Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!dinghy.cis.ohio-state.edu!martens From: martens@dinghy.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jeff Martens) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amigas -- why the 90 day warranty? Message-ID: <72137@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 25 Oct 89 05:43:48 GMT References: <1989Oct15.021329.2118@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <23196@cup.portal.com> <1989Oct24.193454.23743@ddsw1.MCS.COM> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: Jeff Martens Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga Distribution: na Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 116 In article <1989Oct24.193454.23743@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes: [ stuff deleted ] >I don't CARE if I see a PC with the features of an Amiga at the same price. >That is not the point. The Amys are neat machines, yes, but they have >several shortcomings: >1) The plastic case. Yes, the PLASTIC case. It deforms easily, is broken > easily, and in general gives off the impression of >toy<. The A500s and How does this distinguish the Amiga from, say, the Mac? The Mac is plastic. A Sun workstation, certainly a professional system, is plastic. Granted, PCs are metal. So what? >2) Shoddy construction. Included here are the problems with the A500 > keyboards which are reputed to short out, some things I saw in the > original A1000s that didn't really turn me on (the "stacking" method on > the circuit boards) and a few other points. All in all, bad news. Commodore should be embarassed by the A1000 keyboard. I don't know enough to comment about the 500 or 2000s. >3) Custom components where not necessary. Specifically, floppy drives and > (to a lesser extent) keyboards. The floppy drives in particular seem to > be custom just so they can be (720K & 1.44MB "PC" style 3.5" drives have > a diskchange signal, which the Amy needs, so why not use them?) Everybody uses custom keyboards. Everybody. As has been discussed here before, the drives ARE standard 3.5" drives. >4) The warranty. As a commercial entity I might be interested in buying an > Amy for work use. As an individual I am not -- because I cannot afford > the hit that could come from a failure between 90 days and a year's time. > 90 days is insufficient to prove out the hardware unless I use it every > day for several hours -- and I can't be sure I'll do that. A year > warranty would be likely to catch >all< the problems. This problem is > exacerbated by all the custom chips and their costs, as well as the cost > of repairs -- a reasonably simple problem could cost a few hundred bucks > to get fixed! Say Agnes blows up. How much? Some $100 for the part, > plus an hour or so tech time. Total cost of some $150 perhaps. On a > $500-900 system (A500 here). Within the first 6 months of ownership? > There is no chance I'm willing to accept that kind of risk. I don't know one way or another about your prices, but you seem pretty concerned about fairly unlikely occurrences. If I always worried about worst case, I'd never leave my apartment, eat or drink. Actually, I better go outside, since the building could collapse at any time. But if I go outside, a B-1 could suck a bird up it intake and crash on top of me. Darn. As a general rule with electronics, if it works for a few weeks, it's gonna keep working. >Sure, the Amy is a nice machine. It has great points. I have some >complaints with the OS; it's lack of resource knowledge (ie: having to >explicitly free your allocated storage before exiting) stinks, but that can >be lived with (and worked around with some custom libraries which I can >write). The HARWARE issues are harder to resolve, more expensive to fix >when they manifest themselves. The Mac and PC (MSDOS at least) don't do resource tracking either, so, relatively speaking, this isn't a minus. It's also a pretty trivial programming task if you use any discipline. What's HARWARE? Obviously an acronym, but I can't figure it out. >Let's take an example from the consumer market -- big-ticket stuff. A >cellular phone, for example. Every unit out there I am aware of either has a >one or three year warranty. They sell for somewhere around $1,000, a major >investment for most people. They take a while to get fixed when they do >break, and are >expensive< to fix if you're footing the bill. >Yet companies are finding out more and more that even a 1 year warranty is >not sufficient. 3 years is plenty long enough, and firms are increasingly >offering that protection. The incremental cost increase is >not< large >UNLESS THE PRODUCT BREAKS A LOT. First, a cellular phone is typically kept in a harsh environment -- your Yugo. It's regularly subjected to temperature and humidity extremes, so it's going to break more often. Thus, a longer warrantee really is a selling point. Second, your point about incremental cost is valid. >So why is Commodore not doing something about this? Do Amigas have a >horrible record in this department? If their repair record is excellent, >and they have no major problems, why only a 90 day warranty -- the >additional warranty's marginal cost would be minimal, right? Amys in >Canada have a one year warranty. How about the US Commodore? I don't know if Commodore is doing anything about this or not. Based on my own experience, talking to people, and reading the net, evidence, I'm inclined to say that the repair record is neither great nor terrible. One thing to keep in mind is that, in order to boost the warranty to 1 year: 1) somebody in Amiga marketing has to think it would help sales; 2) somebody has to to a CBA; 3) the change has to be authorized; and 4) somebody has to get new warranty cards printed up. If you've never been in a large organization, be careful not to underestimate the amount of time and effort involved, and the amount of bureaucracy to overcome (I was a Honeywell inmate -- hopefully Commodore's not that bad). Finally, please notice that I've done my part to steer this discussion out of comp.sys.amiga.tech, a totally inappropriate place for a marketing debate. -=- -- Jeff (martens@cis.ohio-state.edu) Lie of the week: "I never meant to hurt anyone or defraud anyone" -- Jim Bakker