true" product starts. Yes they do, but I wouldn't consider them copy-cats, because no copying is required, the items are the genuine article. Those kinds of problems ought to be something that can be handled contractually since the guilty party already has a business relationship with the aggrieved. No need for any laws beyond contract law to deal with the issue.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[SharpFang]

I found out a somewhat different approach pretty efficient:

Assemble the computer from the '$30 class' computer parts. It WILL cause trouble in places. Return/sell/dump parts that cause problems, replace them with the '$150 class' parts.

It's a good middle ground between buying extremely expensive stuff from the start (I can't afford it) and troubleshooting cheap unreliable parts endlessly (I just don't have the patience). If it proves reliable, keep it. If it fails, replace it with a better one.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[zakezuke]

Assemble the computer from the '$30 class' computer parts. It WILL cause trouble in places. Return/sell/dump parts that cause problems, replace them with the '$150 class' parts.

It's a good middle ground between buying extremely expensive stuff from the start (I can't afford it) and troubleshooting cheap unreliable parts endlessly (I just don't have the patience). If it proves reliable, keep it. If it fails, replace it with a better one. While I admire your logic, there are a few things that experience has taught me. Most of all troubleshooting a failed part is a pain enough, troubleshooting an intermittent problem is a royal pain. As in when you are in the middle of doing work.

1) Sub budget powersupplies are NOT your friend. Lack of any good reliable circuit protection could easily fry a motherboard. It's generally safe to spend a few extra bucks here as power supplies don't change often. After swapping out a few $15 units, you might as well bought a $45 unit.
2) Sub budget motherboards are NOT your friend. Without tripping the power good line, you do risk your chip.
3) Sub budget memory isn't your friend, though it won't likely fry anything, intermittent problems will lead to troubleshooting for hours, days, weeks.

I'm a cheap bastard my self. To save money I just go for last years model. Socket 939 is a good choice for motherboard, and CPU on the cheap and has the benefit of being tested into the ground. Those single core 4000+ chips are nothing to sneeze at.

You can skimp in other areas, but for me if the machine isn't reliable, it's not worth using.

However, this is not to say I've not known the sub budget method to not work. You always gotta replace something and might turn out well in the end. I prefer to buy into quality parts that will have a good resale value... for that other guy who bought $30 parts.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[SharpFang]

1) Sub budget powersupplies are NOT your friend. Lack of any good reliable circuit protection could easily fry a motherboard. It's generally safe to spend a few extra bucks here as power supplies don't change often. After swapping out a few $15 units, you might as well bought a $45 unit.

OTOH used good quality power supplies ARE your friend. People replace working 200-300W power supplies with stronger ones and there's a surplus of old good quality standard strength power supplies.
They WILL die faster than normal but they are cheap enough and easy to replace, and I always keep a spare.

2) Sub budget motherboards are NOT your friend. Without tripping the power good line, you do risk your chip.

Only if you intend to tinker a lot. If the setup is to stay for years unchanged, these are reasonable.

3) Sub budget memory isn't your friend, though it won't likely fry anything, intermittent problems will lead to troubleshooting for hours, days, weeks.

I disagree. Memory is easy to test thoroughly and breaks by itself only in rarest of cases. Just make sure you can return it if the test fails.

4) Sub budget and old hard drives are your enemy. You're hard pressed to find one to live more than a year, and they tend to develop problems over time. You can try to troubleshoot software for months while the hdd is guilty.

Re:Just how counterfeit are they?

[zakezuke]

OTOH used good quality power supplies ARE your friend. People replace working 200-300W power supplies with stronger ones and there's a surplus of old good quality standard strength power supplies.
They WILL die faster than normal but they are cheap enough and easy to replace, and I always keep a spare. Hey, I can't disagree with a good used unit from power mongers. Granted I bought a new 350watt unit, but this was due to well, troubleshooting an intermittent problem. But if you are going through power supplies, you have a problem. In the past one could feel the output of an overloaded power supply... if the temp was warm upgrade. Not so sure about current generation systems actually sucking 200~300 watts and beyond. A good power supply is going to have a run for... well... over 5 years. I'm happy to spend $45 or even $75.

I thought about being a truly cheap bastard, and taking two known good 200 watt units, one for drives and one for the system. I'm lazy.

Only if you intend to tinker a lot. If the setup is to stay for years unchanged, these are reasonable. Tinkering has nothing to do with it.... well... it has something to do with it... but there are other cases too like over voltage. You want the motherboard to have the ability to supersede the power supply.

I disagree. Memory is easy to test thoroughly and breaks by itself only in rarest of cases. Just make sure you can return it if the test fails. I swore off cheap memory a long time ago. When 256meg dimms fell to $20 I was all over them. About 1 in 4 I bought failed after a year. It didn't outrightly fail.

Now if it has a warranty great, but the sub budget market doesn't carry with it a warranty to write home about.

4) Sub budget and old hard drives are your enemy. You're hard pressed to find one to live more than a year, and they tend to develop problems over time. You can try to troubleshoot software for months while the hdd is guilty. Well... I wouldn't recommend a sub budget HD. But like plentiful power supplies there are plenty of old models or smaller sizes to choose from with good solid warranties.

Let's take an example from my history. Pentium III 500 when it was a premium machine. Motherboard tripped the power supply. Motherboard OK (Asus P3V4x IIRC), Ram OK, CPU cooked.

Alternative situation with a PC chips POS. Board fried, chip fried.

Another case in point. Biostar VIP board... detected an over voltage in a stock full tower supply, something you don't expect to be lame.

I'm not going to say your method won't work. It will work perfectly fine. For me, I would rather take a performance hit rather than buy cheap parts. As far as keeping in budget... I sell my old parts, to people like you, people who expect to keep a sub budget machine in service for more than 3 years and have parts fail.

I'll even admit, cascade failure is rare... just less so on those no name (PC CHIPS) motherboards.

Well great

[Psychotria]

All those motherboards have all the right looking shininess, capacitors, traces etc etc. How does a person without a PhD in I dunno--hardware something--tell these apart from legit boards (apart from the legit boards not being sold in the country of sale.)

Re:Well great

[malinha]

Look for the "Vista capable" logo!?

Re:Well great

[zakezuke]

All those motherboards have all the right looking shininess, capacitors, traces etc etc. How does a person without a PhD in I dunno--hardware something--tell these apart from legit boards (apart from the legit boards not being sold in the country of sale.) This is a legit enough question, one where there is no easy answer. I remember back in 2000 when some parts dealers were popping up all had fliers for their special of the month. Some were legit, but some used boards with counterfeit bios. The only way one can tell by looking at it was looking up the BIOS ID what was flashed for a moment upon bootup.

It's not like the deals were too good to be true. For about $100 from each dealer you could buy a reasonably cheap MB and Chip combo in OEM packaging and a sub par manual.

There was no real solution to ID fake boards, only the general advice of avoiding seedy dealers, which is none too helpful as no matter where you go, you always have to buy something from someone for the first time. And in the age of ordering online, shop loyalty has gone out the window.

Re:Well great

[servognome]

Even with a PhD you probably wouldn't be able to tell, because there are so many different parts. Bad capacitors, poor soldering, cheap PCBs, there's too many things for any single person to identify what and where corners are cut. Which is why it's safer to go with a retail company that has a bunch of engineers dealing with the supplier from every step of the process. A good middle--man doesn't just pass stuff through, they conduct their own testing, and are dealing with the manufacturer on many more levels than an individual consumer can.

Re:Well great

[JasterBobaMereel]

The simple answer is you can't

All the more reason not do buy from "Dodgy Dave's discount motherboard emporium" but from a reputable dealer who will either not sell you a knock-off or if they get fooled will replace it ....

How refreshing - another clueless article on /.

[Donny Smith]

To the bozo poster of this "news": have you been in a coma since late 20th century?

They've been making fake Asus motherboards for 10+ years.

Are they worse than the original?

[Confused]

In what way are those counterfeit motherboards worse than the original?

Is just DFI getting no money for them or can the end user experience any difference?

Confused.

Re:Are they worse than the original?

[freedom_india]

Yeah, i too had the same question.
In what way are they different?
Especially if they use:
1) the same die cast Intel uses
2) Uses same workers to do the job,
3) Uses the same tools to get it made
4) Uses same raw material

If it barks like a dog, looks like a dog, wags its tail like a dog and chases cats like a dog, then it is a dog to me.

Just because it is an unauthorized copy doesn't mean it is inferior.

Much like your GF making a copy of the 256 kbps MP3 song you bought from Amazon.com. Is the copy in anyway inferior to the original?

Re:Are they worse than the original?

[SSpade]

That depends. One of the obvious ways to do this is simply to steal the boards that failed burn-in testing and resell them. Those boards will mostly work, except for when they don't. Symptoms for the end user could be random crashes, failing to work with some speeds of RAM or CPU or only running for 10 minutes before crashing.

Crazy Chinese?

[pedantic bore]

Yes, crazy like a fox.

However, I don't see what nationality or ethnicity has to do with this. TFA doesn't even mention China.

Re:Crazy Chinese?

[Al_Lapalme]

Hahahahh! Those crazy fox commercials drive me nuts too.

Re:Crazy Chinese?

[SL1200MKII]

Crazy?... I don't think so! I second that. Those crazy fox commercials have got to end!

Counterfeit boxes, not processors

[mcvos]

In the case of the counterfeit boxed processors mentioned in the summary, it's not the processors that are counterfeit, just the boxes and coolers. The processors are real Intel processors, but they don't come with the 3 year warranty that boxed processors have, and the cooler is bound to be worse.

Re:Counterfeit boxes, not processors

[Bert64]

Not necessarily, it could have a better cooler than the original. The original coolers aren't great and a lot of users replace them anyway. As for packaging, who cares? It just gets thrown away. The warrantee is the only thing to really be concerned about, but with the speed processors become obsolete 1 year isn't too bad anyway.

Re:Counterfeit boxes, not processors

[toddestan]

I'd steer clear of the non-clocked locked ones in any case, like the Extreme editions. I remember back in the Pentium II days the thing to do was to sell a real Pentium II as a relabeled faster Pentium II chip and profit the difference. That was one of the main reasons Intel started clock-locking their processors in the first place.

It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Britz]

I have seen fake Nokia phones that run Nokia software. Back three years ago I didn't believe it. Now they fake IPhones, processors, mainboards. I heard (and didn't really believe) that they can, and sometimes do, fake just about everything.

Now take a step back and think about it: Pharmaceuticals, airplane spare parts, nuclear power plant spare parts ... (fill in what you want)

And I am thinking. If they are that skilled, why don't they just produce originals themselves (I heard that some fakes are even better than the originals, especially with products where a lot of value is in the brand instead of the product itself).

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Mikkeles]

'If they are that skilled, why don't they just produce originals themselves ...'

Because implementation (manufacturing) is a commodity service; research, design, and developement is hard.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anonymous Coward]

And I am thinking. If they are that skilled, why don't they just produce originals themselves

Resources - These companies hire talent for assembly and manufacturing because they manufacture the originals as well. So their skillset is focused on taking a design and figure out the right processes and tools to manufacture it. They however, don't have resources dedicated to handle the design aspects (industrial design, marketing, UI, etc) because that is beyond the scope of what they usually do.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[francium de neobie]

Also, a brand name takes time to develop.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Digestromath]

In alot of cases, the fakes actually come from the same factory the originals do.

A factory may be under contract to produce say... 20,000 units a month. Well maybe they run another shift and crank out 30,000 units.

Those extra units have to go somewhere. If the original purchaser doesn't need more, the extras find themselves loaded onto a nondescript truck.

Thats really the problem with outsourcing, you lose control.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anne Thwacks]

airplane spare parts,

There have been several air accidents due to fake aircraft parts, not to mention fake Titanic rivets.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[stiggle]

I your example the factory would have to produce 20,000 units that pass quality control per month. So they over produce so they always meet their quota. In a province where a friend of mine lives, they make replica sports team shirts. Everyone in the villages wears them as they get the extra stock. The shirts are all perfectly fine and would have passed quality control, just they over produce to ensure they always meet the targets required by the customer.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Pharmaceuticals are already being counterfeit and have been for some time.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[SpinyNorman]

If they are that skilled, why don't they just produce originals themselves

They will...

This is the same process that Japan went thru. If you're old enough you'll remember when "Made in Japan" meant crap quality, and back then there were few Japanese brand names. China if building up it's tech expertise (very quickly) building knock-off versions of brands that are easy to sell. As "Made in China" stops becoming synonymous with "cheap piece of crap", then you will see more and more Chinese brands, respected for themselves, rather than knock-offs.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most of the time they are producing the real things. So they have the plans, the tools and the materials. They will just provide that information to a shadow plant (another plant that was sometimes built at the same time as the official one, in another location).

They will likely compromise on material quality to cut costs even a bit further. And they might not have the same QA testing. Oh and no warranty, after sale service, and so on.

So they are not "skilled" yet, they will likely be in 10 years or so. Read some book on Japan economy, this is nothing new.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[sheldon]

Actually fake airplane spare parts is a major problem for the industry. It's largely thieves making off with parts which were rejected for being out of spec, or parts which expired past their shelf life and trying to sell them.

I worked for a company as an intern years ago that made windshield wipers for planes. Everything from beechcraft to 747's. That summer while I was there, they cleaned house on their old inventory and had a pallet of parts to dispose of.

They hired a company which does this for a living. Basically one of our companies representatives went with them, following the parts, and they took them out to a spot far away from people(probably on government land) and using something like a well drilling rig, dug a very deep hole and then buried them.

I don't know why they didn't melt them down. Perhaps because there was a risk of them falling into someone elses hands. i don't know. But there's a whole process that they follow, that is authorized by the FAA to make sure those parts never see the light of day again.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[LordVader717]

That was mainly just Xenophobia and crazy nationalist pride. It took for British or American cars to become decisivly worse for people there to consider buying a Toyota. Cheap crap will alsways be made and bought. And China is simply the superlative of cheap labour. So it make sense to make the cheap crap there. And the expensive stuff too. That's why nowadays so much stuff is made in china, from cheap crap to the expensive brands.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anonymous Coward]

> I heard that some fakes are even better than the originals, especially with products where a lot of value is in the brand instead of the product itself.

I'm so buying a fake iphone!

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anonymous Coward]

As a side note, I got a friend who is working in the pharmaceutical industry. He told me that in his company, some people look over their inbox spam to buy cheap viagra or any kind of counterfeit drugs from cheap resellers. And sometimes, these drugs are purer than the real ones... When you know the complexity of reverse-engineering a drug for pharmaceutical standards (you have to be a chemist), it's hard to believe it...

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Pharmaceuticals, airplane spare parts

Both already counterfeited, the former on a very wide scale. IIRC about 80% of Nigerian pharmaceuticals are forgeries. Fake helicopter rotors and car parts too, believed to be implicated in many accidents.

About the most bizarre thing I've seen is counterfeit EGGS. They make them by forming up very unhealthy industrial chemicals in a mould. You really wouldn't think it would be worth it but apparently it is.

Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a famous case recently uncovered where there was an entire, fake NEC factory created. The whole think was faked. And they produced reasonably good quality merchandise. Completely copied. They negotiated supplier contracts, had a building, sign, receptionist, everything. Everything, that is, except endorsement from NEC. And their profits didn't count toward's NEC's bottom line.

So?

[NaCh0]

Aren't all of these boards Chinese in the first place? The factory probably just did some overtime runs to knock out several more thousand.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you'll be a bit more discerning when your MoBo fails b/c it never passed QA...

Or worse yet, your "counterfeit" MoBo might simply be a board that didn't pass QA.

I speak from experience. I believe I was a victim of this myself regarding an ASUS MoBo. And that was over 3 years ago.

Re:So?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Aren't all of these boards Chinese in the first place? The factory probably just did some overtime runs to knock out several more thousand.

That would be a good scenario. A bad scenario is that these are the motherboards which didn't pass QA or testing, in other words faulty motherboards which were liberated from the reject bin by enterprising workers. You'd be buying a known broken motherboard and wouldn't know about it until you got it home, or perhaps even until you'd been using it to process your critical data for a while.

Rich.

Why don't they get their own brand?

[shadyi]

If they have the technology to build a motherboard and a processor, why don't they just create their own brand instead of faking other ones?

Re:Why don't they get their own brand?

[RockModeNick]

They have the technology to build them to specs, but they do not want to develop the specs themselves, that being the expensive part.

Re:Why don't they get their own brand?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? DFI is a chinese company. Same for Asus, MSI etc.

Re:Why don't they get their own brand?

[zakezuke]

If they have the technology to build a motherboard and a processor, why don't they just create their own brand instead of faking other ones? 1) R&D isn't trivial
2) Support isn't trivial
3) BIOSes are not free

It's far cheaper to take someone else's design, pirate a bios, and not tell a soul you made the sucker. No returns, no accountability, no bullshit. You get your dollars per unit and are totally happy.

It's like in the mid 90s with the relabeled PC chips shitty boards. These were crap, and the only people really held accountable were the resellers.

and?

[apodyopsis]

Even if they understand it is illegal, they see nothing wrong with it. In my trips to china I saw some crazy stuff - taking somebody else's ideas and doing it better/cheaper is a normal business practice there.

look, on the bright side - it probably will not be fatal. if you really want a shocking (bad pun) Chinese fake, look at this one:-

http://www.schneider-electric.co.uk/internet/pws/pws.nsf/luAllByID/F2DAEE42760F06F3802573F3004D040C

Re:and?

[dintech]

Yikes. I scanned the doc briefly but I couldn't see exactly what it defined as 'fake'. Does it mean that the circuit breaker has no internal workings at all or is it just of inferior quality?

Re:and?

[apodyopsis]

look at the pics! It is basically a very badly made switch designed to look like a MCB - in other words there is no over protection at all and it is dubious that even the switch component could handle the 32A rated. A fatality awaiting to happen.

Re:and?

[earthman]

It appears to contain only a simple switch instead of any circuit breaker.

Re:and?

[slash.duncan]

Taking a look at the pic... From the detail I could see at 2X magnification, it appears there's no actual "breaker" there -- the magnetic core that's supposed to "trip" was simply replaced by a plain wire. As best I could tell, and this part I couldn't be sure of from the picture but it seems logical, they had it rigged up to switch off if manually turned off, so it does look like it should function as a regular switch, thus effectively deceiving the user until the moment of truth, but the bulk of the thing, the part that should trip it automatically on overload, simply ISN'T THERE!

The wire looks a bit heavy for it but depending on the rated amps and the composition of the wire, if a buyer is /lucky/ (and the counterfeiter has /some/ conscience), it might fuse out, vaporizing the wire (or another component) rather than continuing to short and starting a fire or whatever, but even then, it'd be a (switched) fuse, not a resettable circuit breaker, dead on first use.

More likely it'd cause the main breaker -- hopefully there is one and it's not similarly rigged -- to trip, cutting off not just the single circuit but the entire panel along with all its circuits. Considering, at least over here in the US, that occasionally, for circuits such as alarm panels, security systems, and relay timing circuits, it's apparently accepted and not uncommon to see their breakers blocked ON, thus allowing serious overload to the point the load gets enough to trip the main breaker, this isn't /too/ unacceptable, or at least I can imagine the counterfeiter rationalizing such to himself. (I still have trouble rationalizing the on-block to myself, but whatever, I've seen it enough places, and with blocks obviously marketed for the purpose, to know it's gotta be accepted and legal, regardless of what they tell us about the safety of the system. Of course, we have 125V standard mains. It's possible such things aren't allowed at all on 250V standard mains, which I suppose they have where those were discovered.)

Duncan

Re:and?

[Anonymous Coward]

taking somebody else's ideas and doing it better/cheaper is a normal business practice there. Funny, I always thought being better/cheaper than your competitor was the main idea behind the capitalism upon which our economy is founded, too.

Re:and?

[WindBourne]

Yet, my understanding is, they do not copy their own stuff. If a company has developed something original there, other companies will be blocked from copying it by enforcement of copyrights and patents. If the Chinese gov. applied the same laws everywhere I would be a lot more ok with it. But the lack of same application of the law is obviously designed to encourage local theft of western companies.

Re:and?

[apodyopsis]

Not from what I saw out there. They shamelessly ripped each other off with the same abandon as they did the western world.

There was 1 difference though - the west was a easier target because the margins were so much better. It is the normal to see us ripped off left, right and center but there is less economic incentive for them to rip each other off.

There is one point worth making though - they fully understand IP law (and find it hilarious), and they use it against the western world. They have created a vast swathe of (frequently ridiculous) patents and try to enforce them against the west as gleefully as they ignore them in the east. Its just another way to make a living off us crazy people.

Trying to persuade them that this is wrong is like trying to persuade them that it is wrong to eat dog - they will look at you like you are a madman - and to them you probably are viewed as a madman. Its about the same magnitude of cultural gap that exists between a marine and your average taleban - you try to explain that some soldiers will come and issue "warning fire", follow "rules of engagement", and try to imprison you to some "geneva convention" (with better food and water then they are used to) in some civilized manner, yet if all else fails drop 40 tonnes of high explosive on your head. What they are used to is creeping up on somebody and cutting their throat. The concept is so alien they will not understand.

Sorry, drifting a bit in the last.

The Irony

[amasiancrasian]

The irony is that most of the "genuine" boards are made by Chinese companies, such as ASUS (CEO is ethnically Chinese, but born in Taiwan) who has operations in China. How do you tell a fake from a real these days? A friend of mine told me that the same factories that make real DVD boxes during the day are run at night and make *exactly* the same packaging for counterfeiting. Sometimes the counterfeit is the real McCoy.

Re:The Irony

[amasiancrasian]

I should also add the only way they'd be able to detect in some cases is that the serial number isn't listed in the official database. The packaging will be exactly the same if they're knock-offs during the night; they'll just be unrecorded in the books.

Re:The Irony

[aurispector]

These guys have the manufacturing capability to make anything; what's lacking is official will to enforce IP. Ironic isn't it? The Chinese government's official line is that they won't do anything to jeopardize economic growth. The fact is the government is rolling in cash - over $1 TRILLION in foreign reserves (the exact opposite of a national debt) and hold big chunks of US Gov't debt. Probably because of this, there also seems to be no real will among western governments to call them on it, despite increasing industry opposition.

Basically the Chinese have the world by the balls and they know it. I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords, provided I can has pork fried rice.

BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development. I just think it's time they started playing by the rules.

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Taiwan is China?

I'm assuming you're trolling and not just plain dumb (though it's hard to tell around these parts). Ever heard of "Taiwan R.O.C."? Do you know what the R.O.C. stands for? Republic of China.

Re:The Irony

[McGiraf]

"BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development. I just think it's time they started playing by the rules."

How do you think the USA jump started their economic development after the revolution?

And who do you think control the current "rules" and to who's benefit?

The Irony indeed ...

Re:The Irony

[aproposofwhat]

I remember going with my then GF to the Chinese Embassy in London in 1985 to try to get her visa for Taiwan sorted out.

They very politely informed us that we had the wrong China, but to come back in 2000 and they would have unified.

Ain't happened yet, but it's not unimaginable if the drift towards economic freedom leads to eventual political freedom in PROC.

Anyway, those Formosans make very good motherboards :P

Re:The Irony

[Hoi Polloi]

If you buy a knock-off you won't have access to all that great customer support that always comes from hardware vendors!

Re:The Irony

[Simon Brooke]

BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development. I just think it's time they started playing by the rules.

Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules.

In a Chinese world, these are the new rules, and all of us in the West had better get used to it.

Re:The Irony

[archkittens]

I'm pretty sure they're still waiting on security to get there... clearly, IP laws breed insurgency!

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, and I'm not the guy you responded to, I LOVE the Chinese. As long as they maintain a good head for business, they'll keep dealing with us consumers in a fair way, getting us good tech for cheap, and everyone will be more or less happy.

Who cares if they play fast and loose with the system? The only people they hurt are the corporations they're screwing, and frankly, those corporations fucked over the American worker long ago, so I'm not too inclined towards pity.

Maybe a good laugh, as I play with my new Lenovo!

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

PRC != ROC

One has the UN Security Council seat, while the other has citizens who own or control a majority of the world's semi-conductor design and manufacturing capabilities.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Republic_of_China

Re:The Irony

[JasterBobaMereel]

Which rules?

USA rules - Strict IP with Software Patents

European Rules - Fairly strict IP without Software patents

UN Rules - Strict IP without patents but respecting counties Patent systems

China has a huge cheap workforce so IP is largely irrelevant to them at this stage (as it was in Japan when they ignored IP rights, now they have their own IP to protect and an expensive workforce they enforce other countries IP)

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Rules? what rules? our rules? their rules?

The rule of the majority?

The rule of might makes right?

The rule of he who has the gold makes the rules?

They don't have to play by 'our' rules at all if they don't want to. And the rest of the world can't make them.

Just because we pressured alot of other countries into playing by our set of rules. Don't think for a second you can do the same to china. They have the population and resources to make their own rules. and force US to play by them.

They make all our stuff now. They hold all our debts. I'd say they can do what ever they want....

scary aint it.

Re:The Irony

[Tenebrousedge]

Yeah, the mainland government (People's Republic of China) isn't all that happy with the folks at the Republic of China (that's Taiwan to y'all). A brief timeline of events:

1911:After having had a 2,000 year run with the Imperial ball, the Chinese decide they want a republic. A bad government is better than no government at all, right? Whoops, how'd we screw that one up? Competing warlords control various parts of the country,

1925: A man name of Chiang Kai-shek begins to take over the reins. He's the best thing that the Chinese have to a leader, so US diplomatic efforts are directed his way. Of course, it would be a horrible insult to claim that he was anything other than the strong leader of a united China, right?

1931: The japanese invade Manchuria. CKS response: oh, dang, what a bummer. I suppose I could send some troops out there, but what the hell--they're only peasants. And you know, if I lose any of my army, then I wouldn't have it any more...wonder who I could get to fight for me? CUE 77 YEARS (and counting) OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE.

1931-1945: Chiang Kai-shek fights a losing war, when other people force him to. Through diplomatic cunning, he gets the U.S. (whose desire to have China in the game as a major player, especially after the outbreak of war in Europe, was basically driving the whole matter) to send him aid, soldiers supplies, and recognition as a major power. Meanwhile, the communists are taking things over while CKS lets things slide.

1949: CKS runs off to the newly-acquired island of Taiwan, aka Formosa. The corrupt regime is rescued from annihilation by the U.S. military. Again.

2008: we're still protecting the ROC, the PRC is still angry at the mere existence of the ROC, and the U.S. still buys stuff from both of them. Cause, y'know, we want them to be a major player in the w---hmm. Well, we've been doing it for a while. Can't quit now, right?

For further reading, check out Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45 by Barbara Tuchman, who is more well known for The Guns of August

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the Chinese food buffets in my area, they keep the stray cat population in check.

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Many times the only thing that makes something counterfeit is not having a valid license to create or sell it. "Counterfeit" merchandise isn't necessarily intended from the beginning to be fraudulent. Corporate contracts being what they are, a warehouse full of totally legitimate product may suddenly become counterfeit, simply because somebody broke a contract.

Re:The Irony

[PalmKiller]

Well not really, we can always boycott china and kill off their income...its kinda nice, we keep them in line that way. As far as the debt, a fool and their money are soon parted.

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a real nice idea.

Try it. For a month buy only items that send NO money to china. This will take some research since many items 'made' in another country are made from raw materials that came from china.

Try it. You can't do it anymore. They got too big.

Re:The Irony

[mcmonkey]

As far as the debt, a fool and their money are soon parted.

I think you misunderstand the relationship. I read your post as, the Chinese are fools for having lent so much money to the USA. We can always just cut off economic ties to China and refuse to honor those bonds.

But that's like saying, the addict keeps the pusher in line by threatening to go to rehab.

It's not the US economy was running a little short and we just needed a bump to get us through pay day. Our government runs off debt as S.O.P. We default on those bonds--any of those bonds--and suddenly we have a lot more trouble borrowing money, and it costs us a lot more to do so. On top of that, countries who have been satisifed with rolling over bonds from one issue to another--collecting interest without getting any repayment of the principle--might actually want to cash out and take their money back.

Basically, unless you have a shack up on the mountains stocked with canned goods and ammo with a near by drinkable water supply, boycotting China is not an option.

Re:The Irony

[PitaBred]

Oh yes, deal with consumers in a fair way indeed. I realize that those are isolated incidents, but they are the results of playing "fast and loose with the system". People DIE.

Re:The Irony

[aliquis]

Same with europe I guess. How did great britain, spain, france and so on get their money in the first place? ...

Re:The Irony

[McGiraf]

Exactly

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Man I lived in China for 20 years and I am still alive. You sounds like those redneck neo-conservative zionist loving white trash like this .

No more you Jews. Your era of control is over. China shall rise along with Middle East!

SIEG HEIL!

Re:The Irony

[cas2000]

> BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development.
> I just think it's time they started playing by the rules.

but they ARE playing by "the rules". exactly the same rules that the USA has been playing by for decades, exactly the same rules that the USA has imposed on the rest of the world - "Might Makes Right". the rules suck, and americans are going to start thinking they suck too now that they're on the wrong side of them.

over the next decade or so, americans are about to learn exactly why the rest of the world hates american arrogance.

I can't say i'm happy about that(*), but it is kind of ironic justice.

(*) china as the world's only superpower is bound to be worse than america in that role. there's not much to like about american dominance of the world, but when you have a choice between two evils, it's sensible to chose the lesser evil. not that i, or anyone else, actually has a *choice*...just a personal preference.

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development. I just think it's time they started playing by the rules. s/Chinese/Americans/

just as applicable

Re:The Irony

[RockDoctor]

The fact is the government is rolling in cash - over $1 TRILLION in foreign reserves (the exact opposite of a national debt) and hold big chunks of US Gov't debt. Probably because of this, there also seems to be no real will among western governments to call them on it, despite increasing industry opposition.

My boss, whose degree is in Geology and Economics, has been going on about this for about 5 years - his take on it is that it's essentially a development from "war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means" : bankrupting your competitors is a continuation of war, by other means. We've got enough concerns about the Chinese, but we've been dealing with them for over 15 years because we're reasonably confident that we'll be better able to survive than our competitors. We're not sure that we (as a company) will be able to survive, but the people we're trying to extinguish are likely to go down first. Which is what matters.

BTW I'm not racist

Whenever I hear that phrase (several times a week), I start searching for the racist. I start by turning in the direction of the person speaking ; it's normally a very short search.

Re:The Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Man I lived in China for 20 years and I am still alive. You sounds like those redneck neo-conservative zionist loving white trash like THIS !!

No more you Jews. Your era of control is over. China shall rise along with Middle East!

SIEG HEIL!

Why Asus/Gigabyte hasn't been faked yet...

[strredwolf]

*holds up Asus EeePc 701 and reads the label* "Made in China"

Ditto for Gigabyte motherboards.

Re:Why Asus/Gigabyte hasn't been faked yet...

[WindBourne]

Yeah, but the others are also made in China. The real reason that they are not counterfeited is because the companies are not Chinese. The fastest way to be ripped off is to be a western company and move your manufacturing to china. And supposedly, the Chinese gov. will fund the new start-up that does it.

Are the fake ones better?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who's been suckered into buying a DFI motherboard in the past, I ask "can the knockoffs possibly be any worse quality?" I bet the knockoffs have a better RMA policy, too.

Justify anything can we?

[Shivetya]

Sorry but you really seem to want us to all chime in and excuse you for your poor judgement, let alone ethical outlook.

You want to know the problem, its called theft. By your example which you tried to use clever words to cover up its pure theft.

"Proper Distribution Channels" - Thats rich.

You are receiving stolen goods, worse you acknowledge they are stolen. You they try to excuse it by tossing all the PC key phrases to assign the guilt back to the party being harmed... as in "using slave labor, low wages, poor living conditions" Yeah I added a few terms but why not, I was expecting them.

Is this how your outlook is? You can excuse bad behavior, lack of ethics and morals, by claiming someone else is worse?

Re:Justify anything can we?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

No, the slave labor conditions in Saipan were only added for color. The point has nothing to do with working conditions and everything to do with the perceived value of a good.

Do you think that a factory which has the ability to produce goods (and indeed does produce the goods for an OEM) should be barred from producing the same product for themselves?

Re:Justify anything can we?

[betterunixthanunix]

Actually, in most cases this stuff isn't stolen, at least not in the traditional sense. Usually, a factory in China or India is given an order for some number of goods (say, 5000 motherboards), and they produce more than that (6000), then sell the extras on their own (counterfeits). It is only stealing if you believe in the concept of intellectual property.

Re:Justify anything can we?

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping your example, say there's about 4800 people willing to buy an ASUS motherboard. ASUS has done some market research, and organized its production by estimating that they'll sell about 5000 units. The factory produces the required 5000, plus another 1000 to be sold under the counter, for cheap.

Obviously, seeing as the knock-off is cheaper, perhaps the number of people willing to buy the mobos will bump up to 5200 or something. 1000 of those will buy the counterfeit product, and the remaining 4200 will buy from ASUS. This _does_ deprive ASUS from some of its profit, so the company will have less money to invest in R&D.

I see the parallel you're trying to make with the whole IP thing, music "theft", p2p and all that. Thing is, music is free to replicate, so counterfeit music costs zero. Mobos do cost money to make, so counterfeit mobos cost "normal retail price, minus ASUS's cut". If ASUS doesn't get its cut, then yes, I'd call that stealing. The definition of this word has evolved, just like the rest of the English language and society as a whole. Live with it.

How about an anology

[spasticfantastic]

A friend of mine is a silversmith. He recently completed a contract for a high class jeweler to produce some bracelets. The cost of the silver used was around £15 but the bracelets were sold in the jewelers store for £120. When he finished the contract he used the original design specs and some left over silver to make a few more bracelets which he sold to friends for £30 - so are these fakes?

Re:How about an anology

[technos]

DFI never sold these motherboard models, (In your case, the 'jeweler' did.) and doesn't contract out to have other companies design and make boards for them. (In your case, the 'jeweler' did.)

So no. The friends that bought them were doing something more like "Oh, I know this fab designer and picked up one of his originals for £30!" instead of "I bought this £90 chunk of crap they told me 'jeweler' sells for £120, but they don't and it's actually worth only £15!"

Re:How about an anology

[devnullkac]

The "left over" silver was clearly stolen (unless it's a normal part of contracts like these that such material becomes the property of the silversmith). The harder question is the design that was used, but again it comes down to the contract: if he was handed a design and then used it later without proper license, he's stealing the IP (if you'll allow such an argument here; if you won't, then you might not even accept the notion of a counterfeit board in the first place). If he composed his own design, the contract would state whether it was his to use after. Seems unlikely they'd pay for a new design and then let him keep it so as to dilute the market later.

This analogy is weak, though. It is unlikely that DFI paid for the parts used to build the counterfeit boards. The contract for the factory, though probably mirrors the silversmith's contract for the ownership and use of the design: no unauthorized use allowed.

Re:How about an anology

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It's an interesting argument, and somewhat applicable, but in another way, it's not.

That's because jewelry really doesn't need support, and in your example, they know the original silversmith. But electronics, should it fail, you'll want it fixed, or you'll want BIOS or driver updates. The real drivers might or might not work.

Re:How about an anology

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The "left over" silver was clearly stolen (unless it's a normal part of contracts like these that such material becomes the property of the silversmith).

It also depends on whether the smith was responsible for buying it, or the company that bought the contract. At least in the machine shop world, which I'm a bit more familiar, the machine shop often handles their own materials purchases.

Re:How about an anology

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy would be more accurate of someone else (as talented as your friend) got the design specs, made bracelets and sold them for 30 pounds; that would take into account the problem of revenue distribution, which is the other issue at hand here.

The whole "can these products be considered counterfeit?" debate is interesting, as is the whole security/risk/reputation thing. But even if the "fake" product is proven to be exactly as good as the "real" one, you still have the problem of the original designer not getting his money.

(Cue all the "It's not theft!" morons. Shut up already, this isn't about p2p where things cost basically nothing to produce and very little to "design". Apples and oranges.)

Re:How about an anology

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they are fakes. They look exactly like the jewelry companies bracelets, possibly made out of the same quality silver, but they were never sold by the jewelry company. They cannot be branded with the jewelry companies name. The jewelry company did not make any money off of those bracelets.

Oh come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

The chinks are ALWAYS behind this sort of thing. Give the race-baiting a rest already.

China is a country of possibilities

[eliteisland]

Never assume. Anything is possible here.

But the police sell stolen goods

[giafly]

You are IMHO robbing from society as a whole by buying stolen goods.

You can't be right, because the police are not in the business of helping robbers, yet they sell stolen goods. I got my first bike from a police auction btw.

Move over eBay - this is the police...
This website disposes of property that the police have seized or has been handed in, and where the police can't locate the original owner. Stuff on sale reflects criminal tastes; lots of mountain bikes (many "as new"), Nike trainers (new, boxed), jewellery and electrical goods such as laptops and iPods.

Re:But the police sell stolen goods

[Firethorn]

You can't be right, because the police are not in the business of helping robbers, yet they sell stolen goods. I got my first bike from a police auction btw.

There's a difference between the police releasing resources back into the public when they can't find the proper owners and helping to encourage thieves by providing them a market for their goods.

Fakes are already very common

[Edzilla2000]

I work in a computer shop, and two weeks ago, a guy tried to sell us 1000 "corsair" RAM modules for a very cheap price. Before buying, my boss asked to test them: 8 out of ten wouldn't even boot the computer, and the two that did were actually "kingston" modules on which the brand name had been removed and replace by "Corsair". The packaging looked exactly the same as legit "corsair"'s. The RAM in fact was the rejects from some factory rebranded and resold.

Re:Fakes are already very common

[Ceseuron]

I remember PC Chips doing something similar. They manufactured motherboards with fake L2 cache, from the old 486 into early Pentium 1 era. Do you think I jest? They glued fake plastic chips onto motherboards and then simply programmed the BIOS to report the cache enabled, even though there was none to begin with.

Re:Fakes are already very common

[zakezuke]

I remember PC Chips doing something similar. They manufactured motherboards with fake L2 cache, from the old 486 into early Pentium 1 era. Do you think I jest? They glued fake plastic chips onto motherboards and then simply programmed the BIOS to report the cache enabled, even though there was none to begin with. I remember this time period very well. Dealers had the same MO

1) You go in, get chip and board under $150, cables fan everything
2) Next time unless you had the flyer, the price jumps
3) They call you by your first name but when you claim there was this deal last time (free cables and cpu fan) they claim to have never met you before.
4) When you upgrade to a better board, you only get like $30 credit on the one they sold you, and you have to buy the fan and cables making it cheaper to keep the damn shitty board.

I didn't get the fake cache issue, I bought into an AMD socket 3 5x86 133 which was a low cost high performance chip in it's heyday... and IMHO out performed the socket 4 60/66 without a doubt. Odd ball board, with both a PCI and VESA. A great platform until socket 7 came into the fold. I however got into the so called "VX PRO" boards, labeled whatever you like, just don't remove the sticker else you'll find a critic house number. It was when the Cyrix 6x86 150/166s were out and kinda spiffy.

Mine was either a Matsonic or an Amptron, I'm not sure which as it had documentation for both. I know many that actually were in service for years, and there are even some docs to hack the board to accept AMD k6 series chips. Mine caught fire, not that it didn't stop working, but I like to avoid boards that blow parts.

But nothing was as bad as the parent stated, boards with fake cache chips on it. I didn't buy one as I benched my 386 with an IIT mathco and found it to be faster. I stuck with my 386, silly me.

Re:How about an analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on if he marked them or sold them as genuine designer bracelets. While they may not be fakes your friend was probably under contract to only make this design of Bracelets for the company ordering them. Second the bracelet design may be copyrighted in which case the extra bracelets would violate the copyright. On an other note why did your friend make perfect copies of the bracelets, he could have redesigned them and sold them as his own design in which case he would be legally in the clear. He could also say that he the produced Jewlery that was sold in upscale Jewlery stores. However in this case were not talking about making a few to sell to your friends were talking about going into the other Jewelery Stores and sell them as Designer X genuine bracelets.

Funny how accounting works

[WindBourne]

Companies like Intel, AMD, DFI, etc have all moved loads of their operations to China and Indonesia because of "low" costs. Yet, in doing this, the local gov. will push for their locals to learn and duplicate it. Both Indonesia and China allows this because copyrights and patents do not matter to them. They view it as this is false property and it is just theft by those that have it. In addition, they have lousy quality to keep their costs down as well as due to the fact that they just do not know better. But is this their fault? Nope. It is the accountants and CEOs. For example, Intel recently announced that they were moving some major operations to China. Why? Because China is graduating loads of engineers. Ok, assume that these engineers are top quality. But the shear number is no where near what America, Japan, or even Germany has. So, is this the real reason? Nope. It came down to some account looking at upfront labor costs, but never thinking about the costs of theft, virus, low quality that it will lead to. Sad. The downfall of the west is being lead by accountants as well as short-term thinking CEO's.

Re:Funny how accounting works

[night_flyer]

I read this quote a few days ago...

In the 1980s, Capitalism defeated Communism, in the 1990s it defeated Democracy...

Re:Funny how accounting works

[WindBourne]

I do not know whether to cry or laugh. I think that it has a lot of truth. Of course, to be honest, things are very rigged right now. For example, china has tariffs over 10% on ALL imports from the west (interestingly, they drop them for countries that they are trying hard to get to trade with them). China is now fighting that they are required to drop them according to WTO. After all, they had almost 8 years with them in place and now want another 3-5 years of them. Obviously, the west is not going to allow that. In addition, they are the only country that does not have freely floating money in the WTO. It is heavily tied to the dollar and designed to make imports to them even more difficult.

But I have to admit that I admire them, in the same context that I admire MS or Hitler. Capable of being #1 in their world, but only by cheating.

In most places

[WindBourne]

that would be called theft. And he could and SHOULD be taken to court over that. While it is uncommon in the west, that is exactly what regularly goes on in China. But keep in mind that it is not rare enough even in the west. Yesterday, Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against fisker. Turns out that fisker was designing the white star for Tesla, but purposely did a crap job. In addition, issues that Tesla had solved, fisker took back to his car as well as possibly to Quantum Q Drive. Now, is it true? No idea. Courts will have to solve that one. But it does happen. But then again, Musk should have known better then to trust this guy. Apparently, fisker has a long reputation of pulling similar stunts elsewhere. Hopefully, he has an iron clad contract and can stop this.

Re:In most places

[technos]

Crafted and technological art are sold under different terms. Things like his silversmith pal produces are typically not works for hire like the Tesla body design.

Re:You one dumb MoFo !!

[canUbeleiveIT]

dOES YOU MAMA NO YOU ARE SO stpuid!! Know she doesn't!

Pot meet kettle....

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you think that western countries obtained their (current) position of dominance?

I suppose you think that the history of Europe, and later the US, turning up in a country and taking all of its natural resources by force isn't cheating.

Taking away large amounts of the population of those countries to use as slaves: not cheating.

The outsourcing of manufacturing and now services that takes advantage of the cheap labour and the complete lack of civil rights to the detriment of the wests' own workforces: not cheating.

The simple fact is that most of the current level of technology and wealth is build upon the bedrock of a long history of plundering other countries natural resources and populations, a long list of countries which includes China.

Invoking godwin's law on your last comment is tempting but I'll pass.

Re:Pot meet kettle....

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you think that the history of Europe, and later the US, turning up in a country and taking all of its natural resources by force isn't cheating. Hmmmm. Exactly how and when did Europe and US take all the natural resources? Yes, back in the 1600-1800's, Europe was conquering all, but nearly all territories had been let go more than 50 years ago. In addition, taking all natural resources? Would that be like what China did Taiwan (which was an independent island before 1900's, when china took over and pillaged ALL of it). Even now, China is destroying the south china seas, and invading oceans all over the world.

Taking away large amounts of the population of those countries to use as slaves: not cheating.
Well, yes, back in the 1300-1700's, Europe did obtain slaves from around the world and sell them. Interestingly, America, who seems to be ripped the most, was NOT the slavers. We did BUY them, but only from ppl of that same area or from Europeans. Interestingly, the vast majority of black slaves that American bought were bought from black slavers. And it was relatively few slaves that were brought to America. It was less than 50K, and IIRC, it was actually less than 10K. And of course, China has had slaves FOREVER. In fact, they still have a serious issue on this.
The outsourcing of manufacturing and now services that takes advantage of the cheap labour and the complete lack of civil rights to the detriment of the wests' own workforces: not cheating.
I somewhat agree with you on this. Are the Chinese ppl cheating? Nope. They are simply competing. I think that the issue resides with 2 groups; the Chinese gov that fixes the yuan to make it impossible to compete, and the companies that have move jobs to there. Finally, I blame those companies like GE, Intel, etc that have screwed over the world on this.

The simple fact is, that the wealth of the west was NOT due to plundering other nations. Plundering did occur in the 1800's and prior, but overall the vast majority of the wealth was not built that way. To say that it was, is ludicrous at best.

What's to say this is limited to mobo's?

[HangingChad]

I think a bigger question this begs is what if this isn't limited to motherboards? Remember the lead paint issue? And the tainted food? Once we started looking we found those problems went much deeper than the original discovery.

The potential is massive. Think of all the embedded systems manufactured overseas...flight control, car computers, radar, medical diagnostics. It's a really long list.

To me this is the real potential downside of outsourcing our manufacturing: Losing control of the QA/QC chain. It's already happened with food and toys and we still don't have the systems in place to be certain it's not going to happen again. I believe this just may be the next revelation that the dark side of outsourcing may be more costly than we believed.

They actually make the originals worse!

[ivan256]

Now when you have a problem, the "tech support" at DFIStreet can tell you it's your power supply *and* that you have a counterfeit board, instead of admitting that DFI turns out shit product that doesn't go through QA.

China is/will be knockoff capital, full stop.

[sethstorm]

As "Made in China" stops becoming synonymous with "cheap piece of crap", then you will see more and more Chinese brands, respected for themselves, rather than knock-offs. That's not likely to happen, given their continual desire not to even go towards quality.

Re:China is/will be knockoff capital, full stop.

[danielsfca2]

Yeah, but you have to remember, Japan had national pride working in their favor when they were working their way up the quality ladder. Japanese people wouldn't have been able to live with themselves with a bad reputation for poor quality and unsafe merchandise.

But China? I gotta say that as a whole, China is 100% shameless and has none of that kind of pride, and will stop at nothing to make an extra buck.

It would be cool if PRC pulled a Japan and became highly-respected and full of quality in 10 years, but I don't see what would cause that to happen.

Re:China is/will be knockoff capital, full stop.

[TheLink]

Heh, nowadays even the Japanese get the Chinese to produce stuff for them. You can get the full range of quality from china - from great to crap to "might kill you".

So the chinese producers will probably form a "normal" bell curve in terms of quality rather than form a "biased towards quality" curve.

But as tech improves in some fields the average quality will end up being good enough for most. I don't really care if my USD22 remote control heli stops working after a month or two (I've already had plenty of fun with it). The last I checked apparently wholesale price was USD11.40/pc if you buy a full container of 6050 pcs ;).

Re:China is/will be knockoff capital, full stop.

[danielsfca2]

my USD22 remote control heli

That sounds like fun, where'd you get it?

Re:China is/will be knockoff capital, full stop.

[LarsG]

That's not likely to happen, given their continual desire not to even go towards quality. I'd beg to differ. Even if Chinese culture doesn't have the same cultural pride of quality as Japan (personally I don't know if that's the case, never having had the opportunity to get to know Chinese well), being the manufacturing centre of the world will lead to increased living standards. And with that comes the market and want for quality goods.

Ask your parental or grand-parental units. "Made in Japan" used to have the same "cheap crap" stigma as "Made in China" has now. I'd say give them some years to get living standards up a bit, and quality will go up too. Then the cycle continues, with cheap manufacturing moving to some place like Africa.

Re:China is/will be knockoff capital, full stop.

[TheLink]

It is actually quite fun. 3 channel infra-red control (throttle, forward/back, turn left/right), and remarkably stable and controllable for something that size and price. I've tried a few other mini helis before and those were a lot less controllable.

Note that it's really light so just a bit of air movement can affect it a lot.

In still air with no draughts (don't even think about flying it in a breeze or wind!) it can hover better than my "3 times the price and 15 times the weight" esky lama v3 heli (which I'm too lazy to figure out how to trim properly :) ).

I bought it at Graffiti Toys, Berjaya Times Square, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

You can see something similar in the following url:

http://www.abc-intl.net/detail.php?model=ABC010

Thing is, mine has an all yellow body and yellow cockpit and none of the 2 other possible variations in the shop look like the one in the above url in terms of colour markings, but the design appears identical. So I'm not sure if they are really made by the same company/factory or if someone did some copying/counterfeiting - hard to tell nowadays as per article ;).

The design is pretty decent - unlike with many other mini helis the blades are flexible plastic and are actually hinged so if they hit something they can move away which reduces the odds of damage, and it can survive 8 foot drops to carpet easily. But it's still just 15g of mostly plastic so if someone/something squishes it...

You can see the alleged wholesale price (USD11.2-11.8) if you create a throwaway login - a working email isn't necessary. I actually don't recommend using a real login or email.

I'm happy with what I paid for it :).

Fake razor blades too

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy counterfeit razor blades now too. Some eBay retailers are selling fake Gillette Mach 3's, etc.

See this site for comparisons between the fakes and the real things.

Ah, but...

[tkrotchko]

The issue isn't Nancy Nerd making her PC.

The issue is related to small systems integrators making 1,000 PC's. If they save $20/motherboard by using cheaper substitutes, then that's $20K more profit for. There is no downside to doing this from their standpoing.

Re:Ah, but...

[DrXym]

That assumes that all 1000 PCs function correctly, and not the more likely scenario where failures go through the roof and they're saddled with replacing boxes from irate customers.

NVidia Chipset

[Captain Jack Taylor]

If they're mocking the ones with the NVidia chipsets, maybe the fakes will work better than the originals!

Fake DFI motherboards!

[DaDibbel]

Now that's gotta be an improvement over the 'real' thing.

ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

[tepples]

And if they come from the same assembly line, what differentiates a real one from a fake one? Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers? The improper channel does not offer a warranty, does it?

Missing The Larger Picture

[not_hylas( )]

Don't you think we're missing the larger picture here?

HP Admits To Selling Infected Flash-Floppy Drives
Hybrid devices for ProLiant servers pre-infected with worms, HP says:

A security analyst with the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC) suspects that the infection originated at the factory, and was meant to target ProLiant servers. "I think it's naive to assume that these are not targeted attacks," said John Bambenek, who is also a researcher at the University of Illinois.

"To be safe, yes, you should scan every piece of hardware," he said. "Certainly with devices distributed by corporations."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;314715708

- How about THEY should scan every piece of hardware?

- COMMUNIST China sending infected hardware - who'd thunk?
- Can you just imagine their FIRMWARE?

- Sure you can.

Counterfeit Chips Raise Big Hacking, Terror Threats, Experts Say
Counterfeit Chinese Chips Raise Big Hacking and Terror Threats - The Manchurian Chip:

This past January, two brothers from Texas, Michael and Robert Edman, appeared in court to face federal charges of selling counterfeit computer equipment to, among others, the Air Force, Marine Corps, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Energy, numerous universities and defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4253628.html

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=482520&cid=22708174

U.S.
Farewell Dossier:

Counterintelligence Response:
Another result was that the United States and its NATO allies later "rolled up the entire Line X collection network, both in the U.S. and overseas." Weiss said "the heart of Soviet technology collection crumbled and would not recover."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_Dossier

- So, Communist China produces computer components for the U.S. (world) inserting truncated, obsfucated microcode, when run with sister-cards that, upon boot, combine to executable, then retrieve from the WWW a logic bomb, which upon download, sits in your "bad boot blocks", hidden, until whatever event that it's needed, where it can do anything from start bon fires (burn your graphic cards) all over the country (world), or, possibly to provide easy access in the form of a "lockable "dutch door" to [insert nightmare here] knowing lazy U.S. companies will fail to even "batch check" hardware from the factories - relying on good ol stupid Americans who flinch at the mere mention of the word "conspiracy".

CLASSIC.

So, is this where I now get attacked for looking skyward?

Manufacturer of the fake motherboards identified!

[Anonymous Coward]

Update: Tech ARP has just updated the editorial with the details of the fake motherboard manufacturer and the company has issued an official statement about the issue as well.

ED#87 : Fake DFI Motherboards Rev. 2.0

Re:Manufacturer of the fake motherboards identifie

[zakezuke]

Update: Tech ARP has just updated the editorial with the details of the fake motherboard manufacturer and the company has issued an official statement about the issue as well. I would have less of an issue with J&W Technology if these boards had NO logos what so ever. At least that way they couldn't be confused with a legit product and I would have no way of knowing that they were counterfeits. The PC Chips business model is based on selling OEM gear to 3rd parties for sale under their own label, and it wouldn't strike me as unusual for DFI to seem to be doing the same thing.

johnny

[Anonymous Coward]

friend of mine said that in third world country it doesn't matter weather it counterfait or not because not like in europe or america, even if we buy the original stuff and the thing is not work the way it supposed to, it's very hard to ask a replacement, most of the costumer service of branded product say a lot of excuses to avoid replacing it, so they better buy the cheap one, if it's damage they buy a new one. Its a sad condition really

asdfasdf

[ipooptoomuch]

SO they work just the same?