Event Summary
12/30/99
[ZDNet News]- At least 20 Compaq customers who purchased the Presario 5800 PCs
recently have reported inexplicable freezing of their PCs while surfing the
Web or playing games. The freeze forces users to shut down and reboot, sometimes
by pressing the machine's power button or unplugging it.
"It's a known problem and we've been proactive in addressing it," said Compaq
spokeswoman Hedy Baker. Compaq has responded in two ways: telling users the
problem is caused by limited system resources, and by issuing a "SoftPAQ", a
fix/patch designed to address this problem on certain Presario 5800 models.
However, as of January 4, 2000, some users are still experiencing problems,
even after following Compaq's directions.
Market
Impact
This
affects the consumer market more than the corporate market. Presarios are targeted
there, and presently hold a commanding 33% share in that segment. However, there
will be an overflow effect, i.e. adjacent products (e.g. DeskPro and Prosignia)
may find themselves under scrutiny for the same issue, even if there is no reason
to be concerned. In addition, Compaq's competitors will likely use this to maximize
their FUD-based (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) marketing/sales
efforts. It is likely that this problem would have been found with more rigorous
software/system testing by Compaq. This adds to the perception among some newsgroupies
that Compaq's system quality is not high enough.
The
secondary market effect will, at least in the short term, be on Advanced Micro
Devices (AMD). Although customers have apparently experienced this problem with
Celeron-based (Intel Corp CPU) machines, the bulk of the negative attention
has been focused on systems using CPUs made by AMD. Intel is aggressively cutting
prices and producing faster CPUs in an effort to kill Advanced Micro. AMD can
little afford to have any negative perceptions, whether deserved or not.
User
Recommendations
The Presario 5800 Series is geared for the consumer market. Even so, corporate
users planning to purchase a significant quantity of Presario 5800s (and possibly
5900s) should exercise caution. Even though the reported problems occurred primarily
during gaming (and we know gaming never happens on company time), buying systems
with a known defect/problem is not an advisable course of action. We suggest
these purchasers wait until Compaq proves/verifies that all the problems have
been solved. By "solved" we mean fixed, not a statement from Compaq akin to
"There's a known fix for that, and here is how it's done".
For the longer term, this incident is not a reason to stay away from Compaq.
However, users/purchasers should stay alert to see if similar issues occur six
to nine months from now (about the time it takes a new product to be released).
If they do, users will be justified in questioning Compaq on its commitment
to quality.