Buying Reliability

Understanding the importance of reliability is the first step in overcoming socially accepted misguided conceptions. Let me start off by saying that in the computer world there are no perfect components or perfect manufacturers. What there is, are manufacturers who are significantly better then others. People incorrectly associate perfection with reliability.

You get what you pay for holds true to this day. There are no wonder deals whether on EBay or PriceWatch. The industry sets a standard price for a component based on supply vs. demand economics. Simply put if a lot of people want something in short supply it will cost more, if a lot people do not want something and it is in great supply it will cost less. Pricing will vary from place to place on specific components but rarely by large amounts. A warning sign that something may be stolen, remarked or have high additional hidden fees, such as shipping, are when a certain component is significantly cheaper in one or a few places. Yes companies go under and liquidators can sell components way below market value and yes some companies may choose to sell something at or below cost to bring in customers for other products or services. Just be wary, when something looks to good to be true it usually is.

The Internet merely allows the new ability for the customer to comparison shop on a worldwide scale. Sites such as PriceWatch, Froogle and many others are continually making this easier. With these great resources people tend to focus in only on the price of a component. They look at specifications only, say for 512MB of DDR PC3200 RAM, then compare pricing. What filters to the top are junk brand OEM and Generic modules, made by third party, low cost, memory manufactures, usually using substandard equipment, with no QA/QC procedures. What you end up with is application crashes, lockups, BSODs and random reboots but hey you saved $10 right?

Buying reliable here means filtering only known reliable manufacturers of memory modules such as Crucial, Corsair, Kingston and Mushkin in addition to the specifications. But as an end user how are you to know who is more reliable? You don’t. You need to rely on advice from reputable sources. No this does not mean the online hardware website you frequent. These sites review at most only a handful of components, which are usually handpicked samples from the individual manufacturers. They do not have the ability to do a volume analysis where they can assess failures based on thousands of components. Only OEMs and Medium to large dealers are capable of providing this data. A company that moves thousands of units of a component can provide a much better long-term outlook of a component manufacturers reliability based on RMAs. However keep in mind that these numbers can vary depending on if the company deals more with professional sources or end users. A company dealing heavily with end users will have a much higher number of RMAs due to more user induced failures.

What happens online is Joe Forum Member who maybe assembled a handful of computers posts a lot at forum X and becomes the head "Guru". His recommendations become gospel and people get misinformed. You will rarely find anyone in forums who does heavy volume. If you did companies such as ECS and Abit would rarely be recommended anywhere. Instead you get people commenting that they never had any problems with component X but fail to tell you they have owned only one of component X. This happens constantly online, especially in forums. You will find reliability advice to vary greatly with reputable Dealers and OEMs from online banter.

Perfection Doesn't Exist:
Always beware of anyone claiming anything is perfect. You can get a bad component from any manufacturer. What you need to focus on is how likely it is you will get one. Buying reliable components means you are less likely to have problems. It does not mean you are guaranteed not to have any. Reliable components have around or below a 3% failure rate depending on the component type. People constantly over look this and once they get a bad component declare the company crap. When in reality it may have been from their own mishandling of the component that caused it to fail to begin with. I've had a defective hard drive from every manufacturer and a different customer declaring never to use each one again. Does this mean they are all bad companies? Obviously not, what this does mean is that they can all fail.

Warranties:
More reliable components will have better warranties. Boxed CPUs for instance come with a 3-year warranty as opposed to a 30-90 day one on OEM CPUs. You also get a manufacturer approved heatsink and fan that is engineered for the life of the CPU. The price difference is very small and always worth the money. Unless you are an OEM with special case requirements there is never a need to use an alternative HSF. This is an online Myth perpetuated by overclockers who have much different cooling requirements. The stock HSF will operate the CPU well below the maximum operating temperature of the CPU. Needless to say only buy boxed CPUs.

Conclusion:
"You get what you pay for"

Who to Buy?
The following is a quick list of manufacturers who have proven over the years to be reliable

CPU
-Boxed Intel
-Boxed AMD64

Memory
-Crucial
-Corsair
-Kingston
-Mushkin

Mainboard
-Intel
-Asus
-Supermicro
-Gigabyte

Chipsets
-Intel
-nVidia

Sound Cards
-Creative Labs
-Onboard (for above manufacturers)

Video Cards
-ATi Made
-Asus
-BFG
-Gigabyte
-Crucial
-Onboard Intel
-Onboard nVidia

Hard Drives
-Seagate
-Western Digital
-Maxtor
-Hitachi (IBM)

Power Supplies
-PC Power and Cooling
-Antec
-Enermax

The Firefox Update Conspiracy

Modern software releases patches and updates incrementally, meaning you only have to download the code that is different. This allows for much smaller and more effective downloads. Patching systems such as this have been around since software had version numbers. Why then does Firefox require you to download the full program every time a new version is released?

Updating from v1.0.2 to v1.0.3 requires a 4MB download for a meager .01 version update. Don't get me wrong the security updates are welcome and show that the developers are committed to their product. It is the way that they are released I question.

If you step back and look at it, how hard is it really for the Firefox developers to release an incremental system, let alone a standalone patch? I understand it is nice to have precompiled builds for installs but using an archaic update system is inexcusable. Why then was it omitted?

1. Firefox developers thought their product was so good that it would almost never need to be updated
2. Firefox developers did not know how to program such a feature
3. Firefox developers did not have the time and resources to invest in such a feature

Or

4. They deliberately omitted it so updates boost their media hyped Download Number

Whether or not this was intentional remains to be seen but it cannot be ignored that it is having this effect. Now think about it, say you have 10 million adopters of the initial v1.0.0 release, they all upgrade to v1.0.1, your download number now doubles to 20 million, these same users upgrade again to v1.0.2, you now have 30 million downloads. Finally to v1.0.3 with 40 million downloads and still only 10 million users! How much of the super hyped Firefox Download Number is due to the current users just getting the latest version? Much more than you think.

iPod Overrated?

For a tech toy praised up and down as being the "best" MP3 player, how has everyone managed to miss its shortcomings?

I started out shopping for an MP3 player as a Christmas Gift over the holidays and wound up reading hundreds of reviews on all the available players. After much thought I narrowed the features that the player had to have:

1. Support MP3 bit rate of 192 Kbps or higher.
2. Drag and Drop File transfer both ways (no software)
3. Universal File Storage (not just MP3s)
4. User Replaceable Battery (Either Rechargeable or Standard)

The MP3 bit rate is often overlooked except in regards to audiophiles who understand this or just have better hearing? Generally MP3's with a bit rate below 192 Kbps when played on standard audio equipment (stereo) will exhibit numerous sound flaws including the potential lack of stereo sound. Some may argue that on very high end equipment 192 Kbps is still not good enough but I would argue that is the best mix of quality to size. Then of course you have the various encoding formats vs. bit rate but again the average person cannot tell the difference. The iPod supports up to 320 Kbps, so we are fine there.

I then narrowed down the common features that every player had but you would choose based on how you would use the player, debatable features:

1. Rechargeable Battery or Replaceable Battery
2. Harddrive or Memory Stick

This article is NOT debating these two features since these are determined based on personal preference or finances (being able to afford a more expensive player and or constantly buying batteries), how much music you listen or want to take with you, and long term reliability (Memory Sticks will last longer then Harddrives, and rechargeable batteries will fail at some point). Regardless, I was sure I would be buying an iPod and all this research would just confirm what I initially thought. What I found was the exact opposite. The iPod was way overrated.

iPod's Achilles Heel:

1. Proprietary Software - This was a deal breaker, having to use proprietary software such as iTunes is just unacceptable, especially when it is completely unnecessary. Could you imagine if Microsoft released the mPod and you had to use winTunes to transfer the files to the player? There is absolutely no excuse for this. To make it worse files can only be copied one way with iTunes. Are you kidding me? You cannot take your iPod to a friends house and copy songs off of it or too another player. Yes there are hacks but this is not the point, numerous other players feature Drag and Drop both ways WITHOUT iTunes or ANY software.

2. Nonreplaceable Rechargeable Battery - Keyword is "nonreplaceable", at least not for the average user. Anyone that knows anything about electronics and rechargeable batteries is that at some point they will fail and need to be replaced.

This whole fiasco was brought to light a year and half ago: www.ipodsdirtysecret.com yet I never heard about it until I started doing this research and I am sure MANY iPod owners are unaware as well. Since that site went up iPod changed their battery replacement policy (below) and have improved the battery life on the new models to 18 hours.

Apples Replacement Policy:

Out-Of-Warranty PricingPrice includes:

Repair: $249.00 USD Replacement: labor, parts, and a 90-day guarantee on materials and workmanship, plus $6.95 USD shipping. $255.95 USD total.

Battery Service: $99.00 USD: labor, parts, and a 90-day guarantee on materials and workmanship, plus $6.95 shipping. $105.95 USD total.

Still, the iPod's battery is not easily replaceable by the end user. Excuses for this such as player size and design are unacceptable. Nor is it that other popular players feature the same bad design. My point is there are good players that do not.

Recently on vacation I found the iPod (and its variants) the most widely used and talked about MP3 player (which compelled me to write this). No one seems to know the shortcomings of the iPod, nor how massively overrated this player is. Simply put no one does any research. I recently heard on the morning news an anchor say, "Most people don't realize you have to install and configure software to get songs onto MP3 players" Unbelievable! Not only is this overrated player spreading huge misconceptions about MP3 players it is setting socially acceptable standards on bad design decisions.

Update:After extensive use with the interface I can honestly say it is one of the most idiotic and unintuitive ways to use a device. Moving in a circular motion to go up, down, left and right through menus is beyond maddening and nothing more then a trendy gimmick for Apple to show off their touch sensitive interface pad. I will never buy a device with unintuitive controls.