Vendors Archives - The Silicon Underground

Confessions of a former Best Buy salesman

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:35:12 +0000

The State of Ohio is suing Best Buy. One former employee talked about his experiences working for the company.

I last worked for the company in 1995. To its credit, the company did much to persuade me to finish college: It motivated me to get an education so I could get a better job. A few things have changed since 1995, but what I've read today about the company rang so true.

The post Confessions of a former Best Buy salesman appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Gateway buys eMachines

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:58:54 +0000

Gateway is hoping that its quarter-billion-dollar purchase of eMachines will help it turn around and make it the #3 PC maker in the United States. Seeing as eMachines is consistently #3 in terms of sales, eMachines plus anything is probably the #3 vendor.

The interesting thing to me is that eMachines is profitable. That wasn't always the case.

The post Gateway buys eMachines appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Don’t read this if you don’t want a cheap (under $200) DVD burner

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 17 May 2003 13:32:23 +0000

Long ago, I used to hunt for killer prices on computer equipment, and when I'd find something good, I'd post it here. It seemed to be a fairly popular feature. I haven't done that in a long time, mostly because I haven't been in the market for anything.

The post Don’t read this if you don’t want a cheap (under $200) DVD burner appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Two vendors you can count on

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 06 Jul 2001 17:18:52 +0000

Vendors. I've been trying to get out of the build-PCs-for-friends business and for the most part I've succeeded. My reasons for getting out are twofold: time and support. It takes some time to spec and build one, and if something goes wrong, I've got some responsibility for it. It's something I don't understand, because the systems I've built for myself have been reliable (I had a system appear dead that turned out just to be a corrupt MBR--I can live with that now that I know how to fix it, and it wasn't the hardware's fault) but the last two PCs I've built for friends have been horrendous.

The post Two vendors you can count on appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

An untrustworthy vendor

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 25 May 2001 17:04:35 +0000

First things first. About a month ago I ordered an FIC AZ11 from GPS Computers. One of my readers recommended them because he found Duron motherboard/CPU combos for a Backstreet Boys song there. I agreed. The price was unbelievable.

The post An untrustworthy vendor appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

PCNation.com: Absolutely not recommended

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 09 May 2001 17:04:09 +0000

Don't order from PCNation.com. That was the outfit I got my NEC 19" monitor from. I won't call them a PriceWatch bottom-feeder, since I'm not sure if they advertise on PriceWatch, and they did actually ship product. I made the mistake of waiting out my slightly-damaged NEC FE950+ monitor to see if its defect was indeed only cosmetic. PCNation offers a so-called 30-day return policy, so I figured I'd give it about three weeks. Big mistake. I should have made them eat the monitor.

The post PCNation.com: Absolutely not recommended appeared first on The Silicon Underground.