Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!mithomas
From: mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Michael Thomas Niehaus)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple's Horrible Product Quality
Message-ID: <7681@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
Date: 10 Jun 89 17:55:04 GMT
References: <89156.130832GFX@PSUVM> <1936@aucs.UUCP> <415@lloyd.camex.uucp>
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, IN, USA
Lines: 61

In article <415@lloyd.camex.uucp>, kent@lloyd.camex.uucp (Kent Borg) writes:
> I seem to remember a story a year-or-so ago about the reliability of
> Macintoshes vs. IBMs in University settings.  The figures were
> something like a virtual certainty that a given IBM would need
> `fixing' in the first year, and much less for the Macintoshes.  (Was
> it 25%??  Well, whatever.)

Well, at Ball State we have about 300 of each.  These are my estimates on the
problems that have been encountered with the 100 Macs that were purchased by
the campus' Computer Competency program in the last year:

Bad (misaligned) floppy drives:       15
Bad SE display                         1
  (kept getting dimmer until it couldn't be seen any more.)
Bad keyboard cable                     1
  (this bad cable was connected to three machines.  Each machine that it
   came in contact with blew a fuse on the ADB circuitry, requiring a
   motherboard swap in all three machines)
Bad hard disk drive                    2
  (controller problems)
Bad video card                         1
Bad LocalTalk connector kit            1

Two-thirds of the floppy drives, the video card, the connector kit, the
keyboard cable, the SE display, and one of the hard drives failed within
the 90 day warranty period.

On the IBM side, the CC program bought about 100 PS/2 model 50Zs.  Here is
a list of the problems that I remembered:

Bad mouse                              2
Bad monitor cable                      3
Bad internal hard drive                1
Bad floppy drive (3.5" internal)       1
Bad printers                           7
  (Proprinter XL24s: 3 of the 10 purchased had problems with the print heads and
   paper feed, 3 had problems with the control panel lights shorting out, 1
   had all three problems)

All problems occurred within the warranty period (of course).  The printers
seemed to be out for repairs about 50% of the time.

> The point was not that the Macs didn't break as much as the IBMs 
> did, the point was that the IBMs are so difficult to use that normal
> behavior was mistaken for `it's broken'.  Most of the time the repair
> people could find nothing physically wrong with the `broken' IBM.

Like deleting the COMMAND.COM...

The one thing that amazes me is how much people notice when the Macs have
problems (most of the time there are people waiting in lines to use them),
but could care less when the IBMs are not working (there are plenty of them
everywhere).


-Michael

-- 
Michael Niehaus        UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!mithomas
Apple Student Rep      ARPA:  mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu
Ball State University  AppleLink: ST0374 (from UUCP: st0374@applelink.apple.com)