cM :: MORLEY|DIGITAL

A little over three years ago I wrote an article summing up some of our experiences at [H] Consumer entitled Fear and Loathing in Lost Business. It was about the cut-throat PC market and how companies were succeeding and failing in a crowded niche.  That was about a month before I jumped back into the business myself, scoring a Director of Product Development position at fairly prominent boutique integrator.

If there’s anything that’s for certain, it’s that nothing stays the same for long in this business.  Since then VoodooPC has been bought and shut down, and OverdrivePC was acquired as well.  And Asus started to compete with its customers by introducing their own brand of laptops into the retail channel.

There was much gnashing of teeth because Asus, as one of the precious few ODMs that designs notebooks for the whitebook market, was bringing to market products that directly competed with their customers of said whitebook market.  It didn’t help that Asus-branded books usually were thinner, better looking, and better spec’d than the scraps that Asus fed the channel.  The Asus C90 is a good example of a piece of crap getting handed to the channel while Asus kept the good designs for themselves.

But I digress.  The other day it was brought to my attention that Asus was going to be bringing to retail a pre-built gaming system (If you’ll notice, this system is built in the same plastic toilet chassis that I have talked about on a couple of occasions) - the question posed in the email was “Is Asus a Supplier or a Competitor?”

Well, clearly Asus is trying to be both.

Should we, as builders of high performance, custom gaming computers be worried about this?  No.  What we do is so much more than the sum of the components.  What we do is focus on customer service.  Anyone can build a computer.  Few can build a business around building a high quality computer at a fair price and offering peace of mind day after day to their customers by building a rock solid reputation for quality and performance.

Just ask Shuttle.

Shuttle used to make mediocre motherboards.  Then they began to make these nifty little small form factor barebones kits that sparked a revolution in the industry.  Before long everyone was building Shuttle small form factor computers.  They sold so many that Shuttle decided it’d be a good idea to get in on the action and start selling pre-built systems.  So how’d that work out for them?  Well, nobody uses Shuttle barebones kits any more, and Shuttle doesn’t exactly bring home the best reviews.  And they’re not known for their customer service.

So it’s much more important to be able to stand behind your product and support it than just bring out the next Alienhead at a cheap price.  In the long run that is what is going to make or break you.

MAINGEAR will continue to use the best components on the market because that is what will best serve our customers.  We won’t cut off our customer’s noses to spite our competition’s face.

If that means we will continue to use Asus motherboards (amongst others) in order to get the best performance out there, then we will.  We bucked the Corsair trend and went with Kingston due to vastly superior product quality.  If we need to move away from Asus we will do so because we think it’s good for our customers, not because we want to get back at Asus (they wouldn’t care, believe me.)

And if our next Editor’s Choice Award comes from beating the bloody hell out of an Asus gaming PC using Asus’ own components, well then that will make the win that much sweeter.  ;)

An issue that is close to my heart, and anyone who has gone out drinking with me in this business can attest to this, is the influx of absolutely trashy computer cases.  I’m talking about the gawd-awful, pressed-steel with plastic skin con-jobs that look like dumpsters out of Star Wars or a riced-out import with too much bling and retina-searing aesthetics that make me want to gauge my eyes out with a spoon.  So when I read this article a few weeks ago, I had to cheer.  Finally, someone who not only agreed with me, but was in the industry and was willing to say out loud what we’ve all been thinking.  And after I wrote a post earlier today poking fun of new Asus and GMC chassis and the apparent quest by manufacturers to resurrect Voltron, or even worse, Voltron’s cheap, south-of-the-border knock off, RoBeast - I just had to keep going.  BTW, I’m sure that Thermaltake is working on the body.  There has never been one Thermaltake chassis worth buying.  Period.  I don’t care if it’s the SwordM, Kandalf, Armor, or whatever, I’ve seen it, and Thermaltake sucks, plain and simple.  Awful aesthetics with no attention paid to thermal dynamics, this is nothing more than a marketing company.

This is not a new phenomenon.  I’m sitting here trying to think back to what happened, how did we get here?

Honestly, I think it started with Alienware.  No, it’s not their fault – and personally I think they took a chance and did something commendable with their Predator chassis.  That’s not the point.  What they DID DO was skin a Chenming/Chieftec Dragon chassis with an eye-catching plastic skin.  What followed was the typical orgy of Taiwanese copy-cats trying to cash in on Alienware’s success.

Some of the first tried to mimic the Alienware Predator chassis.  They really looked bad.

But the worst thing is that trash computer builders who should know better started using them in their product lines.  These are companies that are supposed to do due diligence in prior and proper testing and validation of their product lines before they schlep ‘em on the public.  And some of these blinged-out plastic turds that looked like they were done up with a  Bedazzler were not only ugly, but nearly non-functional.  No attention was paid to thermal dynamics, oh no, not when we can have a dragon head on the front!

Getting back to the system builders – these were guys that did not have a premium brand image in the industry.  Instead they took out 1 or 2 page ads in PC magazines advertising cut-rate garbage “gaming systems” sporting PC Chips motherboards and cheap power supplies.  That was then, and these days they just put everything and the kitchen sink in their configurators and hope something sticks.  Please re-read my article “Fear And Loathing In Lost Business,” people.  Getting back to the point, these concocted conflagrations of crappy computer components were all sold in these cheap, plastic toilets passing for computer cases.  The cases were eye catching but lacked substance.  And typically they looked MUCH better in pictures than they did in person.  Whoever did their photography, dude, call me, I have plenty of customers for you.

Let me make an analogy.  If you see a dropped Civic with a Type-R sticker it may or may not be a fast car.  Heck, the person might have even spent $10k tuning it up.  But it’s still a Civic, and when it’s sitting in the drive way you wouldn’t pay it a second glance.  But if I parked a Bugatti Veyron in my drive way (I wish) – you damn well KNOW that’s a bitchin’ car, and I wouldn’t even have to turn it ON.  And you know what, it doesn’t matter if that beefed up ricer is or isn’t faster than a car like that (hahahahahah) – pull up in front of an exclusive club in either and see which one gets you in the door faster.

Is anyone else not seriously freaked out about chassis manufacturers attempting to resurrect Voltron? 

Asus is building the head:

 http://www.edbordenblog.com/2008/03/decepticons-attack-asus-ares-cg6150.html

 And GMC is building the legs/feet:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/04/video-hands-on-with-the-gmc-bulldozer-r4-computer-case/

Kids, these chassis are plastic toilets.  And to paraphrase George Carlin, it’s wrong, and it’s bad for ya!