Why Lying About Storage Products Is Bad: An IBM DeskStar Story(extremetech.com)
extremetech.com
Why Lying About Storage Products Is Bad: An IBM DeskStar Story
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326292-why-lying-about-storage-products-is-bad-an-ibm-deskstar-story
2 comments
I mean joycons are cheap and replaceable wear items. If your joycon drifts you just replace it for 50$ or whatever
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not?
$50 is a lot of money to replace a worn-down springy thing, and if you replace it promptly that could easily be $200 a year on joycons.
$50 is a lot of money to replace a worn-down springy thing, and if you replace it promptly that could easily be $200 a year on joycons.
anecdote: I was working IT Support in academia when the IBM DeathStar thing was happening. We'd buy computers in batches each summer on a rolling replacement program, and one generation came in with what were, I found out later, rebranded DeathStars.
Within about 6 months most teachers, even the very non-technical ones had heard about the tick of death, and could even recognise and warn us well enough in advance that we could swap out the drives on the affected machines. The manufacturer that sold us them made sure we had a pool of replacement hard drives on hand, once it proved to be a major issue. I believe in the end we'd replaced roughly half of the hard disks over the space of the first two years of life.
Both IBM and the other company entered my shit list after that one, though in the process of writing this note I realise I've forgotten the name of the rebranding company.
Within about 6 months most teachers, even the very non-technical ones had heard about the tick of death, and could even recognise and warn us well enough in advance that we could swap out the drives on the affected machines. The manufacturer that sold us them made sure we had a pool of replacement hard drives on hand, once it proved to be a major issue. I believe in the end we'd replaced roughly half of the hard disks over the space of the first two years of life.
Both IBM and the other company entered my shit list after that one, though in the process of writing this note I realise I've forgotten the name of the rebranding company.
It was Hitachi (HGST). Now part of Western Digital.
I knew it wasn't Hitachi, but you prompted me to go search for it. Ended up finding them via wikipedia under a "defunct manufacturers" list, though it notes they're not defunct, just left the business: ExcelStor.
Perhaps it is because of the fact that the result of failure (minor to major annoyances depending on the game before being forced to eventually replace the controller) is not so nearly as catastrophic as total data loss that Nintendo has been able to skate by as long as it has. But the reactions outlined by IBM 25 years ago outlined in the article are eerily reminiscent of the actions of today’s Nintendo.