On Tue, 04 Apr 2000, you wrote:
> Wolfgang....add Acer to that list. I worked on a friend of my
> son's Acer for him. The bios was so dumbed down as to be almost
> useless (and hard to get at with a non-standard key combo to
> activate it), the mb had only a single channel IDE controller
> and the sound card was hooked up to the cdrom, but wouldn't play
> the analog sound coming to it over the wire hookup. All-in-all
> a pretty cheesy box.
>
This sort of thing is EXACTLY why I try to tell people to
avoid buying a stock, name-brand PC and go get one
custom-built with standard parts! It may not be as cheap as
a Gateway or Acer, etc. but it's much more likely to work
and will DEFINITELY be much more upgradeable than a
name-brand PC! Plus, a lot of name-brand computers suck. My
previous employer bought a whole bunch of Gateway computers
and monitors. In the year they had them while I was there,
they replaced something like 3 power supplies (out of about
8-10 computers they'd bought) and had to replace (all under
warranty, you understand) one of the monitors which burned
out! THAT is why I recommend people stay AWAY from
Gateways! :-)
John
