In the early '90's, Dell, Compaq, Packard-Bell, and Gateway had a good thing going. Then Packard-Bell showed the industry how to cut corners and, in doing so, trashed their product, their service, their reputation, and finally their company. Gateway followed suit, but was able to keep from killing the company -- just barely.

In the late '90's, Compaq jumped on the boat and sailed off into the computer world's version of the Bermuda Triangle, where quality mysteriously disappears! I had hoped the HP/Compaq merger would raise Compaq out of the mire but, alas, it only dragged HP down into the "crapola".

Now Dell has begun the descent into purgatory, first with service and support issues and, sadly, now with hardware and quality control issues.

What is a OEM and VAR going to do? In the early '90's, I used to recommend Compaq, Gateway, and HP. In the late 90's I would recommend HP and IBM, or a custom built system. In the early '00's I would recommend IBM, Sony, and Dell or a custom built system. For the record, I would never recommend e-Machines or Toshiba.

Today? Who knows! For PCs, I still go with Dell because from a price/performance ratio, they still have the best bang for the buck. I can't even build a custom system as good as Dell for the price. And, with most of my clients, price matters. For printers, I now choose Epson or Canon over HP and Lexmark, due to quality, pricing, and support issues. Personally, after 10 years, I just - this month - switched from an HP to an Epson printer (all-in-one unit). I got tired of the hassles, expenses, and poor quality all the way around. Sad.

The forecast I make from my view from the quagmire is that within a year I'll simply recommend IBM and Sony laptops with Epson all-in-one printer-scanner-copier-fax devices with FireWire storage devices and USB 2.0 docking stations. No more desktops. No more CRTs. No more PS/2, serial, or parallel connectors. No more vendor tech support.

I recommend to my clients that they take the money they'd spend on an extended warranty and invest it in a "contract-for-hire" system administrator such as myself. Many hardware issues are more likely caused by spyware, malware, viruses, or the user's lack of knowledge on installation or operation. The few issues that are not are better handled by someone such as myself who has been dealing with the vendors for years and knows how to cut through the "red tape" (a euphemism for bull-pucky).

I only see heartache and pain for the end user until the industry wises up and gets consumer electronics on-par with other items such as cars or old fashioned TVs and radios. Our level of technology today allows us to make consumer electronic goods that can truly be "plug-and-play". Do we really need 12 different cables to hook up a DVD or Video recorder to our sound system? Do we really need to plug in the surround sound speaker cable into the correctly marked jacks? NO! We should be able to build a speaker that is marked as "Left-Rear", plug it into any of the dozen jacks on the back of the home theater system amplifier, and let the amplifier recognize the speaker because it identifies itself. We should be able to plug in a USB device into any USB port and not be greeted with a "finding new hardware" message after the first time installation on any other USB port.

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