Computer Discussion - cheap-ass

Surely some of you have been around long enough to remember the US Incarnation of Packard Bell computers?




The original big-box-store cheap-ass computer.

As a computer technician, I was always asked what to buy when someone wanted a new computer. I would say, rather unequivocally, "STAY AWAY FROM PACKARD BELL". Whats the first damn thing they did? Go to Best Buy and buy a Packard Bell for 300 dollars, "It was so cheap.. I couldn't help it. It'll be okay," they'd tell me. Then 2 weeks later, they'd call me to fix their shite box. I refused to work on them after a while.

Tell your (or your loved ones') "screwed by Packard Bell Stories"

I paid $1600 for a 486/25mhz

210mb hd, 4mb ram I think. 14" monitor.

I wound up throwing it away about 7 years later.

:rofl:

It came with a 2400 baud modem. Hot stuff.

Had them in the UK, peddled by PC World (no not the magazine, just a major PC store, owned by Dixons). Our techies (I worked there for a while) called them Crappard Hells.

They are cheap machines. However I turned my 486dx2/66 into a neat Linux box (when Pentium II hadn't even come out yet) and it ran quite solid for some time.

With PBs you either got a good one, or it just kept breaking down again and again and again and again. Those are the ones that came back frequently.

Besides, what would be the main difference between Hells, Shiteways, Heaps of Poo or Comcraps of today and the Crappard Hells of yesteryear?

Mark.

I thought, for a while, that E-Machines would be the new PB, but they seem to be fairly solid, as big-box-store computers go.

Me? I still build my own.