Which computer companies have you had bad experiences with?

[Cerb]

ATI - They've had shitty drivers since ever. You'd think they'd improve over time.

They did. Just in time for nVidia's to tank. I've had a Fermi card since release, and the drivers have only been truly good enough for like the last 4 months. There are many apologists, due to their good history with earlier NTs, but when they had to move to WDDM, the quality was not what I was used to, and has been hit or miss until the 300 series...then 306.?? WHQL caused BSODs, for me, so they might still not be quite there.

MSI: dead boards due to VRM failures, way back in the S462 days. They later would perform out of warranty replacements, but they admitted to the problem long after everyone had gotten rid of them. Initially, they stonewalled, since they didn't cover power surges or something, so we threw them away. Too little, too late, guys.

Powercolor: multiple infant video card deaths, and warranty non-service. They've gotten better, apparently, but I'll remain hesitant.

Seagate: the late 7200.7 through early 720012 HDDs were all utter crap. Not quite Death Star failure rates, but awfully high. Their Chinese QC sucked.

Every monitor manufacturer that requires more than 1 bad pixel for a replacement. If you don't have confidence in the panels you're going to use, don't try to sell the damn thing. As an aside, I prefer buying monitors at best Buy, whenever possible, due to this.

Gateway, around 2002-2005. They had some of the worst big vendor case designs in the universe, resulting in overheating video cards and HDDs left and right.

Not Logitech. Very much not Logitech. I am a Logitech fanboy.

 

[MontyAC]

I have no problems with most companies. I had a great experience from ASRock, my motherboard rma took only 6 days for them to replace it. They even paid Saturday Fedex delivery to my residence.

 

[Rumpltzer]

Seagate 7200.10 500GB. Died within a month.

The only Seagate that I've ever bought, and literally the only hard drive that has ever failed on me since I began buying/building in 1996. Eight years later, and I've still not forgiven it...

Had some memory go bad on me once, and the maker took care of it. Otherwise, I've had very good luck with my hardware, and I tend to keep rigs for 4 years or more. Like the WD Caviar Black 500GB that replaced that Seagate; they're still running!

 

[mikeymikec]

Acer, for poor design and bizarre issues. One laptop I've encountered doesn't have any problems unless you throw about 12GB of data over USB (e.g. a backup), another goes to sleep randomly during use until Windows sleep mode is disabled.

Re: design - I want to throw the laptop at any manufacturer who makes a trapdoor in a >4 sided shape. They're a complete ah heck to remove and a lot of the time one flimsy plastic clip has to break before the job is done.

Dell: Their business sales/customer service rep on one occasion assured me in no uncertain terms on numerous occasions that the laptop would arrive by a certain date. Of course it didn't, then that rep wasn't available for comment any more, and their customer service department said there wasn't any chance of that laptop being shipped on time in the first place due to a battery shortage. Then they said that I wasn't allowed to cancel the order! On another occasion, I was agreeing a laptop spec with a rep and adjusting it to my requirements was like playing whack-a-mole - change one item and three other things would change. Needless to say, I don't use Dell any more.

ASRock / MSI (and Gigabyte to a lesser extent): Capacitor plague. I think I've seen one ASRock mobo out of many from around 2004 make it to a reasonable age without showing signs of it.

HDDs - I used to commonly encounter dead WD disks, then it switched to Seagate disks. I think this was due to shifting loyalties amongst OEMs. I stopped using Seagate because of their warranty reductions. I've used lots of Seagate disks (probably 90-100) and I'd say I've had about 5 fail. I only started using WD disks in the last few years so I'd say there are about twenty in the wild that I bought for customers and AFAIK 2 have failed. I've just decommissioned my old server (with a 60GB Seagate 7200.7).

HDDs (2) - I'm not particularly impressed with the warranty system that Seagate and WD use, being the original drive has a multiple year warranty, but the replacement drive only has 6 months or less. I had a WD Black die in the first year, so a 5-year warranty gets cut down to virtually nothing, because their product failed.

 

[Brainonska511]

I haven't had too many bad experiences, but I would be hesitant to buy another Asus board. I had an M4A785TD-EVO board with 2x2gb of RAM. About a year into owning it, I added some RAM. Apparently, my processor had a reported errata with the number of sticks and the speed, so I lowered the clock speed of the RAM - okay so far. But then 2 weeks later, the board would just fail to POST, even when stripped down to the bare minimum. Tried to get a warranty repair - e-mail support was useless, but phone was okay. Sent the board back, it was repaired and worked for about 4 more months until the problem reappeared. At that point, I scrapped the board and the processor and picked up an MSI H67 board with a Core i3, which have been working perfectly ever since December of 2011.

Their laptop stuff was also pretty meh. For a while, with the W and V series, they had some nice chassis (I owned a W3J through college), but their driver support always seemed rather lacking. And the newer stuff that they push on everyone, like the A series, seemed quite plastic-y.

Acer's laptops are also pretty sh*tty. We got one for my mom a few years ago because it was cheap and she needed something nearby when she had some knee-surgery. It was okay as a tabletop machine, but it's really showing its age despite the fact that it hasn't traveled much at all. And after a year and a half, the touchpad got all wonky and had to be disabled permanently.

 

[Imp]

OCZ: Dead stick of RAM -- DOA, so exchanged at store, didn't go back.
ASRock: Fuxxored SATA controller in mobo -- bad service
XFX: Somewhat defective video card -- good service, got it replaced, but didn't go back.

 

[Cerb]

HDDs (2) - I'm not particularly impressed with the warranty system that Seagate and WD use, being the original drive has a multiple year warranty, but the replacement drive only has 6 months or less. I had a WD Black die in the first year, so a 5-year warranty gets cut down to virtually nothing, because their product failed.

They can't deny the warranty claim for the old drive, and won't, as long as you have the original drive's information (if you have the paperwork, and they deny it, they can probably be successfully sued). If it was bought online, that just means you need to keep your initial RMA records. I agree that it sucks.

They used to put a new sticker on the replacement drives, that linked the warranty, but I'm guessing some lawyer and bean counter got together one day at one of the two companies, and then another lawyer and bean counter at the other became jealous when they read people ranting hatefully about it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

MSI - had a DoA motherboard, was a huge pain in the ass, because this build involved using parts from my existing system, so I was stuck without a machine till I order a different board and wait for it. When I returned it I also forgot to take off the plastic X on the back for the heat sink so I asked if they could send it back and they refused. The heat sink company (can't recall what brand) was actually nice enough to send me a replacement free of charge. The whole situation was a huge pain in the ass all because of this MSI garbage. Never bought an MSI product since. What's funny is I had always gone with Asus and it was the first time I didn't. I could not find an Asus board with the slots/specs I wanted so ended up going with Intel.

Microsoft: I don't really have any specific bad experience with, but they do piss me off. Just the way their practices are. "Yeah, we want a grand for this software, but you still need per user licenses if you want to actually use it!" Pure BS. Though they're not really the only company that uses those capitalist tactics either. Also pisses me off how they're always putting artificial limitations on their software just so you pay more money to buy the higher edition. Their licensing is also super convoluted when you get into enterprise stuff. I don't understand why so many companies insist on using it. Their support is terrible as well, it's outsourced to India, and they read scripts and use Google. I can do that with Linux too.

Nvidia: Been having trouble since day 1 with trying to get 3 monitors to work in Linux, well, the card to work PERIOD. I have to keep rebooting because of artifacts and crap. When I was in windows I'd also get "the driver has crashed and recovered" errors which caused the screens to flicker. Overall just terrible card. Still fighting with that, I'll be trying an ATI card and hoping for the best, but their drivers arn't really known to be stable either, at least not in Windows. These problems are new though, my old video card was nvidia and it was fine.

 

[It's Not Lupus]

Lenovo: an incredibly slow, budget laptop with a decent trackpad. shitty screen. in my opinion, any modern computer should be fast enough by now for basic uses, but this is not the case. another laptop with decent specs but with a shitty trackpad. both filled with crapware.

Dell: laptop with broken GPU, no screen. filled with crapware.

Asus laptop: poor build quality. it's splitting apart at the screen. shitty trackpad and viewing angles. filled with crapware initially. I shouldn't have do clean installs ffs.

Next laptop will likely be a Mac.

Parts: I usually don't have issues with parts for PCs I build. The build quality and design of some of the Fractal and Corsair cases could be better.

 

[phucheneh]

All hard drive manufacturers are terrible anymore.

And ATI sucks.

Nothing else in particular jumps out at me. Even with cheap mobo or graphics card OEMs, the product you get for the price is usually worth it.

 

[phucheneh]

Lenovo: an incredibly slow, budget laptop with a decent trackpad. shitty screen. in my opinion, any modern computer should be fast enough by now for basic uses, but this is not the case. another laptop with decent specs but with a shitty trackpad. both filled with crapware.

Dell: laptop with broken GPU, no screen. filled with crapware.

Asus laptop: poor build quality. it's splitting apart at the screen. shitty trackpad and viewing angles. filled with crapware initially. I shouldn't have do clean installs ffs.

You should just expand this to 'all laptops.'

I've had a Lenovo laptop for about three years. Paid $375. No complaints.

 

[Jumpem]

Microsoft: I don't really have any specific bad experience with, but they do piss me off. Just the way their practices are. "Yeah, we want a grand for this software, but you still need per user licenses if you want to actually use it!" Pure BS. Though they're not really the only company that uses those capitalist tactics either. Also pisses me off how they're always putting artificial limitations on their software just so you pay more money to buy the higher edition. Their licensing is also super convoluted when you get into enterprise stuff. I don't understand why so many companies insist on using it. Their support is terrible as well, it's outsourced to India, and they read scripts and use Google. I can do that with Linux too.

Per user licenses are the norm for business users. Nothing to get agitated about.

 

[zanejohnson]

asus, abit, Epox Tyan

 

[Cerb]

Asus? Do tell!

Tyan makes good stuff, but Supermicro's support is 100x better (like, get somebody on the phone that knows about your specific motherboard, to troubleshoot it, better, v. the run-around).

 

[etrigan420]

I've never had what I would classify as a "bad experience" with a computer brand.

I *have* had parts fail...Corsair RAM, ATi Video Card, AMD processor, WD hard drive, ASUS motherboard, etc. etc., but have never had any issues getting the various problems resolved to my satisfaction.

I've received *exceptional* customer service from WD, ASUS, and Corsair, so I tend to stick with them when I can.

 

[ShreddedWheat]

Packard Bell: Self explanatory for us older users

Abit: KT7A: no support for AthlonXP though they stated...pisxed off a lot of people.

ECS: mobo died quick.....

Western Digital: HDD fails often....

 

[BoomerD]

HP. In the 90's, my son bought a HP desktop from MicroCenter. He had continuous problems with the damned thing...calling HP (at the time) was a long-distance toll call. I was surprised that they didn't have an 800 number for tech support...and, as usual, when you called, it took for-fucking-ever...jacking up the long-distance phone bill.
Yes, they FINALLY fixed the thing, but it took a couple of long-distance calls...on my bill.

I don't think I'd ever buy anything HP again, just because of that one experience with them.
I had MUCH better luck with Sony PC support back then.

 

[Newfie]

Surprisingly enough, Apple!

First Macbook (Early 2008 Refurb) had a laundry list of problems and was a constant PITA for 4 years.

Bought a 2012 MacBook Pro 13'' and it was a paperweight for ~1 month as they were working on pushing a fix for overheating/crashing issues. I needed a computer for work so I brought it back and went with a Thinkpad. This Big Black Beauty has been rock solid for almost a year now!

 

[Via]

I don't think any one company has been consistently terrible, but I have had some clunker experiences in the past.

My very first desktop purchase was a loaded (for the time) Dell dimension 8100 that underperformed terribly for the specs it had. A good friend of mine had a similar system that wasn't as powerful (I think he had a 1.5 GHZ P4 and I had a 2 GHZ), but his ran smooth as glass while mine would jerk even during intro videos to games. Even a game like Diablo 2 would freeze for a split second regularly. To make matters worse the Trinitron monitor that came with it started to lose brightness within a year.

I don't remember all of the details, but the customer service runaround I got made me give up after weeks of trying to get answers. I financed around $1800, and the payments totaled about $2400 iirc. For that amount of money I think I should have been able to expect something decent. I was new to the PC world at the time; if something like this happened to me today I would throw the thing into my car, drive to Dell and leave it on their doorstep.

I also had a horrible experience with an HP laptop I bought around 2006. The damn thing froze one day after about 4-6 months, and refused to boot anymore. It would just hang at the Windows screen. As a last resort I tried to re-install Windows, but it refused to let that happen either. Thus began another descent into support hell, as I was thrown back and forth between Indian customer service people who's only job was to deny any responsibility for HP. I remember some of them were really fricking mean; I suppose that was a tactic to make me give up. To make matters worse - I had bought the extended protection from Circuit City but they refused to help because the laptop was still under HP's original warranty (funny, but not HP's fault).

I think it was on the seventh or eighth call I finally got a person who was humane enough to kick me up to a "supervisor", and after only 2 or 3 more calls they agreed to send a box so I could ship the thing to be repaired.

After that the laptop worked fine for another 2 years before a fan gave out and the thing would'nt run for more than a few minutes without overheating. I took it to a local PC repair shop and the guy told me the fan was embedded in the mobo and not worth replacing. Maybe HP is better now, but never again for me.

 

[Ricochet]

Packard Bell: Self explanatory for us older users
<snip>

LOL. I'm surprised it took this many posts before someone mention Packard Bell. PB makes Acer look like Lexus.

I'm going to put Diamond up there. Use to be a reputable maker of video cards. Nowadays, quality has dropped significantly. Not a single rebate from them ever came through either.

 

[pyonir]

Will never purchase an HP product again. Between printers and computers all of the ones I've dealt with through friends have been junk.

 

[sourn]

Nvidia, I will never buy another one of their cards. I've had 3 of them all have had serious issues. I know they make some good cards, and it's mainly the manufacturers but I got to stick with what has worked for me and that's amd.

 

[Possessed Freak]

Packaged Hell
HP (specifically inkjets)
IBM

 

[styrafoam]

HP. In the 90's, my son bought a HP desktop from MicroCenter. He had continuous problems with the damned thing...calling HP (at the time) was a long-distance toll call. I was surprised that they didn't have an 800 number for tech support...and, as usual, when you called, it took for-fucking-ever...jacking up the long-distance phone bill.
Yes, they FINALLY fixed the thing, but it took a couple of long-distance calls...on my bill.

I don't think I'd ever buy anything HP again, just because of that one experience with them.
I had MUCH better luck with Sony PC support back then.

I had a similar experience with hp that ended me buying from them. Back in 98 when $150 was a bargain for a CD burner I bought an hp. It died in a few months, I went with email support since it was a toll call. They would respond once a week, obviously following a trouble shooting tree, a different tech each time. About 6 weeks into the process they started at the beginning again, repeating the earliest series of questions. I broke down and called and managed to get an rma in one attempt.

I can understand that stuff dies, but don't waste my time.

Others that made it to do not buy:

MSI- posted a bios for a specific revision of a motherboard, but marked it as usable for all revisions. Killed said motherboard, saw that many other people had the same thing happen on the support forums, not a peep from msi. Also, rma'd a new board that would crash instantly with multiple graphics cards with any 3d game. They returned the same board, apparently untouched as it still behaved the same.

Gigabyte: rma'd a board for multiple failing components(nic, sata controller) returned it untouched.

Evga: replaced a dead 8800gts with one that lasted about 15 minutes and then died. Even the manufacturer uses the oven trick? Whatever.

Other than that, I've done rma's with quite a few hardware vendors and come away satisfied.

 

[Charlie98]

HP. Spent $1800 on a custom-built HP back in the late '90's and it didn't make it even a year... and that was with the processor, mobo and RAM being replaced under warranty. Compare that to the Compaq that replaced it (4 years before blowing a mobo cap,) and, next, the Dell that is still rolling after 6 years.

I can't say as I've had any other major component fail... HDD's, my OCZ SSD, any mobos or PSUs...

As far as software... I stay away from McAfee (CS stinks) and this, hopefully, will be my last version of QuickBooks. Intuit is the AntiChrist as far as I'm concerned.

I'm going to put Diamond up there. Use to be a reputable maker of video cards. Nowadays, quality has dropped significantly. Not a single rebate from them ever came through either.

Still waiting for my Diamond rebate for my HD6450...