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Abit To Close Its Doors Forever On Dec. 31, 2008
ki1obyte writes "Earlier this year the Taiwanese firm Abit, once a leading-edge maker of computer mainboards and other components, was slated to shut down motherboard production by the end of 2008 and focus on consumer electronics devices. Now X-bit labs reports that Abit will cease to exist entirely after midnight on the last day of 2008 because the owner of the brand, Universal Scientific Industrial, is in the process of restructuring and cutting their costs."
Sad to read this. Have had several Abit mobos in the past, always good quality reliable boards.
Their timings and voltages were always off a bit So I will miss them, but only a bit
I started out on Abit boards and loved them, but after a few years I started having more and more problems with them. I switched to Asus and the problems went away. I was surprised they were still around.
Abit specialized in high-end motherboards back in the day. I'm not too surprised that they're closing now; most people are going with laptops now, and the people who get desktops get sub-$1k machines, anyway. Hell, most desktops seem to be less than $500 now.
Oh well, at least Gigabyte's still around. *hugs his mobo*
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
As far as I can tell, there will be no closing of any door. We have this Universal Scientific Industrial (what a name!) that has a brand called Abit, and puts stickers with that name on some products. Now it finds the value of the brand diminished, and will put other stickers on the products, perhaps change the product line, etc. But for all we know, the total production of the company can be growing apace. In short, the only real material change to be reported by this story, is probably the value of some computer records. But well, this is Slashdot after all, and we are interested in that kind of thing, aren't we?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
"... the process of restructuring and cutting their costs."
Which means that while there may well be new stickers and boxes for any existing inventory, USI get to kill Abit completely and no longer support anything with that name on it.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that in 6 months time there's a big furore about Abit boards having leaking capacitors or some such - and the consumers will be out in the cold with no-one to sue.
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I have to say a name like Abit to go under. That was a bit of a shock.
I've personally probably built / owned / used a couple of hundred systems based on Abit MB's over the years. However I can't remember actually building or owning an Abit based system in the last 1.5 years.
True enough the last couple of years the company literally had nothing that competed on the MB front. ( Flame away ).
The cash burn must have been something beyond my comprehension.
I truly morn the loss. Less competition is bad. I really don't want to see the price of a main board hit $300. And still suck. If Lenova ends up making the best board on the market I'm going to retire and hide in the bush. ( Personally I don't much care for anything IBM or IBM tainted. )
I loved their product line. If I am not mistaken they were one of the first to have a "jumperless" design/setup. I remember when I was running dual 1GHZ processors long before it was the norm.
Under Linux their dual processor motherboards were fast and problem free...under windows well that's another story...blue screen of death would make an appearance every now and then.
For the custom builder these were the best MBs by far. I tested them against gigabyte, asus, etc., but nobody offered the ports and options that ABIT had.
They were pricey, but you definitely got what you paid for. Markets change...Abit to me now is kind of like Austin Healey. Really cool for it's day, but time and economic conditions make it a thing of the past.
I hope you bit your tounge a bit after a croc statement like that! To this day, I think my favorite Abit board was their BP6... Ahh, remembering when I had dual celerys when it wasn't supposed to be possible. And 400Mhz O/C'd to 600Mhz at that! Of course I don't miss that tower that sounded like a 747 taxiing for takeoff...
No, Abit used raw meat in their system boards, so you really want to replace them before they go bad.
Abit has been suffering because their most popular boards are from the late 90's. They had some very serious quality control issues a few years back with the NForce3/4 and Intel 8xx boards, I personally witnessed a 30% defect rate when most manufacturers were below 5%. As a result, many distributors stopped selling Abit products and they became very difficult to source.
Perhaps the reason why they are "known" as good overclockers is because of the kind of people buying them: cheapskates and suckers who believe online reviews. There was nothing spectacular about the performance, you could achieve the same results on an MSI or Asus board, and I've seen a zillion folks do pretty damned well on garbage boards like Asrock and GigaByte. Abit just made it a bit easier to overclock with gimmicky little things like "uGuru", which is little more than a rudimentary stress tester with clock control.
Abit tried to position their products as high-end while sticking the price somewhere in the upper-mid-range. As a dealer this made them hard to sell, as most people either want the cheapest board available, or a true top-end "Deluxe/Premium/Platinum" kit, and Abit was neither.
I really won't miss them. I haven't sold an Abit product in nearly 5 years, they are already dead to me.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
You would be amazed how many hours you waste in a year of using a flaky computer. Even more if you are a developer and flaky hardware could possibly be mistaken for a bug.
Dollars and time spent on researching parts then building a computer have a reasonably short payback. (I can only recommend one MB brand: Asus. Even there search Toms and Anantech prior to buying.)
I do wish there was a source of reliable and high performing ready made computers. I know of no such brand or local store. The brands are jokes and the local stores will all sell you out in a heartbeat if they think they can make a buck selling you junk ('DFI is top quality hardware! Why are you walking away?'). I had one store trained while I was running a corporate network. Long sense lapsed to their old habits. Only the owner remembers me (as a profitable pain in his ass).
You don't have to have money burning a hole in your pocket to buy top quality parts. You need money burning a hole in your pocket to buy the neon glow of 'Alienware' etal.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'