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Businesses The Almighty Buck

MPC Computers Shutting Down 137

Posted by kdawson from the 17-year-run dept.
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."
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MPC Computers Shutting Down More

MPC Computers Shutting Down

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  • RIP Micron (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @11:53AM (#26300209)

    Micron always made rock solid, good performing machines. They even had a high-tech name. Anyone know why they failed?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They only appealed to an elitist community.

      • Re:RIP Micron (Score:5, Funny)

        by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @01:01PM (#26300955)

        Apple is doing well.

        I Keed. I Keed, I love my MBP.

      • Re:RIP Micron (Score:5, Interesting)

        by black6host ( 469985 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @01:55PM (#26301745)

        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....

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by billcopc ( 196330 )

          It's not exactly difficult to build PCs that last. There's really just one component you have to not chintz on: the power supply. That's the one part that will fry your system if it's a no-name piece of garbage.

          The fact that other PC vendors' systems fail so often and so brutally is almost always the result of weak unfiltered power supplies and thermal stress. A scary number of brand names build their PCs to boot, not to last. I have seen so much dumb shit while repairing/upgrading even brand new machin

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Chysn ( 898420 )

      > Anyone know why they failed?

      You know what I blame this on the downfall of?

      Society.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:02PM (#26300309)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:RIP Micron (Score:5, Funny)

        by RulerOf ( 975607 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @01:12PM (#26301115)

        Oh, I bet it's George Bush fault too!

        Just like the lack of coffe in the machine this morning :/

        Indeed! Unfortunately, neither your coffee machine nor Micron qualified for bailout money. :(

        • Oh, I bet it's George Bush fault too!

          Just like the lack of coffe in the machine this morning :/

          Indeed! Unfortunately, neither your coffee machine nor Micron qualified for bailout money. :(

          Damn! I want Big IT bailed out! Send some of that money my way!

          Wait--unless that also includes Microsoft. Crap.

    • Re:RIP Micron (Score:4, Insightful)

      by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:15PM (#26300449)
      I am guessing price. "Cheap" is the only market that is really growing right now. You would see a bigger hit with HP and IBM if they hadn't already addicted everyone to services...

    • Who's micron?

    • I'll agree. I was a loyal customer for 15 years. Their support was absolutely top notch. I never had to wait more than 10 seconds when calling them and only once did I ever need to escalate a call beyond the first person to answer.

      I think this is what put them out of business. The PC industry is a race to the bottom. Price is king these days and if you aren't willing to sacrifice your quality in the name of more profits, you will be replaced by someone else who is.

      This is a very sad day for me.

    • Re:RIP Micron (Score:5, Informative)

      by Calmiche ( 531074 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:59PM (#26300927)

      Living in Boise, ID, maybe I can shed some light on this.

      MPC has been steadily going downhill for a couple of years. I didn't work for MPC, but I had several customers who did. The gossip from them is a tale of outsourcing gone bad. MPC used to assemble PC's here in Idaho. A couple years ago, they outsourced most of the manufacturing overseas. Instead of building a new factory here, they built in China. All went well for awhile, then the quality started to slip. Companies stopped ordering. There wasn't enough money left to bring the manufacturing back to the states. Finally, the high oil prices of last year destroyed the profit margin they were making by outsourcing the manufacturing.

      They have been in a death spiral ever since. They hoped to fix it by declaring Chapter 11 a couple months ago but that obviously didn't work.

      *Disclaimer:
      Please be aware that all my information is third hand and may not reflect other peoples experiences.

      • outsourcing causing their death.

        I take a wee bit of comfort in that, in a schadenfreude kinda way.

        maybe others will learn from this? maybe sending work offshore is NOT always the best way to 'fix' things?

      • Sounds like a typical case of Chinese quality fade [google.com]. If MPC didn't have their own inspectors on the ground, watching EVERYTHING, then it's a good bet that after the first few orders, the Chinese supplier started cutting corners to make a pitiful few more cents on the deal. I've seen it a million times. I do this sort of thing for a living...this story is a common one.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epine ( 68316 )

        Oh, yes, I remember Micron. Back when memory was $40/megabyte, Micron would sell a PC pre-configured with enough memory to stun an elephant. Well, they weren't making so much money on the PC itself ...

        A quick dip of the fish net, brings up the following:

        http://law.taragana.net/archive/micron-faces-two-class-action-lawsuits/ [taragana.net]

        http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2006/02/28/37828/more-dram-price-fixing-charges-for-micron.htm [electronicsweekly.com]

        According to the complaint, Micron shares traded at inflated prices allowing the company to issue more than $632m worth of debt during 2003, sell more than $480m worth of warrants and complete numerous stock-for-stock acquisitions using inflated shares as acquisition currency.

        Insiders also sold approximately $4.5m worth of their own personally held Micron stock at inflated prices during the class period, the complaint continued.

        http://www.crn.com/it-channel/187202238 [crn.com]

        Turns out that extended plateau in the d

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Sbmocp ( 1445807 )
        Would anyone happen to know either (1) who originally made MPCs TransPort T3100 laptop, or (2) who bought/is buying their parts inventory? I need a couple of parts for my two laptops and, of course, MPC is no help now...
    • The best part was their warranty support for businesses. Not only were ALL of their level ONE support A+ certified (so they weren't total idiots at least), but they would allow onsite storage of spare parts. They would give us a spare desktop to keep on site in case any of our desktops needed a part. Part dies, we swap it with one from our spare system, call Micron and a swap is made for the extra part. They would even do chassis swaps for off site laptops where they would even clone the serial number/a

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by hal9035 ( 827327 )
        Well, I'm sitting here with a Gateway computer 1.5 yrs into a prepaid 3 yr on-site support program with no chance for replacement of this failing video card. MPC/Micron might have been good one-time, but they suck the big one now!
        • You can't buy a budget computer from Gateway and expect the uber support from MPC that cost $$$. There is a reason they went under, and it's because whats the point of paying $200 extra per computer when you can buy a good business class desktop for $500? If you are buying 500 computers, 500 * $200 = $100,000 of saved cash. For that amount of cash you can have 100 "spare" computers and have enough money left over to hire a full time A+ technician to have on site. I'm not saying their system was economic
    • Micron didn't fail. They still make really good [crucial.com] memory :)

    • Re:RIP Micron (Score:5, Informative)

      by jjhall ( 555562 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMmail4geeks.com> on Friday January 02, 2009 @05:13PM (#26304355) Homepage

      In my opinion the whole spiral started with Joel Kocher. When I started employment at MPC (was called MicronPC.com at the time) in early '00, they had a rock solid product, and were in the midst of transitioning to a PC and Internet hosting company. Kocher introduced a free bare-bones PC with a long-term Internet service contract.

      Kocher was convinced the PC was dead and that hosting was the way to go. Up to that point Micron PC was known as the Cadillac of PCs, using good quality parts, a good non-bloatware system load, etc. Once this piece of cheapest-possible junk was introduced, the reputation of the company, as well as the internal focus on quality went out the window. All of the company effort was focused on expanding the hosting business at the expense of the hardware side of the business.

      After a while Kocher spun off Hostpro and left the PC manufacturing side of the business to die. It was picked up by an investment group and was never able to fully recover. While I can't confirm it, rumor stated that the company could have turned around but the investment company siphoned off every cent of profit rather than re-investing it back into the business for long-term growth. Coupled with leadership that (I feel) were more interested in short-term balance sheets than long term success doomed the company to failure.

      I was laid off in July of '06, and haven't looked back. I made it through more layoffs than I could count and the stress of wondering if I'd have a job every couple of months was horrible. The layoff that finally caught me was more of a relief than a concern. I should have looked for something else far prior to that but I was convinced the company could recover and then I'd be in a good position for advancement.

      The way I see it the company has been floating for the last 6+ years, and someone finally decided to hit the flush handle. I have quite a few friends that were still employed there that have lost their jobs in the last month. Its a tough job market right now and this isn't going to make it any easier.

    • They bought Gateway's business line...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by splorp! ( 527131 )
      My first PC was a Micron I bought in February 1996. It was a Pentium 133 with 32megs EDO RAM, a 28.8 modem and a 1.2GB harddrive (I started late with computers). When the modem died, they replaced it. When the CPU died, they replaced it (with a Pentium 166, since they no longer carried the 133). When the modem died, again, they replaced it. When the harddrive died, they replaced it (with a 1.6 GB, since they no longer carried the 1.2GB). When the keyboard died, they replaced it. When the motherboard died, t
  • TRON strikes again! Eat it MCP! Oh wait...

    Come to think of it, I bet TRON caused a bunch of layoffs too. Gosh, that kinda makes the movie more of a bummer :(
    • Off parent topic

      Come to think of it, I bet TRON caused a bunch of layoffs too. Gosh, that kinda makes the movie more of a bummer :(

      Didn't TRON and Flynn destroy the MCP and his monolithic ways to allows users access to their own programs again? Wouldn't this be more productive and have need for a bigger work force?

      I may need to watch it again.

      • ...allows users access to their own programs again?

        No, the MCP was then replaced with a BOFH who carried on in a similar fashion.

  • Well, this certainly makes me feel secure about the hundreds and hundreds of Gateway computers we've got at work. I'm sure warranty repair parts will be easily available.

    *cough*

    --saint

    • If the warranty was from a 3rd company you should be OK. Desktop components are easy/cheap to replace. Laptops are not so easy.

      • Our problem is that the last hardware refresh for our computer labs (I work for a college) was all Gateway Profile all-in-one systems. They're nice, but almost none of the parts are standard; and, from what I hear from our desktop support people, the power supplies are prone to failure.

        Awesome.

        --saint

      • I work for a school system that used Gateways. After MPC took over, getting warranty parts was a hassle. And since October, we haven't received any.

        Not so much a problem for standard desktops, since we can use standard parts for those, but we have labs full of their Profile 5.5. The power bricks on those die all the time, and we've only found a few sources to buy them, for $120 to $150 each.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Petaris ( 771874 )

      We had been standardizing on Gateway E-2610D systems (made by MPC) for the last two years. Their a good system except I have had the on-board NIC die on a few of them. Now I have to re-spec for some other brand. It irks me but it will probably be HP as I no longer trust Dell (since an issue we had with a bunch of Optiplex boxes). Anyone know of a brand that offers the same motherboards/chipsets for a few years at a time? I want to be able to use as few images as possible to manage our machines.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nimey ( 114278 )

        Would that Optiplex issue be the bursting capacitors on the GX270?

        I've had a handful of newer Optiplexen (620s IIRC) with dodgy power supplies, but (pulling a figure out of my butt) that's less than 5% of installed base, and Dell was good for quick replacements.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Petaris ( 771874 )

          We had the cap issue as well but there was just some general flakiness of the hardware and some ps issues as well. Also Dell was a pain in the arse for getting the CAP issue taken care of.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Petaris ( 771874 )

            Sorry to reply to myself but I just thought I would mention quick that Dell wasn't the only one having the CAP issue. I know that, at the very least, HP had it as well.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by afidel ( 530433 )
              IBM as well, including on workstation and server motherboards. I know because one of my scariest days in IT came because of one of those server boards. A banking client was having all of their servers motherboards replaced proactively free of charge by IBM which meant a site visit to every branch. Well, naturally since it was scheduled it was done outside of business hours. There's nothing like working in a bank after dark in the ghetto....

              To keep this on topic, I have two fond memories of Micron: the fir
    • Agreed. We've got a third-hand Gateway (in the Aegis case, dated around 2003 I think) and I recently had to reinstall Windows on it because the existing install was totally trashed. I went to MPC's website and I couldn't even find a spec list because their website decided my S/N doesn't exist any more. I couldn't even get information on who the manufacturer was for the ethernet card. It took me two days before I could find the right driver, and a few other third party tools to figure out who made the freaki

  • Kinda harsh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rzei ( 622725 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @11:56AM (#26300249)

    I for one believe that firing the employees in question would be enough, instead of termination. Perhaps it'd even be cheaper choice.

    • No worries, the termination of expired human capital is fairly streamlined nowadays.
      At first they make all but one employee jump off the building. The remaining employee will then clean up the mess and finally jump (along with the gore in a zipbag) into the crunch gears of a rented garbage truck.

      Admittedly, the rental of that garbage truck (1 day) and those zipbags are still a cost factor but the they're working to optimize that further (experiments with paperbags are being carried out as we speak).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nimey ( 114278 )

      Nah, 50 ohm terminators are pretty cheap. Just stick one on the end...

    • Soo... MPC was this worlds CSC? [wikipedia.org]

  • This Explains Things (Score:2, Insightful)

    by AMSmith42 ( 60300 )

    This explains why my MPC salesperson didn't bug the crap out of me like other salespersons. I faxed in a P.O. in September but never heard from her again. Perhaps she'd been laid off early or quit. I wasn't worried about it because there were more critical items I was dealing with at the time. There's one contact I'll be deleting on Monday after Christmas break.

  • Micron Quality (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:02PM (#26300303)
    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.
  • This is going to be a pain in the ass especially for business customers who i guess now have no support. They were also having issues delivering machines with massive delays months.

    • I'm currently in that group. We had a shipment of 55 PCs that just came in last week, only to hear about the future of MPC on Monday. We now have a bunch of MPC and Gateway PCs that effectively have no warranty or support coverage.

    • We have bomber Gateway desktops and (less-and-less bomber) MPC laptops throughout the organization. We shuddered when Gateway went kaput, realized all our eggs were in one fragile basket, and now we have no support. Luckily our warranties were up this month anyway. Condolences to those who purchased from MPC lately. Dell has finally stepped up to the plate, and now all our eggs will be in a basket in Round Rock.

      • Our newest machines are from last year. We tryed to order more after that to no avail with them spouting bs the whole time why i had been months and they could deliver.

  • Don't scare me! What with all the Zunes freezing, you can't be too careful nowadays... the last thing I need is trusty ol' MPC to crash!

    • Yeah, With it being a new year and all, I thought at first the computers themselves were shutting down a la Zune. Maybe "MPC Computers Going the Way of the Dodo" would have been a better title.

  • in spite of the spectacular summary, I chose not to RTFA. too gory for work.

  • I remember reading a bunch of PC magazine reviews in the mid- to late- 90's and Micron PCs always seemed to be near the top of the editor's picks. Which led me to wonder: what the hell is a Micron PC? I knew HP, Dell, Gateway 2000, and Compaq back then, but I never saw a Micron PC in person. I guess I never will...I'm getting all choked up.

  • Expected this, did a few of the warrenty repairs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WarlockD ( 623872 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:15PM (#26300443)
    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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by quangdog ( 1002624 ) <quangdog&gmail,com> on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:17PM (#26300451)
    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: (Score:2)

      by halivar ( 535827 )

      As long as he isn't in charge of parts requisitions for your desktop PC's you should be fine.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jerk ( 38494 )

      It's not like there's a shortage of well-trained IT-related folks around Boise. I don't see why you'd be happy that a company that was once Nampa's largest employer is now gone.

      • We had actually been looking for quite some time without success. Our requirements were not strictly for an IT person - we needed someone more well-rounded, and bilingual. This person fit the bill nicely, so we lucked out that he was pink-slipped. I am not tickled to death that MPC no longer exists, and I know it has left a lot of highly qualified folks w/out work. Seeing businesses fail is never a pretty sight for anyone. We just happened to benefit as a result, for which I'm grateful. Lemonade from

    • What? He found another job without a government bailout to prop up this industry?!

      Absurd!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sl4x74 ( 1038976 )
      Wow Kimball, Thank you. I missed this comment the first time around.

  • Gateway was the death of them (Score:5, Interesting)

    by citking ( 551907 ) <jay.citking@net> on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:18PM (#26300467) Homepage

    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.

  • Bad Business Manners! (Score:4, Informative)

    by ClaraBow ( 212734 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:20PM (#26300493)
    They didn't even notify their customers. We had ordered hundreds of PCs (all-in-ones) for a new South Tower at our hospital and they didn't even have the courtesy to give is a head up! Just Plain rude!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Manfre ( 631065 )

      I doubt your account manager received anymore notice than you did.

    • We've been almost certain that this was coming since mid-October. What we were told at that point was that MPC's finances were shut down - hard - and as a result they had no working capital to purchase any product. In other words, they haven't been able to build or ship product since the middle of October. (This was before they went Chapter 11... and before they were delisted from NASDAQ.)

      Fortunately, we stopped buying desktops from them a while back... but unfortunately we were still buying laptops from th

  • In the grand scheme of things.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sdnoob ( 917382 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:31PM (#26300579)

    this is like Michael Dell swatting a gnat.

    MPC had been essentially non-player in the PC business for years, even after it's acquisition of the business unit of Gateway.

  • 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 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AmericanGladiator ( 848223 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:54PM (#26300843)

    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

    • I worked for Micron CMS from 1991 to 1994

      One day I had an "Edge Technology" 386 dropped on my desk to replace an old 286. It was one of the first 30 prototype PCs from the company that grew into Micron Computer. It was very obviously a prototype, but I did fun stuff with it. It helped to work for a memory maker. Micron made a line of memory expansion cards that ran in ISA slots. I ran around and found all of them that I could find. I eventually had about 256MB of memory stuffed in this box. I se

  • Their tech support sucked (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nimey ( 114278 ) on Friday January 02, 2009 @01:39PM (#26301501) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • But if MPC owned a large number of warranties, and they are now defunct, why is this allowed to affect the consumer at all? If I buy a warranty from company 'A', and company 'A' sells their warranty department to company 'B' a year later, why can I as a consumer not go back to company 'A' and demand that they honor the warranty that was originally purchased under them? Company 'A' likely was paid for those warranties, and I don't find it unreasonable to expect that money from company 'A' be used to cover

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jalefkowit ( 101585 )

      I feel bad for the employees at the company that were effectively jobless days after christmas, with no warning of their impending 'layoff'. I find their letter justifying why the couldn't give 60 days notice unsettling. They're admitting they screwed up, and i'm sure their former employees are comforted by this fact, right? I hope they ban together and demand those 60 days paid, as is required by law.

      Indeed, and now there is even a template now on how to do just that: [nwsource.com]

      A day after dozens of protesting worke

  • I've had to call in a few gateway laptops and didn't have any problems at all until I called in on the day someone over at MPC decided to change their input applications and database. I was on the phone for 2+ hours and was eventually cut off and had to call back the next day when I was on the phone for another hour or two. Every time after that I've had nothing but problems from MPC. Every call took way too long and one person even told me to have the user I was supporting call them so submit the suppor

  • It's for old Windows testing like 9x and 2000. The only that failed was its HDD and CD-ROM drive.

  • We just bought another 35 of their All-in-ones over the summer, for the computer lab at the university... MPC had a great warranty on their machines, and a great service dept., which let us keep things running smoothly. So much for that!

  • If you can not be the price leader, then you have to learn to be the market leader. Companies like that need to create their own markets. Sadly, business ppl today are worthless.
  • I had a friend with a Micron PC way back in the day and I'm not sure where he got it but I never-ever saw one sitting on a shelf anywhere at the big box stores, nor have I ever seen one advertised in a place where non-geeks frequent (on TV on the big 4, Newsweek/Time magazines, sporting events).

    For the average consumer; they would have had very little way of knowing why they'd want a Micron over a Dell (if there is a reason; didn't seem any different than any other beige-box late 90's PC) and secondly, n

  • Went off to college with the machine and it worked extremely well...until I got tired of screwing around with windows and linux and bought a Mac. For it's day, it was comepetitively priced with dell on the high end and offered a better video card and more RAM. Of course back then 256MB was a lot of RAM screaming fast for Windows 98. Especially with a 32MB video card.

    At some point I stopped reading PC magazines and all their fluff pieces on technology and stopped paying attention.

    So long as Crucial is sti

  • 51 would be retained while the company liquidates its assets.

    I've called them several times this last month for RMAs or server issues, and the support has been horrible--which is unusual for them.

    On Christmas Eve a client called me with a server down--apparently the RAID card just decided to eat it. I called MPC for an RMA around noon and was told "the server guy should be in around 8:00 tonight if you could call back then".

    WTF? I'm not calling in for an RMA at 8:00 PM on Christmas Eve. Bastards!

  • The first windows based computer we owned, after several Apples, was a Micron. Back in 1997, their customer support reps had the patience of Job and spents hours on the phone with us, helping us understand Windows and the hardware. If anyone reading this used to work there, let me just say "Thank you very much." We still have two Micron machines in use around here. They just last.

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