** Wayne Stallwood wayne.stallwood@btinternet.com [2003-08-07 00:52]:
On Wednesday 06 August 2003 22:35, Paul Tansom wrote:
far better than the now defunct AST factory I also saw.
My 2nd laptop was an AST and I loved that little 486. It was tiny (Apple Powerbook 12" G4 size) and had a trackball for cursor movements. No CD Rom and a Passive Matrix screen. But it never let me down and I only got rid of it about 3 years ago !
I guess it's all down to your last experience of any make, I've had bad ones with Dell and others, but my Compaq 1015v is fantastic (and cheap).
Also remember that the base machines are built all over the pace (regardless of the badge on the front) The name brand manufacturers jump between carcass manufactures all the time so quality varies between different models of the same make.
** end quote [Wayne Stallwood]
I'm not actually going on experience of owning an AST machine, just looking around their factory. What I saw there was not professional - coke cans sitting on the shelf above the PC build area, no sign of anti-static precautions being used; rubbish lying around on the benches (sweet wrappers, etc.); and staff who didn't seem to really care. I wouldn't have been impressed at a local computer shop, but at a manufacturing plant it was worrying.
On the other hand, the Dell factory had custom trays for moving machines around on (shapped with anti-static foam); full anti-static precautions; build papers with each machine; a no eating policy on the build floor; test areas for the build process (I don't remember a section for testing at AST, but it is a good few years ago now).
I've not seen round any other factories to comment. On machine usage I've found Compaq pretty good (although expensive, and only on server experience); HP, OK, but quirky on the desktop (although that may have been NT4!); Toshiba desktops look nice, but not good for the office environment (nice little flap means memory can be removed in seconds, which is not good in an open office environment!); Dell have been solid apart from my laptop and a Quantum HD in my parents machine (which probably shows a drop in quality from the PII or PIII era onwards as everything else I have dates back to Pentiums and is still going strong - I'm just about to take my last Dell P90 out of service due to upgrading the hardware on my firewall; I currenty have 6 pentiums and 3 486s still fully funcional (one P200 still in a every day use as a desktop until my in-laws upgrade).