Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!udel!udccvax1!bill From: bill@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (William Tsai) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Reliability of "inexpensive" 386 machines. Summary: Gateway 2000 Keywords: ZEOS, Micro Express, etc, reliability. Message-ID: <3982@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> Date: 15 Jul 89 20:00:53 GMT References: <1271@unhd.unh.UUCP> Reply-To: bill@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (William Tsai) Followup-To: bill@vax1.udel.edu Distribution: usa Organization: University of Delaware Lines: 43 In article <1271@unhd.unh.UUCP> abc@unh.UUCP (Avinash B Chopde) writes: >A general 386 PC question. >I will be purchasing a 386 machine, and I would be glad if any of the >current users of inexpensive machines could e-mail me their experiences >regarding the construction, reliability of various brands. >For example, ZEOS sells them pretty cheap, but I have heard many cases where >their power supply has blown out within two months. >Micro Express chassis is said to be "fragile". > >Is it worth it getting it cheap or should one invest in more established >brand names ? > >Thanks in advance for any replies. >I will summarize to the net, if there is any interest. I have a Gateway 2000 20Mhz 386 with VGA and their 80Meg SCSI Drive with 2 floppies and 4 meg of 100ns memory. $3670 with shipping to Delaware. A great price when I bought it 3 month ago, and still a great price today with nobody to complete, and you know 3 month is a LONG time for the computer industry. Except when I first received it I had a crack in the tower case, which they promptly (well, took them about a week) replied by sending me a new factplate. My salesperson was Vern... and he was okay because he gave me a multisync montir for the price of VGA and a tower case for $100 (instead of $200). Everything runs fine on it - except Compaq OS/2 (I don't know if it's suppose to run it, but Dell runs it..) and maybe Windows 386 (286 is fine.) I am very satisified. BUT, got to let you know... this is a NO-FRILL 386 - it does not have fancy memory-caching, no page-interleave and stuff like that. But it really doesn't make that much of a difference. Good luck searching and let me know what happens. bill@vax1.udel.edu -- Bill Tsai University of Delaware CIS ARPA: bill@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (302) 478-0953 " The computer doesn't hate everybody - just you... " -- Bill Tsai University of Delaware CIS ARPA: bill@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (302) 738-1716 " The computer doesn't hate everybody - just you... "