MPC Computers Shutting Down

davidphogan74 writes "MPC Computers (formerly Micron's computer division) notified the Idaho Department of Labor in a letter on 12/29/2008 that it would terminate its remaining employees. The company had been operating under the protection of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy since November, after it laid off 200 employees in October. MPC said 147 employees would be terminated immediately and 51 would be retained while the company liquidates its assets. Last year, MPC bought the professional business unit of PC company Gateway, which itself had been bought by Acer earlier that year. MPC had sold business technology hardware to mid-sized business, government agencies, and education organizations since 1991."

Micron Quality

[DaMattster]

Micron made some bullet proof laptops. About five years ago, when I worked as a civilian for the Department of the Navy, they gave me one bangin' Micron laptop. My friend had a Micron full tower back in college and the thing was bullet proof. It ran Linux flawlessly. In fact, I was going to purchase one because they are clearly superior to Dell but I they were out of my price range at the time. I guess everyone is now looking at their bottom dollar so quality has lessened. Still a shame, but people would rather pay less than a small amount more. In the three years that I had that laptop, I put it through hell and never once did its hardware fail. It survived rough handling and, an embarrasing slip out of my hand.

Expected this, did a few of the warrenty repairs

[WarlockD]

Unisys had a contract to do MPC computers. I think it was a hold over from the "oh fuck the customer is MAD, send a tech out there!" contract we had with gateway before they bought them.

There was one case where they sent motherboard after motherboard. (5 in total) to a gateway customer. Looked like someone in shipping kept substituting the wrong board. Though how you could substitute an ATA interface laptop board with with a SATA interface and expect it to work is beyond me.

But that was their laptops, there servers were very solid and support was GREAT. Always got on the phone with an experienced techs. I just think they shouldn't of bought the Gateway stuff.

MPC didn't have a big foot print though. Its hard to be the little guy in a bit Dell/HP world. Hate to see them go.

MPC's Downfall Makes Me Smile

[quangdog]

I, for one, happen to be rather pleased that MPC bit the dust: We hired one of their former employees back in November, and he has proven to be a great addition to our (currently growing, amazingly) company.

Re:This Explains Things

[snspdaarf]

It could be worse. The salesman for MAD Computer sold us a bunch of systems after the company had shut down. He didn't tell anyone, just continued to sell product on hand.

Gateway was the death of them

[citking]

We used MPC in a higher-ed setting quite consistently over Dell since they had better deals, more configuration options, and USA tech support.

Once they purchased Gateway however the service was horrible. Installing XP on a RAID-enabled SATA controller required the RAID drivers which Gateway/MPC techs refused to send to us. It took 10 minutes for them to find the system in the database and over an hour for one of their techs to scour their website for the proper driver.

MPC's only original 2 flaws were their oddly-interfaced website and their billing. You know how you get configuration errors if you have more cards than PCI slots? Well, their "default" configurations would always have a configuration error right off the bat. Things like that, plus poorly-updated tracking info made it useless.

And then their billing...I moved to a different department and therefore had a new purchasing card issued to me (and the old one canceled). 3 Months after a PC purchase I received a threatening e-mail from their accounts Receivable stating that the payment on the system was denied and that we'd better pay up now or go to court. A quick e-mail and a call with the new card number resolved things quickly, but waiting 3 months to bill for a system is a little odd.

MPC had a good thing going right up to that point (for the most part anyhow). The Gateway curse continues.

Yup, cheap

[Tau Neutrino]

And that's why Apple is doing so well. Oh, wait...

Re:MPC's Downfall Makes Me Smile

[ChrisGilliard]

This is one reason the computer industry really helps keep the employment numbers high. Unlike the auto industry, employees can much more easily go to a new company and contribute right off the bat. So, when you read about these kind of layoffs just think that it's a good thing because the employees will end up at a place that is setup better in order for them to succeed.

Not bad product, but really bad service

[michael_allison]

We purchased some Gateway M275 tablets a couple of years ago and were pretty happy with them, but then MPC took over the business from Gateway and everything went down hill...the service we received was terrible and when we were looking at new tablets earlier this year, we were promised a lot by MPC and they didn't deliver on any of it. We had an order placed with them in August and they choose not to tell us they were out of business until two weeks ago...

My recollections of Micron

[AmericanGladiator]

I worked for Micron for a while. It has a somewhat confusing history. I was there in the mid-late 90's when it was called Micron Electronics. It was tethered to Micron Tech at that time (the memory maker). Micron Tech in hindsight did well to spin off Micron Electronics (MPC) in 2001.

Micron Electronics had previously acquired ZEOS computers along with a small groups of engineers from a little town in Minnesota that had expertise in chip design, specifically north bridge chips. It was these engineers that I worked with.

It was no secret that their strategy was to create performance/gaming PCs. They did that by going up against the Intels, VIAs, and SiSs in creating the fastest northbridge ICs for a given CPU. They also designed their own motherboards and extended the commercially-obtained BIOS to take advantage of features in their chipsets.

Even though they were based in Nampa, Idaho, they had significant operations in Minnesota (in fact all design was in Roseville, MN). Nampa had a larger workforce, but it was primarily production.

I'm somewhat sad that they folded, though I'll admit I haven't followed them for a while. My thoughts are that Dell/Alienware and the DIY market took away the high-end customers. Micron (Electronics) attempted to get into servers with the purchase of NetFrame in the 1997 timeframe. I don't think they ever got any real traction with those products, though.

R.I.P. ZEOS/Micron Electronics/Micron PC

Their tech support sucked

[Nimey]

I work in higher education. We've had a few MPC-Gateways (my area is mainly Dell, thank goodness, but other techs are not so lucky), and nearly every time we've needed support on a Gateway box, it's been terrible. I've had an incompatible drive sent to me, twice. They have refused to send me restore DVDs for in-warranty machines, when the restore partition failed[1]. It can be difficult to find the correct drivers on their website.

And now, we've got this then-expensive 22" widescreen monitor that went bad a couple months ago and is putatively still under warranty. Except now that they are bankrupt and dissolving, there is no warranty. We've got the money that he already bought a replacement, but that's a regular burr beneath my saddle that we paid for something which we'll never get.

[1] A problem because of said machines needing XP Tablet Edition, and us not having a site license nor media for that version.

Re:RIP Micron

[black6host]

Maybe. For me, the appeal was a rock solid office machine. I still have a Pentium II server I put in place for a business about 10 years ago, running Novell 3.1. They got over 7 years of service from that machine without issue. Sure, had to replace a hard drive but that's to be expected. I booted it up about a month ago to retrieve some data from it and it still runs just fine. They also got 5-7 years out of the desktops. The only reason they were retired is that technology had just progressed so much and Novell didn't have the applications that Windows offered at the server level. I still have these businesses as my clients, in part because I put in solid equipment that lasted for as long as they wanted it. I'm sorry to see Micron go....