I replece a lot of IDE drives from various manufacturers. I started to look at the econmics of the industry. As the economy struggles along manufacturers must find new ways in save money and boost the bottom line, to make Wall Street happy. Cutting manufacturing costs by using cheaper components is a start. If they cut back the waranties and increase the failure rate, they will sell more drives at the expense of customers. However if it's a fairly industry wide practice, it doesn't leave many options for the customer. You could migrate all your machines to SCSI, the drives are more relaible and expensive. This translates to more $$ for the manufacturers. It's a vicious circle.
There's probably no solution until the Box Builders who give 3-year support contracts start loosing money, and put pressure on drive manufacturers. Drive manufacturers might start building drives with 3-5 year waranties for more $$$. Anyway you cut it it seems to be an economic decision.
Here in California, if you have a piece of consumer electronic equipment fixed more than three times for the same problem the manufacturer has to replace it. I'm not sure if thats still the case.
As far as Dell support goes, it's getting worse. It seems that support across the board has declined. As revenue drops, so does support, quality etc. There are times I don't mind writing checks for support contracts.
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I replece a lot of IDE drives from various manufacturers. I started to look at the econmics of the industry. As the economy struggles along manufacturers must find new ways in save money and boost the bottom line, to make Wall Street happy. Cutting manufacturing costs by using cheaper components is a start. If they cut back the waranties and increase the failure rate, they will sell more drives at the expense of customers. However if it's a fairly industry wide practice, it doesn't leave many options for the customer. You could migrate all your machines to SCSI, the drives are more relaible and expensive. This translates to more $$ for the manufacturers. It's a vicious circle.
There's probably no solution until the Box Builders who give 3-year support contracts start loosing money, and put pressure on drive manufacturers. Drive manufacturers might start building drives with 3-5 year waranties for more $$$. Anyway you cut it it seems to be an economic decision.
Here in California, if you have a piece of consumer electronic equipment fixed more than three times for the same problem the manufacturer has to replace it. I'm not sure if thats still the case.
As far as Dell support goes, it's getting worse. It seems that support across the board has declined. As revenue drops, so does support, quality etc. There are times I don't mind writing checks for support contracts.