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From: dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Why do magazine's review mail-order PC brands
Message-ID: <1640081@hpspcoi.HP.COM>
Date: 15 Mar 90 19:23:43 GMT
References: <1990Mar6.024915.1295@cs.dal.ca>
Organization: HP Lovecraft Division
Lines: 53

>It does, however, say that your "Strife" program failed to catch a major QC
>problem with a vendor.  Everyone else got nailed too, we replaced a
>half-dozen of these drives under warranty (thank the Gods that all the 
>trouble showed up before the 1 year warranty expired on our machines!)

Strife does not catch quality problems when a supplier screws up and sends
us a bad batch of parts. That is not the purpose of Strife. Strife tests
whether the NORMAL quality of the parts meets our reliability standard.
Determining whether the evaluation units sent to us is normal is
an interesting problem in itself. Qualifying a supplier is sometimes
like buying a used car.
 
>Correct.  The point is that it is awfully presumptious to say "We're better"
>when you use the same parts as everyone else!  You may make the board
>yourself, but let me ask you -- when was the last time you had a >board<
>fail?  The board itself, not the components....

Our boards are very reliable according to our warranty data. Also HOW
you design and manufacture the boards makes a great of difference in the failure
rate of the components in the boards. Place a screw hole too close to
an IC trace and you get a dramatic increase in field failures. Analyzing
why a component fails is very interesting. More often than not, it
is not a problem with the component but usually with the design or
manufacturing process of the larger part. Solder shorts, cross talk
between traces that were too close together, excessive flexing of
the board because a large part was placed in the middle of the board,
etc.

>And what about the cost of repair to the customer?  I noticed that wasn't
>addressed.  For most customers it is very important, especially once the
>warranty expires.  

Haven't you heard? HP really stands for High Priced. We do not design for
lowest cost. We design for lowest cost that meets our quality standards.
Sometimes (as in the Laserjet 2P) we just happen to be the lowest
cost product on the market. Usually we are not. Being high priced
certainly has not hurt us. The public records on our growth as
a corporation and as a PC supplier show we are a very fast
growing company. There are people
who are willing to pay the price for quality. There are others for
whom low price is more important. Whatever your perception of HP
quality and price, there are many people out there whose perception
is that HP's quality is worth the price.  We do not claim perfection.
We have certainly put out our share of lemons. However our practices
are designed to minimize this. That's the whole point of my
original posting. Different clone makers have different practices.
This makes a difference in the likelihood of getting a reliable
unit. Everyone can agree that more reliable is better. Cost is
more subjective. What is cheap to one person is too expensive
for another.

			   Danny Low
     HP SPCD   dlow%hpspcoi@hplabs.hp.com   ...!hplabs!hpspcoi!dlow