JagsLive sends in a story (in somewhat inflammatory prose) from The Inquirer, which links to many others; they have been following developments in the alleged NVidia quality "fiasco" for some time. "Hot on the heels of its denials that anything is wrong with the G92 and G94s comes another PCN [Product Change Notification] that shows the G92s and G92b are being changed for no reason. Yup, the problems that are plaguing G84 and G86 are the same that affect seemingly all 65nm and now 55nm NVidia parts ... It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm NVidia part appears to be defective ... We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens percent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs ... To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting ... Until NVidia comes fully clean on this fiasco, lists all the defective parts, and orders boxes clearly marked, you can't say anything other than just avoid them. Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen."
I've got this brand spanking new car if you want to buy it. I'll give you a great deal on it. The paint is brand new, custom wheels, high end brakes, a completely killer stereo system, GPS, power everything. The only problem is that there is a 15% chance the engine doesn't work.
But its just one component, so lets not blow this out of proportion, what will you give me for it?
I've got this brand spanking new car if you want to buy it. I'll give you a great deal on it. The paint is brand new, custom wheels, high end brakes, a completely killer stereo system, GPS, power everything. The only problem is that there is a 15% chance the engine doesn't work.
But its just one component, so lets not blow this out of proportion, what will you give me for it?
It worked for Jaguar in the 70s and 80s. Other than Ford buying them, I mean.
I own several English made cars and I can testify from personal experience that the only time when there is not oil leaking from the car is when it has run out.
I own several English made cars and I can testify from personal experience that the only time when there is not oil leaking from the car is when it has run out.
I heard that was why they never really got into making computers... They could not figure out how to make them leak oil.
I've got one too and was wondering exactly the same thing. From what I can tell the 8600GT has an 80nm [techpowerup.com] process size, so it should be safe. Which is good, I really like this card.
But with ATI opening up their specs and open source drivers coming along nicely, and now this issue with nvidia chips, chances are my next videocard purchase will be from ATI.
I remember reading something not entirely dissimilar in Robert X Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds". Might or might not be apocryphal; I don't have the book to hand.
Apparently Intel (IIRC) were having problems. The amount of defective parts they were getting was going through the roof, and they were pulling their hair out trying to get to the root of the problem.
Finally they traced it down to the guy responsible for receiving the deliveries of the silicon wafers. Apparently he was taking out the wafers and putting them down in his desk- quite dusty and very definitely *not* up to clean room standards!- to make sure Intel was getting what they'd paid for.
The person who submitted this story to Slashdot left out an important link [theinquirer.net] on that text from the original Inquirer article (linked again here [theinquirer.net] for your convenience). In the original story, that sentence reads:
Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them [theinquirer.net], we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen.
At that link, you'll find The Inquirer's (however flimsy and speculative) financial analysis of a full-scale Nvidia recall of the bad parts.
The Inquirer doesn't and has never claimed to be a fair and balanced news source, so they are free to put these sorts of quips on their stories. People there are pretty knowledgeable, and appear to have connections and sources in the industry, which is why people keep reading The Inquirer and don't really complain about stuff like that.
There's a big difference between a car with failure of engine or brakes, and a videocard with a failing GPU... Failing brakes could kill you, or others, the legal fallout could easily bankrupt a company making such cars... On the other hand, the engine or brakes make up a relatively small part of the overall cost of a car, replacing them would still be expensive but it's unlikely to bankrupt an auto maker. They are also much easier to repair than the inner workings of a silicon chip, so there's no need for thousands of units to be scrapped.
I've got a two 8800 series cards (one 8800GT, one 8800GTS), and I live in a place with no air conditioning. If these cards were subject to heat failure the way the Inquirer has been hollering about - one or both would have died by now. Particularly the one in my wife's computer - it's a Shuttle box, which runs toasty. It's been rock solid, running 24/7 for more than a year now.
I'm not suggesting there is NO problem - but the Inquirer has been talking about this like all of these cards are just waiting to die. With no A/C, and temps in the house above 90F during the summer, they should be dead if the Inq is to be believed. Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I still aint buying the story.
Actually, if your wife's computer runs 24/7 it would be less susceptible to the problem since the problem they are experiencing is exacerbated by thermal cycling. fewer cycles of heating up and cooling down = less of a chance to fail.
They say failure rates are "in the teens percent". Figure 20%, just for kicks. That means your chances of either card failing is 1 - (1 -.2)(1 -.2) = 36%.
For some reason that I don't understand, the vast majority of people have innate misconceptions of the rules of probability.
Well for starters they said its a failure rate in the teens. The odds even with 2 cards that 1 would fail is still less likely than not.
Also the 8800 cards have been out for a while. The impression I get is that this is a newer issue with the cards, so initial 8800 cards might not be an issue.
I don't get people who show any sort of devotion to a GPU manufacturer. I just don't. The author of this article is one of them. That doesn't mean it's not true, but he's written a number of articles that later proved to be completely false in the past, for instance saying that the 8800 series would doom nV because of low performance and high power usage compared to the 1900 or 2900, whatever ATI was releasing at about the same time. I'd suggest you not take any article written by Charlie seriously until it's been confirmed (not just repeated, as often happens) elsewhere.
Years ago (like 5 years or something) he got some official info from NV and then turned around and leaked it. In response NV stopped having any official contact with the Inq, Charlie specifically. Charlie took this personally or something and has been on a vendetta against NV ever since.
Why is NVidia using lead-based solders at this late date? The European RoHS deadline for lead-free components was back in 2005.
The NForce and 8800 parts were RoHS compliant years ago.
Are these NVidia parts even exportable to Europe?
Yes there is an exception in RoHS for lead solder that has a high melting point. However, the official RoHS rule is that while lead solders in general are prohibited, there is an exception allowing for the use of lead solder that contains at least 90% lead. The idea being that solder with at least 90% lead melted at a higher temperature and was at least somewhat safer if disposed of improperly. Otherwise, potentially there may also have been no replacements for high lead content solders that performed as well when the first RoHS directives were drawn up in 2003. Currently (2008), however, there are lead-free solders that would work, but the lead free solders are more expensive than lead based solders (by roughly three times). Using a lead-free solder with a significantly different composition may also require a new packaging design and another extensive round of qualification, too. I am not totally sure how this would be done.
It get worse, the new solder to be used by nVidia mentioned in this Inq article states that it will only contain 63% lead and 37% tin, making nVidia based cards with this solder not saleable to consumers in the EU according to RoHS directives. The replacement 63Pb/37Sn solder has a somewhat better tensile strength and a lower coefficient of thermal expansion than the older 95Pb/5Sn solder, which may be why nVidia chose this route to fix the problem. Whether nV will be selling very many products in the EU with this fix and whether this will correct the problems, is another issue.
To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts.
This sounds very similar to what finally took down Weitek, back when there were a bunch of graphics chip companies competing hotly and being shaken out if they screwed up.
Weitek had built a very fast and powerful chip. But they had goofed: While it had the mandatory basic VGA mode for acquiring the Microsoft certification, there was a bug in it.
QA told management that the bug was there and would fail them. But Software told them a driver could work around it and people would want the chip because it was so fast on graphics rendering. (Of course it could not - because to get the cert it had to work with the stock bootstrap stuff, before a custom driver could be loaded.)
So they went to production with the bug. And the customers got their prototypes, found the bug, and demanded a fix. Eventually they did a fixed version - but had maybe a couple million of the buggy ones on hand and wouldn't sell the fixed ones unless the customer bought some buggy ones, too. So nobody bought and the company folded.
I am neither an NVidia or ATI fanboy (heck, my current GPU is an integrated Intel), but this article is a steaming pile of crap.
Somehow, he takes a report of a routine running change to the production process (a new kind of solder), and magically turns this into some wild tale of how NVidia is shipping thousands of defective parts that will remain in the field.
Completely lacking is how he corresponds the running change to some defect...
Charlie at The Inquirer has no credibility when it comes to nVidia.
From TFA, nVidia is changing from high lead to eutectic (tin) solder - for RoHS compliance - and has issues a PCN to that effect. Charlie has latched onto this as "proof" of his claim that all nVidia chips are faulty and overheat.
What Charlie doesn't explain is how switching from high-lead solder (5/95 Sn/Pb) to eutectic solder (63/37 Sn/Pb) - which has the lowest melting point of all tin-lead solders - is supposed to help if the chips are overheating.
Nor does he explain how changing the solder material has any relationship to changing the underfill material on some mobile chips (other than they were both PCNs.) But hey, why let facts get in the way of a conspiracy theory/page hits?
IMNSHO, the quality control at both companies has been terrible for several years now. What's the point of paying a premium for a good graphics card, if hardware problems make your system unstable as soon as a demanding game is loaded or the drivers take out your operating system at random intervals? It's not like this has happened only on bleeding edge cards with new drivers, either: several entire models have had basic incompatibilities with other common system components, and sometimes drivers have been unacceptably poor for the entire useful lifetime of a gamer's card.
Contrary to the marketroid reports, it is not in any way unavoidable that new cards with new drivers have to crash a significant fraction of the hottest games at release time. It's not like these kinds of problems are subtle and might be missed during a decent period of testing, and it's not like the card vendors couldn't co-operate with the game vendors on a beta test programme. This happens because commercially, it makes more sense for them to race to market with inadequately tested hardware and poorly engineered driver software and hope they can patch up any widespread problems later with a minimal PR hit. As long as both the big names are as bad as each other, consumers in the target market are pretty much screwed anyway.
It's about time something like this happened and one of the companies took a major financial hit as a consequence. Perhaps then we'll move back towards supplying hardware and drivers that actually, you know, work. Gamers the world over (other than those currently suffering from these problems, of course) should probably be happy about this, because it might be serious enough this time to make a difference to future quality control, which is much better than a significant fraction of people being disappointed with each new model but never enough of a critical mass to really punish the company that supplied substandard kit.
No, you are just most likely American. The problem for you guys is as a customer you have next to no rights, very limited warranties removes the need to make proper products.
In EU however, most places now require 2 year warranty, that means all the good hardware is being shipped here because they don't want to be stuck with a customers problem 1,5 years down the road.
Raw eggs in the US run about 1:20,000-1:40,000 chance of salmonella, and a healthy adult is capable of fighting off the amount of salmonella in the average tainted egg.
WRT to beef though, salmonella poisoning by beef is almost completely unheard of - chicken yes, beef no. Where this whack job got his numbers from is anyone's guess but they are wrong.
Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
So let's not blow this out of proportion.
Re: your brains (Score:4, Funny)
We're not unreasonable here, nobody's going to eat your eyes.
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
That wasn't thunder, that was a sonic boom as the joke went right over your head.
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
I've got this brand spanking new car if you want to buy it. I'll give you a great deal on it. The paint is brand new, custom wheels, high end brakes, a completely killer stereo system, GPS, power everything. The only problem is that there is a 15% chance the engine doesn't work.
But its just one component, so lets not blow this out of proportion, what will you give me for it?
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you for that car analogy, I understand this now.
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
I've got this brand spanking new car if you want to buy it.
Can you crush it for me?
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
I've got this brand spanking new car if you want to buy it. I'll give you a great deal on it. The paint is brand new, custom wheels, high end brakes, a completely killer stereo system, GPS, power everything. The only problem is that there is a 15% chance the engine doesn't work.
But its just one component, so lets not blow this out of proportion, what will you give me for it?
It worked for Jaguar in the 70s and 80s. Other than Ford buying them, I mean.
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
I own several English made cars and I can testify from personal experience that the only time when there is not oil leaking from the car is when it has run out.
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
Really I thought that was limited to their motorcycles.
Hey it is a feature. It is an automated oil change.
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:5, Funny)
I own several English made cars and I can testify from personal experience that the only time when there is not oil leaking from the car is when it has run out.
I heard that was why they never really got into making computers... They could not figure out how to make them leak oil.
Parent
Socket GPU? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if we'll ever see graphics card makers use socket GPU's (or maybe it's been done before).
Could be a useful thing if they start coming out with multi-GPU cards... if you can't afford a dual-GPU then add it in later.
Parent
Re:Actually, not that big of a deal. (Score:4, Funny)
Note to self: don't reply hastily to slashdot posts when you didn't get enough sleep.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, it WAS part of a joke. Now you blew it for everyone else. I hope you're happy.
8600GT? (Score:3, Interesting)
At risk or not?
Also, this sounds like a class-action waiting to happen.
Re:8600GT? (Score:4, Informative)
I've got one too and was wondering exactly the same thing. From what I can tell the 8600GT has an 80nm [techpowerup.com] process size, so it should be safe. Which is good, I really like this card.
Parent
Re:8600GT? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an 8600GT too, hopefully it's OK...
But with ATI opening up their specs and open source drivers coming along nicely, and now this issue with nvidia chips, chances are my next videocard purchase will be from ATI.
Parent
Pizza (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually it was Kramer warming up his clothes in the silicon fab oven.
Re:Pizza (Score:5, Informative)
Finally they traced it down to the guy responsible for receiving the deliveries of the silicon wafers. Apparently he was taking out the wafers and putting them down in his desk- quite dusty and very definitely *not* up to clean room standards!- to make sure Intel was getting what they'd paid for.
Parent
Fair and Balanced? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen"
-5 Troll
Re:Fair and Balanced? (Score:5, Informative)
Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them [theinquirer.net], we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen.
At that link, you'll find The Inquirer's (however flimsy and speculative) financial analysis of a full-scale Nvidia recall of the bad parts.
The Inquirer doesn't and has never claimed to be a fair and balanced news source, so they are free to put these sorts of quips on their stories. People there are pretty knowledgeable, and appear to have connections and sources in the industry, which is why people keep reading The Inquirer and don't really complain about stuff like that.
Parent
Re:Fair and Balanced? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between a car with failure of engine or brakes, and a videocard with a failing GPU...
Failing brakes could kill you, or others, the legal fallout could easily bankrupt a company making such cars...
On the other hand, the engine or brakes make up a relatively small part of the overall cost of a car, replacing them would still be expensive but it's unlikely to bankrupt an auto maker. They are also much easier to repair than the inner workings of a silicon chip, so there's no need for thousands of units to be scrapped.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks for the tip!
Intel... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you a betting man? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're a betting man, now's a good time to pick up on Nvidia stock.
The question is, do you feel lucky, punk?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not exactly going to pick up NVDA [yahoo.com], but I may sell it shorter than the 55nm process used on these chips!
Still Not Buying It (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got a two 8800 series cards (one 8800GT, one 8800GTS), and I live in a place with no air conditioning. If these cards were subject to heat failure the way the Inquirer has been hollering about - one or both would have died by now. Particularly the one in my wife's computer - it's a Shuttle box, which runs toasty. It's been rock solid, running 24/7 for more than a year now.
I'm not suggesting there is NO problem - but the Inquirer has been talking about this like all of these cards are just waiting to die. With no A/C, and temps in the house above 90F during the summer, they should be dead if the Inq is to be believed. Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I still aint buying the story.
Re:Still Not Buying It (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if your wife's computer runs 24/7 it would be less susceptible to the problem since the problem they are experiencing is exacerbated by thermal cycling. fewer cycles of heating up and cooling down = less of a chance to fail.
Parent
Re:Still Not Buying It (Score:5, Informative)
They say failure rates are "in the teens percent". Figure 20%, just for kicks. That means your chances of either card failing is 1 - (1 - .2)(1 - .2) = 36%.
For some reason that I don't understand, the vast majority of people have innate misconceptions of the rules of probability.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well for starters they said its a failure rate in the teens. The odds even with 2 cards that 1 would fail is still less likely than not.
Also the 8800 cards have been out for a while. The impression I get is that this is a newer issue with the cards, so initial 8800 cards might not be an issue.
Re:Still Not Buying It (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like what Xbox fanboys were saying when word of the 360 being defective reached a fever pitch.
"Well, MINE works fine, you all must be using it wrong!"
Course a week later Microsoft admitted to it and shelled out $1 billion.
Parent
A Grain of Salt (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get people who show any sort of devotion to a GPU manufacturer. I just don't. The author of this article is one of them. That doesn't mean it's not true, but he's written a number of articles that later proved to be completely false in the past, for instance saying that the 8800 series would doom nV because of low performance and high power usage compared to the 1900 or 2900, whatever ATI was releasing at about the same time. I'd suggest you not take any article written by Charlie seriously until it's been confirmed (not just repeated, as often happens) elsewhere.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, but a lot of people show devotion to their notebook computer manufacturers, who hardwire these chips onto the mobos.
Like, say, the Apple MacBook Pro and its nVidia GeForce 8600M GT [lowendmac.com], for instance.
Charlie Demerjian (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, this guy is to NVIDIA as Jack Thompson is to video games. It's just not as common knowledge that you shouldn't take him seriously.
Re:Charlie Demerjian (Score:5, Funny)
Could someone explain just what exactly the chip on his shoulder is?
Did a nvidia graphics card molest him as a child?
Parent
Re:Charlie Demerjian (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago (like 5 years or something) he got some official info from NV and then turned around and leaked it. In response NV stopped having any official contact with the Inq, Charlie specifically. Charlie took this personally or something and has been on a vendetta against NV ever since.
Parent
a workaround solution (Score:4, Funny)
buy ati.
Lead-based solders 3 years after RoHS deadline? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is NVidia using lead-based solders at this late date? The European RoHS deadline for lead-free components was back in 2005. The NForce and 8800 parts were RoHS compliant years ago. Are these NVidia parts even exportable to Europe?
Re:Lead-based solders 3 years after RoHS deadline? (Score:5, Informative)
I would say it's because lead-based solder actually works properly, but according to this story that doesn't seem likely to be their motivation.
Parent
Re:Lead-based solders 3 years after RoHS deadline? (Score:4, Informative)
rohs has exceptions for very fine pitch stuff iirc.
Parent
Re:Lead-based solders 3 years after RoHS deadline? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes there is an exception in RoHS for lead solder that has a high melting point. However, the official RoHS rule is that while lead solders in general are prohibited, there is an exception allowing for the use of lead solder that contains at least 90% lead. The idea being that solder with at least 90% lead melted at a higher temperature and was at least somewhat safer if disposed of improperly. Otherwise, potentially there may also have been no replacements for high lead content solders that performed as well when the first RoHS directives were drawn up in 2003. Currently (2008), however, there are lead-free solders that would work, but the lead free solders are more expensive than lead based solders (by roughly three times). Using a lead-free solder with a significantly different composition may also require a new packaging design and another extensive round of qualification, too. I am not totally sure how this would be done.
It get worse, the new solder to be used by nVidia mentioned in this Inq article states that it will only contain 63% lead and 37% tin, making nVidia based cards with this solder not saleable to consumers in the EU according to RoHS directives. The replacement 63Pb/37Sn solder has a somewhat better tensile strength and a lower coefficient of thermal expansion than the older 95Pb/5Sn solder, which may be why nVidia chose this route to fix the problem. Whether nV will be selling very many products in the EU with this fix and whether this will correct the problems, is another issue.
Parent
Inq? I'll believe when there's more proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the Inquirer is such a steady and accurate news source.
I'll believe this when I see more proof.
Did they hire people from Weitek? (Score:5, Insightful)
To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts.
This sounds very similar to what finally took down Weitek, back when there were a bunch of graphics chip companies competing hotly and being shaken out if they screwed up.
Weitek had built a very fast and powerful chip. But they had goofed: While it had the mandatory basic VGA mode for acquiring the Microsoft certification, there was a bug in it.
QA told management that the bug was there and would fail them. But Software told them a driver could work around it and people would want the chip because it was so fast on graphics rendering. (Of course it could not - because to get the cert it had to work with the stock bootstrap stuff, before a custom driver could be loaded.)
So they went to production with the bug. And the customers got their prototypes, found the bug, and demanded a fix. Eventually they did a fixed version - but had maybe a couple million of the buggy ones on hand and wouldn't sell the fixed ones unless the customer bought some buggy ones, too. So nobody bought and the company folded.
It's not too hard to overstate... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is hard to overstate how bad this is.
This will end all life on earth.
That wasn't hard.
Sheesh, is it such a big deal? (Score:3, Informative)
The Intel 486SX was a defective 486DX who's numeric processor was dead or not working.
Most very very large scale integrated chips have defects. Depending on the nature of the defect, they simply categorize the part differently.
A chip is not fast enough for a high speed gaming system? Us it in an embedded device.
Buy it, if it fails, return it. Just because nVidia has issues you know about, don't think for an instant that ATI doesn't.
What a bizzare article... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am neither an NVidia or ATI fanboy (heck, my current GPU is an integrated Intel), but this article is a steaming pile of crap.
Somehow, he takes a report of a routine running change to the production process (a new kind of solder), and magically turns this into some wild tale of how NVidia is shipping thousands of defective parts that will remain in the field.
Completely lacking is how he corresponds the running change to some defect...
SirWired
A wolf! A wolf! (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA, nVidia is changing from high lead to eutectic (tin) solder - for RoHS compliance - and has issues a PCN to that effect. Charlie has latched onto this as "proof" of his claim that all nVidia chips are faulty and overheat.
What Charlie doesn't explain is how switching from high-lead solder (5/95 Sn/Pb) to eutectic solder (63/37 Sn/Pb) - which has the lowest melting point of all tin-lead solders - is supposed to help if the chips are overheating. Nor does he explain how changing the solder material has any relationship to changing the underfill material on some mobile chips (other than they were both PCNs.) But hey, why let facts get in the way of a conspiracy theory/page hits?
Re:8800 and the 9600... Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
IMNSHO, the quality control at both companies has been terrible for several years now. What's the point of paying a premium for a good graphics card, if hardware problems make your system unstable as soon as a demanding game is loaded or the drivers take out your operating system at random intervals? It's not like this has happened only on bleeding edge cards with new drivers, either: several entire models have had basic incompatibilities with other common system components, and sometimes drivers have been unacceptably poor for the entire useful lifetime of a gamer's card.
Contrary to the marketroid reports, it is not in any way unavoidable that new cards with new drivers have to crash a significant fraction of the hottest games at release time. It's not like these kinds of problems are subtle and might be missed during a decent period of testing, and it's not like the card vendors couldn't co-operate with the game vendors on a beta test programme. This happens because commercially, it makes more sense for them to race to market with inadequately tested hardware and poorly engineered driver software and hope they can patch up any widespread problems later with a minimal PR hit. As long as both the big names are as bad as each other, consumers in the target market are pretty much screwed anyway.
It's about time something like this happened and one of the companies took a major financial hit as a consequence. Perhaps then we'll move back towards supplying hardware and drivers that actually, you know, work. Gamers the world over (other than those currently suffering from these problems, of course) should probably be happy about this, because it might be serious enough this time to make a difference to future quality control, which is much better than a significant fraction of people being disappointed with each new model but never enough of a critical mass to really punish the company that supplied substandard kit.
Parent
Re:8800 and the 9600... Ouch. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you are just most likely American. The problem for you guys is as a customer you have next to no rights, very limited warranties removes the need to make proper products.
In EU however, most places now require 2 year warranty, that means all the good hardware is being shipped here because they don't want to be stuck with a customers problem 1,5 years down the road.
Parent
Re:Learning from the meat packing industry (Score:4, Informative)
WRT to beef though, salmonella poisoning by beef is almost completely unheard of - chicken yes, beef no. Where this whack job got his numbers from is anyone's guess but they are wrong.
Parent