Paul wrote: > My guess is that UCC saved money by skimping on quality assurance when > purchasing lots of drives.
Not exactly, but there's a point at which you can't test a drive any more and have to start trusting the manufacturer. It's a bit tricky to confirm a 20K-hour MTBF rating when the production line starts rolling in 48 hours. Once we realized that Western Digital and Micropolis drives were dying MUCH sooner than Western Digital's and Micropolis' numbers said they should, we switched over to Quantum and IBM drives as fast as possible, both for new units and in service stock. They cost more, but what they saved in warranty replacements made the higher up-front prices worth it. UCC was interested in efficiency, but almost nothing the company did was about cutting costs. This was a company that spent money all over the place, and sold many machines at a loss. By mid-98, the whole venture was $36-million in the red. We beat Apple, Power Computing, and Motorola in product satisfaction in a Macworld survey, but getting there was expensive. -Kennedy -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
