[TriLUG] Customer service stinks

[Mike M]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 03:07:00PM -0500, Magnus Hedemark wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Mike M wrote:
> 
> > It's got a Realtek (realcrap) 8139 embedded on the mobo so I'm
> > not suprised there's problems.
> 
> Just to cast a differing opinion on this, I've got a bunch of the Realtek 
> 8139 adapters deployed and they have been nothing but dependable for me.  
> Eyeballing my almost empty box lot, I would guess I've got about 23 
> deployed now.
> 
> You may very well have a bad NIC or system board, but I don't see how 
> Realtek deserves this slam in light of just one problemed unit.

Just wait till you have 1000 rtl8139.  I think I know the point you're
trying to make.  I have PCI rtl8139s too and once they burn in they
are OK despite their CPU cycle stealing crap design.  But the
crap design doesn't really matter on a workstaion. I don't think you
want to use them on a high bandwidth router app though.

I was disappointed to have paid $1200 for a laptop and have a realtek
NIC.  A 3Com or Intel NIC would have instilled more confidence.

If I crapped out a $7 rtl8139 PCI card I wouldn't be ranting.  Crapping
out a laptop mobo and having the mfr give me grief is unacceptable. If
you pay 1200 for a computer these days, there better be a high quality
NIC on board.  It seems that if Toshiba is going to use a crap NIC
then they shouldn't put up such a fight to fix the thing when it fails.

Maybe my expectations are too high?  Maybe the Digitz folks will fix it
and the NIC will never fail again?  I'm ranting so it might
pop on a search for Toshiba A35-S159 and rtl8139.  I wish I'd bought a used laptop
so my expectations were lower.
-- 
Mike

Two hundred years ago, we note mischievously, the average American or 
European had a standard of living not very much superior to that of the
average man in India or China. -- dailyreckoning.com