cM :: MORLEY|DIGITAL

Since some people get their panties in a wad when I don’t fully disclose every business venture I’m affiliated with at the start of every sentence that comes out of my mouth, I must again remind people (and probably for the first time on THIS blog) that I do consult for MAINGEAR Computers.

In doing some competitive analysis, I came upon this gem of a post from a boutique builder as to why they are “better.”  To me it sums up the biggest problem facing the boutique business:

But they offer a very limited amount of options and choices.  They also charge more than us for the same options and configs.  Sure people are happy because they can spit out these systems fast, and they know they work.

Our systems are completely different for every system we build.  We have no idea what our next order is going to be.  Sometimes components just do not want to work together and sometimes they work together the first time. 

I’m not sure where to begin on this because it is so full of fail.  First off – being able to be sure that a configuration is going to work is a Good Thing.  That’s the point of a limited number of choices.  If you offer 8 vendors’ motherboards, 6 vendors’ memory, and an equal number of heat sinks, power supplies, etc, there is no way to ensure that all configurations are compatible.  That means there’s a very realistic chance that a customer will order a system that the company has never built before nor fully qualified as a reliable product.  Furthermore, can you imagine the support nightmare?  Personally, if I wanted to call up technical support on a product that I’ve dropped $2,000 on, I’d want to be damn sure that the person on the other end has at least SEEN a configuration like mine before.

I’ve run a real product development lab at a $30 million dollar company.  I know exactly how difficult it is to balance choice versus responsibility when it comes to your customers.  There is a balance and you always err on the side of responsibility.  It is flat out not worth it to add that latest hot motherboard that got a great review on a website just because you don’t want to lose a sale.  You must properly qualify it in your system configurations and in your production process.

To do otherwise is simply irresponsible and reprehensible.

(this article originally appeared on Digital Trends)

Once upon a time PCs were terrible gaming platforms. *gasp* Why, you ask? Well, beside the obvious lack of horsepower or gaming-centric graphics accelerators, the CPUs were simply not capable of processing in hardware the necessary floating-point math required for today’s games.

Starting with the 80386, consumer desktop PCs were the first to benefit from a symbiotic, pseudo dual-core technology that included a second processor for handling these math-intensive calculations. While this processor could not stand on its own or even allow the system to perform multi-threaded instructions, it did intercept floating point instructions and could decode them in hardware.

And boy-oh-boy did video games get a boost. Eventually the x87 floating point co-processor went the way of the dodo when its function was integrated in the 486 processor, although stripped down versions of the CPU did not include the FP unit. Anyone who owned an Intel processor with the SX designation knows it was the Celeron of the day.

Now it’s all about the multi-threaded, multi-core architecture. Both Intel and AMD have made tremendous efforts in delivering unheard of performance on the desktop by incorporating multiple CPUs into a single processor package at a very affordable price point.

This really opens up the possibilities to software designers both in and out of the gaming realm to expand physics calculations, artificial intelligence, and keep games running smoothly without hitches or lag. Of course, you need to make sure your system is running lean and mean with no extra software chugging your system down and wasting the time of the second processor. 

But let me tell you why the multinational Tier 1s benefit from dual-core processing technology more than their customers.

It’s quite simple. They load down their systems with extraneous software that you do not need and only chew up clock cycles. Microsoft has dubbed this bloatware “craplets,” and they’re worried it’s going to ruin Vista’s reception by the public. These craplets of course are revenue streams for the Tier 1s. In fact, with the razor thin margins in this industry, the kickbacks they get may mean the only margin they get! So who’s the real customer at this point? Back to my point…

Bloatware and craplets bog down system performance and make your system less responsive. Dual core technology makes this less obtrusive to the end user as a second processing core can be occupied with the all the pop-ups, advertisements, and “free” offers while you are able to get your work done on the other. And the faster PCs get, the more bloatware they can install.

You didn’t buy a bloatware co-processor, you bought a dual-core processor that is supposed to speed up video encoding, digital imaging, and make for a smoother gaming experience. Right?

Not according to those other guys.

I just wanted to take a moment to comment on my esteemed colleague’s declaration that benchmarks are “Wiggedy Wiggedy Whack.”

Couldn’t agree more, Mr. Sood.

I’ve been saying for years that, when it comes to purchasing a custom computer, fast is easily bought, but ownership satisfaction can remain elusive. It doesn’t matter if that Editor’s Choice winner you paid $8,000 for edged out another $8,000 PC by 1% in some worthless synthetic benchmark. If you can’t get help when you need it, or if you can’t even get someone on the phone, who cares what the benchmarks say? And did you even get it delivered to you within the same fiscal quarter that you paid for it?

Or what about that out of box experience? I don’t know about you, but when I spend a lot of money on an item, many of my initial impressions come from the way the product is packaged and presented to me when I first open the box. To me it means a lot that a company puts as much time into presentation as they do the actual product. It’s the little touches that tell you that you got what you paid for.

I wish that features, usability, out of box experience, and total cost of ownership (which encompasses support costs if they must be burdened by the customer) were easier metrics to communicate in a magazine than who won 3D Mark. I do not think those reviews would mirror what we see today. I think that there are companies out there doing a great job that are not always recognized for it.

It’s good to see that others are now publicly speaking out about this issue like Rahul is. There are mainstream publications that are beginning to do this, and that’s great. I don’t want to name names, but Rich Brown at CNET has done a great job of balancing the benchmarking numbers with other factors about the product or company. There are others that are beginning to as well. Hopefully we can enact a call to arms for reviewers to re-evaluate their own methods and take more consumer-oriented concerns into consideration when they go about reviewing systems.

The end result would be that customers would get a better picture of the companies they are looking to spend their hard earned money with, and those of us on the other side of the fence could focus more on the whole customer experience rather than tweaking builds for certain synthetic benchmarks that will have no impact on the day to day computing experiences of our customers.