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From: Digestifier <Linux-Misc-Request@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu
Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 94 13:13:22 EDT
Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #828
Linux-Misc Digest #828, Volume #2 Mon, 26 Sep 94 13:13:22 EDT
Contents:
PC HARDWARE VENDOR REVIEW: SW Technology (a.k.a. SW Trading Company) (Jonathan I. Kamens)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jik@cam.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems,misc.forsale.computers.pc-clone,comp.answers,misc.answers,news.answers
Subject: PC HARDWARE VENDOR REVIEW: SW Technology (a.k.a. SW Trading Company)
Date: 26 Sep 1994 12:23:19 -0400
Archive-name: pc-hardware-faq/vendor-reviews/swt
Posting-Frequency: quarterly
Version: $Id: swt-review,v 1.12 1994/09/26 16:22:19 jik Exp $
INTRODUCTION
This article details my dealings with a company doing business on the
net as SW Technology (although their checks say "SW Trading Company"),
referred to as "SWT" from here on. Their E-mail address is
swt@netcom.com; their phone number is 214-907-0871; and their address
is 251 West Renner Parkway, Suite 229, Richardson, TX 75080. All
dealings I had with SWT were through an employee named Marvin Wu (I
don't even know if there *are* any other employees in the company,
although Wu seemed to imply that there were).
ONE-LINE SUMMARY
Avoid this company.
THREE-PARAGRAPH SUMMARY
My experience with SWT is that although they don't seem to be
malevolent or intentionally dishonest, they are incompetent
technically and in their business dealings. They presented a
good-looking facade when I was negotiating with them to purchase
hardware, but my problems with them started on the day I sent them a
check and didn't end even when I returned the hardware and asked for a
refund. Although it seems to me that they tried to address my
complaints and make me happy with the system they sold me, there was
simply too much wrong with it from the start.
The net result of my dealings with SWT is that I've lost about $150
and learned a valuable lesson about not taking PC hardware vendors at
face value.
I strongly discourage anyone from doing business with this company.
THE WHOLE STORY
I set out in January 1994 to learn how to buy a PC-compatible computer
and then to go ahead and buy one. I planned to run Linux on it I sent
the specs of the system I was looking for to a number of different
hardware vendors, and got back a number of quotes and brochures. On
February 2, I posted an article to comp.os.linux.help, asking specific
questions about how the Pentium CPU, the PCI bus, and SCSI hard drives
and CD-ROMs would interact with Linux. One of the people who
responded to that posting was Marvin Wu, with the return address
swt@netcom.com.
On February 7, I sent an E-mail message to all of the people who had
responded to my posting in comp.os.linux.help, including
swt@netcom.com, with an outline of all the issues I was considering
and what conclusions I had (tentatively) reached.
Marvin Wu responded on the same day, suggesting that I consider
purchasing one of SWT's systems, which would meet my specifications
and come pre-installed with Linux as well. We corresponded about his
bid for about a week, and I sent him a check (after FAXing him a copy
of it as proof of acceptance, so that SWT could begin assembling my
system immediately) on February 16. I paid $4949 (a good price for
what I was getting, compared to the bids I'd gotten from other
vendors), plus $95 for shipping and insurance, for the system. The
entire purchase agreement, including all the specifications, is given
in Appendix A at the end of this article.
This is where the problems started. I will first list the problems I
had with SWT's business dealings (the problems that I consider most
significant are marked with three asterisks instead of one):
* Every mail message I sent to SWT before placing my order was
answered within one business day. Since placing my order, I have on
numerous occasions waited over a week for responses to my messages.
Other messages haven't been answered at all. When pressed on this,
Wu claimed that problems with SWT's service provider were making
mail unreliable, and that since multiple people read the
swt@netcom.com E-mail account, some messages might have been lost.
Frankly, I have a hard time believing either of these claims, and
besides, they don't justify the delays.
*** Wu told me on February 15, before I placed my order, "... it'll
take 5 five [sic] working days after a firm order to ship the
system." I placed my order on February 16, but my system did not
arrive until March 16. Even assuming a full week for ground
shipping from Texas to Massachusetts, I should have had the system
by March 2; instead, it arrived two weeks later than that. At no
time did Wu send me E-mail informing me that shipment had been
delayed; I found out about delays only through repeated E-mail
messages asking why the system hadn't arrived yet.
The causes of the delay in shipping my system were known to SWT
before I agreed to purchase from them, but they still told me that
it would be shipped five days after an order was placed.
* When SWT finally shipped my system, Wu gave me a UPS tracking number
over the telephone (I called him because I'd received no response to
a week of E-mail asking whether the system had been shipped), after
flipping through papers for several minutes, with me waiting (and
paying long-distance charges), looking for it. I called UPS to
check on the status of the system, and they said the tracking number
I had was invalid. Wu subsequently gave me the correct tracking
number in E-mail.
* Wu told me that the machine was shipping on a Monday, and that the
shipping company used by SWT introduced a one-day delay before UPS
actually got the shipment (so that UPS would get the shipment on
Tuesday). However, when I called UPS, they said that they didn't
get anything until Thursday.
* After I received the system and discovered that some manuals were
missing (see below), Wu told me that he'd send one of them to me on
March 17, but I didn't get it until a month after that.
*** When I finally gave up and decided to return the machine, both
because of the technical problems with it and because of poor
responsiveness from SWT, SWT agreed to reimburse me for only the
cost of the machine and half the cost of my shipping it back to
them. Legally, they were entitled to do that; however, given that
the machine never worked properly since the day I got it, I believe
they should have reimbursed me for all shipping costs, both what I
paid for the machine to be shipped to me originally and what I paid
for shipping it back to them.
*** The refund check that SWT issued bounced, i.e., their bank
returned it because there were insufficient funds in their account
to cover it, and my bank charged me $4 for depositing a bad check.
I called Wu on the phone and asked for an explanation. He told me
that he was out of town and therefore wasn't around to make sure
there was enough money in SWT's checking account (why someone in a
stable business would need to be present in order to ensure that an
already-written check would clear is beyond me). He told me to
redeposit the check when my bank returned it, and then send him
E-mail letting him know it had been deposited, so that he could make
sure there was enough money in the account to cover it.
I got the check back on July 16, and I redeposited it on July 18.
It appears to have cleared the second time. I've sent E-mail to SWT
(three times) asking if they're going to reimburse me for the $4
bad-check charge, but I haven't yet received a response (it has been
more than a week since I first asked them about it).
The machine I purchased had the following significant technical
problems (I'm omitting some of the trivial ones):
* The Linux LILO message configured into the system was incorrect --
it mentioned booting DOS even though DOS wasn't installed on the
machine.
* Although the purchase agreement promised complete documentation,
there was no documentation at all about unpacking and setting up the
system. There was also no documentation about the various plugs in
the back of the machine, nor was there a list of Linux device names
corresponding to installed hardware (e.g., I had no idea what device
my tape drive was installed on). Furthermore, the manual for one of
the cards in the system (the Seagate SCSI card) and for the tape
drive were missing.
* The CD-ROM drive included with my system had some minor problems
interacting with Linux (e.g., "workman" wouldn't start up unless a
CD was already in the drive). These problems were not mentioned to
me before I purchased the system; I was assured that the drive was
fully compatible with Linux.
* The video board included with my system had problems interacting
with Xfree86; in particular, font restoration bugs in the Xfree86
support made it impossible to use virtual consoles while using X,
and made font restoration when shutting down X fail occasionally.
These problems were not mentioned to me before I purchased the
system, although SWT was aware of them.
* There were a number of minor errors in the installation of software
on the system. For example, a number of X programs were installed
without app-defaults files, and there were several errors in the
default user dotfiles.
* The mouse I was sold came with drivers on a 5.25" floppy, despite
the fact that I purchased only a 3.5" floppy drive with the system.
The documentation that came with the mouse claimed that it was
possible to purchase it with a 3.5" floppy too, so I obviously
should have received the 3.5" floppy rather than the 5.25" one.
*** The CPU fan installed with the system could not adequately cool a
66MHz Pentium processor. As a result, the system regularly
overheated and behaved erratically or hung. For example, the first
attempt to compile a source file with gcc would fail with a weird
assembler error, but the second attempt to compile the same file
with the same command would succeed.
Wu told me before I agreed to purchase from SWT that my system would
undergo "a thorough test for at least 72 hours" before being shipped
to me. However, I find it impossible to believe that any sort of
"thorough test" was done and did not detect this problem; until I
installed early in April a new fan sent to me by SWT (more
accurately, I used the heat sink compound that came with the new fan
to improve the heat conductivity between the CPU and the *old* fan,
which rested much more snugly against the CPU than the new one), the
system never went through more than a couple hours of active use
without behaving in some obviously erratic way or hanging
completely.
*** Even after the new CPU fan was installed, the machine continued to
hang regularly. It turns out that the power supply installed in the
system by SWT was not sufficient for all of the components in it,
and SWT had to send me a new power supply (which arrived April 16,
and which I had to install myself).
Again, I can't imagine how my system could have undergone "a
thorough test for at least 72 hours" and never failed because of the
inadequate power supply.
Furthermore, I can't imagine how, short of incompetence, a company
could sell a system without bothering to add up the wattages of all
its components and making sure to include a power supply capable of
driving all of them.
*** Even after the CPU fan had heat sink compound added to it and the
power supply was replaced, the machine continued to hang for no
determinable reason. The hanging happened less frequently for a
short time after the power supply was replaced, and then came back
with a vengeance.
* My purchase agreement explicitly stated that the source code for all
programs installed on the system would come pre-installed on the
hard drive. It did not. SWT eventually sent me a CD-ROM containing
source code, but that wasn't until over a month after the system
arrived.
*** When I opened up the CPU box to check that all the boards were
seated properly, I found what looked like a piece of a cable
connector of some sort sitting on the bottom of my CPU case. I
asked SWT what it was, and they told me to mail it to them in an
envelope so they could figure it out. It turns out that it was a
piece of the SCSI terminator for my tape drive, which broke off when
they were assembling the system and which they didn't bother to fix
because the tape drive was in the middle of the SCSI chain rather
than on the end.
*** The keyboard (or perhaps the keyboard hardware on the motherboard)
of my system was incapable of generating the key sequence
Alt-Shift-> and a number of other key sequences. When any of those
sequences was pressed, the LEDs on the keyboard would all blink and
the computer wouldn't think any keys had been pressed. This
occurred both in console and X modes, and even under a DOS hardware
diagnostics program that SWT sent me to test the system with.
I made clear to Wu repeatedly that this problem was not specific to
one particular application (he kept on insisting that it was an X
program or an X Emacs problem or a curses problem). He apparently
never attempted to duplicate the problem on a machine with the same
configuration in SWT's shop.
His solution to this was to ship me a "new keyboard," by which I
thought he meant a different kind of keyboard that wouldn't have
this problem. In fact, all he did was ship me another instance of
the same model keyboard I already had, and it had the same problem
(which I fully expected).
In the end, he said that the new motherboard he wanted me to install
to replace mine might solve this problem, but we'll never know,
because I returned the system before then.
*** When the system was shipped to me, Wu told me that the 16Mb of RAM
I asked for would be in the form of two 8Mb SIMMs instead of one
16Mb SIMM, because they didn't have any 16Mb SIMMs in stock. I
asked if he would be willing to exchange the 8Mb SIMMs for one 16Mb
system when he got them in stock, so that I'd have more room for
future expansion, and he said OK.
However, later investigation revealed that the motherboard required
SIMMs to be installed two at a time, which meant that a single 16Mb
SIMM would never have worked in my system.
Wu should not have told me that such an exchange would be possible
if a single 16Mb SIMM would never have worked in my system.
*** The PCI chipset on the motherboard included with my machine was
outdated and had known bugs. I asked before agreeing to purchase
the system, "Does your PCI chipset avoid the problems with early
chipsets I've been hearing about?" Wu responded, "Yes, this [sic]
the newest Intel Saturn chip." What he did *not* bother to tell me
was that all the Saturn chipsets had known cache bugs, and that the
newest available chipset at that time was the Mercury II, not the
Saturn.
From the day I received the machine until the day I returned it, it
was never in proper working order. It should never have been shipped
to me in the state in which it was shipped. I wasted hours and hours
trying to diagnose problems, recovering from hardware failures, and
installing new hardware sent to me by SWT, and I still never ended up
with a fully working machine.
RESPONSE FROM SWT TO MY COMPLAINTS
I E-mailed to SWT a preliminary revision of this review on July 17,
1994 and offered them a chance to respond to the claims made in it.
They never responded.
Others who were interested in purchasing hardware from SWT and who
have seen this review asked SWT to respond to the complaints raised in
it. One such response from Marvin Wu, which was forwarded to me by
its recipient, contained what I consider to be lies. Here's what he
wrote, with my comments interspersed in it:
> We have two unsatisfied customers so far, Jonathan Kamens being
> one. He had the machine for three months, without paying anything
> except part of the shipping.
That's sort of true, with the exceptions that (a) "part of the
shipping" came to over $100, (b) he mentioned nothing about the
bounced refund check, (c) he mentioned nothing about the $4
check-bouncing charge which SWT never paid me back for (they never
even acknowledged my mail about it), and (d) the system didn't work
properly, and I spent much time trying to get it to work properly, for
the entire time I had it.
> The probelm of the machine was
> mostly due to the Seagate scsi driver, as we've sold many
> identical systems with other SCSI adaptors doesn't have any
> problem at all. This is solved now by the NCR53C810 driver.
I think that's a lie.
Many people are using the Seagate SCSI driver. I simply don't believe
that it caused significant problems with my system. None of the
problems I experienced seem to me to be directly or indirectly
attributable to problems with a SCSI driver.
If the problem with my machine was "mostly due to the Seagate scsi
driver," then why did SWT send me replacements for the CPU cooling fan
and power supply on my system, and why did most of the problems I was
experiencing go away after making those replacements?
During the entire time I was working with SWT to get the machine
working, Mr. Wu never said a word to me about the Seagate SCSI driver
causing most of my problems. Once, shortly after the machine arrived,
he mentioned in passing that the Seagate card might be causing
problems, but he never mentioned it again, and nothing that happened
subsequently supported that possibility. He also didn't mention
anything about the Seagate driver when I sent him my review of SWT and
asked him for comments before posting it.
Why did he never say anything about the Seagate SCSI card being a
problem before I returned the machine? And if they discovered *after*
I returned the machine that it's what was causing the problem, why
didn't they tell me so and offer to send back the machine with another
controller?
Incidentally, I didn't ask for the Seagate SCSI controller; they
offered it to me; that particular controller was their choice, not
mine. Presumably, if they were going to pick a controller to sell me
without any preference on my part, they would have picked one that
they sell regularly. And if that's the case, then how come none of
their other systems with that controller had any trouble?
BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU COMPLAINT AGAINST SWT
On July 25, 1994, I filed a complaint about SWT with the Better
Business Bureau for the greater Dallas area, asking for reimbursement
for all my shipping costs, reimbursement for my bank's bad-check
charge, and an admission of fault from SWT.
The BBB forwarded my complaint to SWT on July 29, 1994 and asked for a
response. As of August 22, they had received no response, so they
sent a followup letter with another copy of the complaint. They again
received no response, so on September 8, they closed the complaint
without resolution.
As of September 26, their automated complaint information system had
no information about the company. I spoke to a representative and
asked why, and she said that they don't actually tell anyone that
there are complaints against a company until "enough" people complain.
I asked what "enough" means, and she said that it varies.
Therefore, if you've had trouble with SWT, and they did not resolve
your complaint to your satisfaction, I encourage you to file a
complaint with the Better Business Bureau. You can get a complaint
form by calling 214-220-2000 or by writing to Better Business Bureau
of Metropolitan Dallas, Inc., 2001 Bryan Street, Suite 850, Dallas, TX
75201.
IN CLOSING
I intend to post this review regularly in relevant newsgroups until
someone gives me reason to believe that SWT has either improved
considerably or gone out of business.
I have retained all E-mail correspondence between SWT and me. If
you'd like to know more about my encounter with them, I'd be glad to
answer questions or to forward you copies of our correspondence.
Please contact me by E-mail.
--
Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@cam.ov.com
*************************
APPENDIX A: SWT PURCHASE AGREEMENT
SW Technology, as represented and guaranteed by Marvin Y. Wu, agrees
to sell a computer system to Jonathan I. Kamens, 175 Freeman Street,
Apartment 123, Brookline, MA 02146-3510, that is subject to the following
configuration, price and warranty policy.
The system consists of the following hardware and software components:
- Intel Pentium 66Mhz CPU
- Asus I-P5MP3 PCI motherboard, 3 PCI bus slots
- 256k cache upgradeable to 512k
- AWARD BIOS
- Intel Saturn PCI chipset
- 16 mb ram, upgradeable to 192 mb on board
- PCI bus S3 805 video card with 2mb ram, 1280x1024 256 colors
Supported by Linux/XFree86-2.0
- Viewsonic 15" monitor, .28mm, 1024x768NI@76Hz, flat, full screen
- Asus PCI bus SCSI II controller with NCR53C810 chip (supported
by Linux soon)
- Seagate ST02 SCSI card (supported by Linux).
- Fujitsu M2694ESA SCSI II drive, 1080mb, 10ms, 5400RPM, 246k buffer
- Conner Python 2GB 4MM SCSI DAT, 11mb/m
- Teac 1.44 floppy drive [note We now use Teac, which is the
best in the industry]
- Mitsumi FX001D double speed CD-ROM drive with driver,
software, 250ms, MPC II, multi-session PhotoCD (supported by Linux)
- Kouwell high speed IO card, 2 serial w/ 16550A uart, 1 bi-directional
parallel with buffer and 1 game port
- Large case with 230 WATT power supply, and three half height
drive bays that are free to add more drives.
- 3 button mouse with switch, X Window Systems compatible, Microsoft
mouse compatible
- 101 keyboard
- Linux, X and LILO installed and configured
properly. Latest public released Linux kernel, full distribution
of Linux utilities. DOSemulator and X windows configured to fit the
hardware for optimal performance
- The linux distribution contains the Slackware 1.1.2 distribution,
plus Xfig and Fig suite, Pbmplus suite, Gnuplot, Xpaint, Calentool,
Ingres the relational database system, and
a user home directory that contains extensive dot files.
- The hard drive will be partitioned in the following way:
one swap partition of 10mb, and four other partition that are
of equal sizes. Two of these partitions will be used for the
root filesystem and sources files, while the other two will
remain empty.[ Note: the actual partition table will have
six partitions, one of which is an extended partition that
will hold one or more useable partitions. This is because
Linux can have up to four primary partitions, and if we
want more than four partitions we have to use extended
partition. Please let me whether you'd like to do this
way. Or three filesystem partition is ok to you? I do
think you still need a swap partion of at least 8mb].
- Manuals for the system, the system components and "Linux,
Installation and Getting Started Guide"
- Two year parts and labor warranty (including monitor).
Please refer to the SW Technology Limited Warranty for details
of the terms of warranty.
30 day money back guarantee. If the buyer is not satisfied
with the system, he can return the system for refund, credit
and exchange within 30 days of the original delivery date.
Life time expert technical support, through telephone,
email or mail.
Price US $4949 + $95 shipping and insurance. Price reflects
a discount of 2.5% for check/money oder/cash.
Check payable to: SW Technology
251 West Renner Suite 229
Richardson, TX 75080
The buyer has the option to return the Seagate ST01 SCSI card
for a refund of US $29.00 when Linux supports the NCR SCSI II
card in the system.
The terms of warranty follows:
SW Technology Limited Warranty
SW Technology (SWT) warrants that SWT computer system
will be free from defects in workmanship and materials for a period of
two years from the date of original purchase.
Should your SWT computer system, or certain parts of the system,
prove defective during this period, please ship the product securely
packaged along with proof of the date of
original purchase, to SWT. SWT will, at its option, repair or replace
on an exchange basis the defective unit, without charge for parts, labor
or the return shipment.
This warranty covers only normal consumer use. SWT is
not responsible for warranty service should the SWT label or rating label
or serial number be removed or should the product fail to be properly
maintained or fail to function properly as a result of misuse, abuse,
improper installation, neglect, improper shipping, damage caused by disasters
such as fire, flood, and lightning, improper electrical current, or service
other than by SWT. Postage, insurance, or shipping costs incurred in
presenting your SWT computer system for warranty service are your
responsibility. If a claimed defect cannot be identified or reproduced in
service, you will be held responsible for costs incurred.\\
The warranty and remedy provided above are exclusive and in lieu of all
other express warranties and unless stated herein, any statements or
representations made by any other person or firm are void. The duration
of any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular
purpose on your SWT computer system shall be limited to the duration
of the express warranty set forth above. Except as provided in this
written warranty, SWT shall not be liable for any loss, inconvenience, or
damages, including direct, special, incidental, or consequential damages,
resulting from the use or inability to use the SWT computer system, whether
resulting from breach of warranty or any other legal theory.
------------------------------
** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **
The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:
Internet: Linux-Misc-Request@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU
You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.misc) via:
Internet: Linux-Misc@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU
Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
nic.funet.fi pub/OS/Linux
tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux
sunsite.unc.edu pub/Linux
End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
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