OCZ May Be On Its Last Legs 292
itwbennett writes "OCZ, one of the first commercial solid-state drive (SSD) makers has been blaming a shortage of NAND for its woes for some time now, but things have taken a precipitous turn for the worse: 'For its second fiscal quarter ended August 31, 2013, revenue was $33.5 million, a huge drop compared to revenue of $55.3 million for the first quarter of 2013 and revenue of $88.6 million for the second quarter of 2012. The net loss for this quarter was massive, $26 million, a doubling of the $13.1 million loss in the same quarter last year.' The company has burned through cash, its stock collapsed, and now so have sales. Meanwhile, other SSD makers are doing well. So what is happening here?"
Tiniest violin (Score:5, Insightful)
They burned too many customers with "enterprise" devices that'd fail almost immediately, then treating the customers like shit when they did.
They bet too heavily on high performance, while not maintaining the kind of behavior that would bring back the customers who want devices like that.
The reason Dell and HP can get away with burning customers is simple: there's always another person who needs a cheap laptop.
Not many people need a new PCIe SSD.
Good riddance.
Re:Tiniest violin (Score:4, Informative)
True story:
I bought a 240 GB Vertex 3 back in 2011 at a considerable expense... I put it in my laptop and immediately, my laptop would crash (BSOD) every 20 minutes, continuously. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SandForce#Issues
I attempted to contact OCZ but their phone support directed me to an online forum. There, they said it was a known problem with laptops' powersaving mode, and to flash it. I said, ok, where's the flashing program for windows? The tech said (via a post) that there was no flashing utility for windows. I would have to use Linux. I said that I couldn't just wipe my hard drive and install linux, and the guy laughed at me and told me to buy another hard drive.
So I did. I went to a competitor, left a horrible review of my experience on Amazon, and never used OCZ again. http://www.amazon.com/review/R1GYKQFNH227GT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Re:Tiniest violin (Score:5, Informative)
The tech said (via a post) that there was no flashing utility for windows. I would have to use Linux. I said that I couldn't just wipe my hard drive and install linux, and the guy laughed at me and told me to buy another hard drive.
Intel did the right thing and deployed their SSD upgrade software [intel.com] as a bootable CD. In my opinion, this is currently the best way to distribute any kind of PC firmware. You can burn the disc from inside any operating system, and when you boot from that medium, you get a nice clean environment to update the device without a full-blown OS interfering with the process.
Re:Tiniest violin (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Except for the people who don't own a single optical drive. Not trolling, Being an Apple user first I freaked out. Then now back to Linux and somehow don't miss them. So when I put a server and a desktop machine together, I didn't put an optical drive in them at all.
I think the right way to do it is to give users a bootable USB drive. Or offer the download with a utility to make a drive bootable.
I have probably 50 driver CDs in a shelf I never opened and this plastic nonsense has to end right now.
my 2c ...
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Tiniest violin (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of SSDs support SATA Aggessive Link Power Management (ie. SATA powersaving), but has stability issues when it is enabled. To fix this under Linux -
https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Power_Management_Guide/ALPM.html [redhat.com]
I have no idea how to disable this under Windows, but having turned off ALPM, all of my Sandforce SSDs have been rock solid. Even my Crucial M500 has problems with ALPM on max, I had to turn it down to medium to prevent it from crashing regularly and taking the filesystem with it.
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on the drive. Sandforce drives tend to drop out. The drive disappears from the SATA bus. With the M500, the Marvell controller actually corrupts the file system. I had to reinstall my laptop with a 960GB M500 twice before confirming that the issue is due to ALPM.
Re: (Score:2)
Not that I disagree with your real point about using a Linux live CD, but please be careful telling people to play around with it because it won't harm anything. Your normal Windows drives probably get mounted by default, and one mistaken command with a cryptic two-letter name could easily destroy data without even prompting for confirmation (rm, dd, etc.).
Re: (Score:2)
That's clearly beside the point - and untrue.
He obviously bought the product - losing a customer with horrible customer support is always bad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Tiniest violin (Score:5, Informative)
They also replaced the 34nm Vertex 2 drives with 25nm drives [tomshardware.com], lowering speed and space without changing the model number. They are scum.
Re:Tiniest violin (Score:4, Interesting)
They also replaced the 34nm Vertex 2 drives with 25nm drives, lowering speed and space without changing the model number. They are scum.
Worse than scum. I hope they die in a fire. My OCZ drive has started locking up and showing bad sectors and they won't RMA it. They just say "Oh, unplug it, wait an hour, then wipe it." ... Yeah. The bad sectors disappear... until the first time the OS tries to write to those sectors. Their warranties can't even be used as toilet paper.
They didn't "bet on higher performance", they bet on shit construction, no quality control... hell, you can't even update the firmware using the tools they provide on the website unless you plug a second drive in and install an OS on it. Now yes, many of us geeky types can install a mini-XP or Windows 7 on a flash drive and be on our merry, but really... how can you expect Joe Power Gamer to do something like that? Simple: You can't.
It's not just the poor quality and construction of the drives that fucked them, but a complete and utter disregard for any level of customer service. No, I recant on my last statement... death by fire is too good for them. Let us create a new 'ocz' internet meme to immortalize this level of fail. >.
Re: (Score:3)
This is why I like the EU warranty system. The warranty is with the shop you bought it from, not the manufacturer. The onus is generally on the shop to show that it wasn't some kind of manufacturing or quality defect, i.e. you broke it. In cases like yours there would be very little the shop could do to wriggle out of getting it replaced. If OCZ won't do warranty replacements the shop loses out and stops stocking them, and you get a refund or replacement drive.
In other words manufacturers can't get away wit
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HardOCP#Hard.7CForum [wikipedia.org]
It is likely they run them two separate businesses to protect each other from liability.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed on OCZ, we tried their products and it has become a running gag to NEVER trust an OCZ product.
But as a happy Dell laptop user, I take exception to your dig at Dell. We've tried HP, had an utterly miserable experience compared to Dell. We buy Dells with the 3-year full warranty. Problems are relatively uncommon, and get taken care of quickly. Not sure what you would object to?
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to have a different experience I run OCZ in 3 24/7 machines ( 2 OS/x 1 linux) ... the only SSD drive that failed on me was on my Macbook Air, and it was a Samsung, and it was a "freeze, then all data gone and drive unrecognisable" nasty failure (thanks Apple for time machine, really) ...
The OCZ drives are Vertex 4 and Agility 3 drives (latter in the Linux box, crunching data all day, writing to a mysql db non-stop - data collection app) ..
I am happy with the drives, but would double-think getting a
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Jobs himself had to tell the CEO of OCZ to cut out the crap products.
A link would help back that statement. It would also make inroads on countering the whole "cult of Steve Jobs's personality" label that Apple users don't understand why they can't shake. Else what you stated comes out as "do you not recall the iScriptures? The LORD commanded the heathens at OCZ, but they did not obey, and thus their business was torn asunder by His divine might, and His followers celebrated the power of their rightful LORD by buying more iPhones and iPads, as is His will. This is the wo
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I do remember a few years back OCZ was in the process of trying to get a contract with some manufacturer such as Apple, HP, Dell, etc. but the company decided not to sign the agreement after they saw the negative feedback being left for OCZ products. Someone had said that when OCZ had left all of their other products and went to SSD-only they were heavily relying on that contract.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you couldn't find a citation then maybe you shouldn't have fucking said it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Full of BS (Score:4, Informative)
I used a handful of OCZ vertex 2's (back then it was like $3 per GB) in a couple of servers (in enterprise setting) for almost three years. Still running.
I also own four vertex 4's in a RAID 10 setup, all four drive still running after a year.
Either there is a incredible bad luck streak, or there is some abuse going on. The first and only SSD failure I have come across is a 120GB Intel X25-m.
Re: (Score:3)
I got a vertex 2 that's ran for 1.8 years without a hitch.
that doesn't change the fact though that some models from them suffered 50%+ return rates(links available in other comments).
I however don't know what kind of vertex2 this is that I got since apparently they changed the device without changing the model name at some point, "yay".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Full of BS (Score:5, Interesting)
My own experience with OCZ drives is a 100% failure rate and no support to speak of.
Far more significantly, though, my supplier's experience with them was that they saw such a high proportion of returns that they dropped the brand entirely. My anecdotal data point might have been down to bad luck, but the odds of the pattern my supplier told me about being down to luck would be tiny.
Re: (Score:2)
My supplier exchanged my broken OCZ drive whithout even testing it to a bigger one, as they were out of stock for the particular model.
But the support from OCZ doesn't seem bad at all in comparison with any other electronics manufacturer, IMHO. Better even, they have a nice informative website. What sort of support do people expect from their SSD vendor, and what sort of support does their competition offer?
Re: (Score:2)
Several years ago, my first SSD drive was OCZ, and I found out some time later that once filled more than half full, the drive started stuttering (data wise), becoming notably much slower than a hdd drive when writing and it was due to OCZ using a cheap and shitty controller. No fixing it, since it was garbage by design. For a little more money, I could have gotten a quality drive from someone else. And that's I did, and I swore off OCZ forever.
Re:Full of BS (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Full of BS (Score:5, Informative)
I've never had experience with their SSD drives. I have, however, had experience with their RAM and power supplies, and after those experiences I avoided their SSDs like the plague...
Ditto with my local computer store, the failure rate was so high they dropped them completely. I don't think they'll even let you special order them now.
Re:Full of BS (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience with all drives, solid state and spinning, is a 100% failure rate... eventually.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. Maybe I've been lucky. I've got 4 of their drives in two different machines. No problems at all & yes they are very fast.
Re:Full of BS (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
At one point in the past few years, one of OCZ's popular SSD lines had a 20% failure rate. Most of their other products have consistently been about double to triple the failure rate of everyone else's.
Given that cheap-ass SSDs and cheap-ass RAM were two of their big lines (with PSUs and various other gamer-jockey bits and pieces floating around at the edges from time to time), and given that they didn't own any fabs, it will be very interesting to see what, if any, effect their demise would have on the market for flash and ram silicon...
With something like a DIMM or an SSD, there isn't a huge amount to go wrong mechanically (unless your manufacturing process is unbelievably dire), nor are there a whol
Re: (Score:2)
GP is fully correct. Every OCZ product I've ever had has failed, often dramatically, and OCZ's "support" was laughable. I've had public exchanges with OCZ execs where they dismissed concerns about device quality and ignored issues. They're reaping what they sowed here.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:2)
Though I'd say you're being a bit too hard on them, your experience with Dell is the same nonsense I go through, managing thousands of servers. The time-wasting useless procedure checklist crap needs to stop!
Their technicians also range from below average to bad... I've seen things like a defective DRAC problem being treated by a motherboard being replaced. That was of course followed by us complaining, and the same dummy coming back the next day to fix the actual problem... Or a system with a single de
Re: (Score:2)
The trouble with Dell is that the support service isn't permitted to do a full replacement. You have to go part by part until you have a working system. The trouble is to go through all the parts on a typical server or PC can take weeks. This isn't quite what you expect when you have a 4 hour on site contract, you sort of expect to be back up and running in at the most a day or two.
Of course they don't really commit anything till you've gone through full diagnostics. Which can seem a bit of an irritatio
Re: (Score:2)
They've never had me do anything like that - no stock OS reinstall, BIOS updates or anything else. But then I don't deal with their low-end crap. I currently have a Dell Precision M6400 laptop and my next laptop is going to be a Precision as well. I know I would probably get a better price from the actual manufacturer of a given model (be it Clevo or whomever) but the customer service from the manufacturers is nonexistent at best.
Re: Tiniest violin (Score:4, Interesting)
My favorite Dell customer support experience had to do with the floppy disk drive getting jammed. We tried pushing the eject button, but couldn't depress the button to release the floppy. Despite the fact that this was clearly a mechanical issue that should still be able to work when the drive is unplugged from the computer (and hence not have any power), the rep still insisted that we:
1) Restart the computer & report what errors were showing up in the Add/Remove Hardware window (hint: there was no reported error)
2) Uninstall & reinstall the drivers for said floppy drive
3) Unplug the computer from the wall, wait n seconds, plug computer back into the wall, then repeat #1 & #2
After going through this process, the rep concluded "Well, I don't have a clue what could possibly be wrong! I suggest you mail the drive back to us so our specialists can take a look at it and give you a replacement (which is what we immediately asked for when we finally got in contact with a person.) here is your RMA number...."
And this was when we called their customer support for enterprises!
Re: (Score:2)
They must've done that after I replaced the only Dell I ever bought.
In my case I had a power supply go bad. A replacement from Dell was 2x as expensive as a top tier off the shelf replacement. Everything was fine when I did the plug in but the mounting holes didn't line up and I had to mangle the case to make it fit.
I decided then that I'd just build my own and I have ever since.
Re: (Score:2)
I knew it ended but not when. But beyond the tactic itself, it conveyed their attitude loud and clear. Somewhere between extreme disinterest in the customer and active revenge.
Easy. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Informative)
You suspect correctly, the last stats I saw said:
OCZ: 6%
Industry average: 2%
Samsung: 0.5%
Intel: 0.3%
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you could provide a source(even if your numbers aren't completely accurate) you would make me very happy. I have been unable to find anything that discusses reliability of different manufacturers like you just described.
I have always sworn by Intel while friends have bought OCZ(because they were cheaper per GB) and several have had nothing but problems but others have sworn their OCZ was rock solid. On the other hand, I bought only Intels since the day the G2 series hit the market. Every single one is still in use and none of them have had any problems. In fact, I haven't had to reinstall windows as often as I've had to in the past. Not sure if its because Win7 is better than WinXP, the SSDs are more reliable than platter based disks, or both.
But even then, I still swear by Intel every time a friend makes a recommendation, regardless of the benchmarks and the (often) slightly higher price per GB.
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Informative)
2011: http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-7/components-returns-rates-5.html [behardware.com]
Early 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/components-returns-rates-6.html [behardware.com]
Late 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html [behardware.com]
Sorry, I have no 2013 figures.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh my God! The money quote:
Re:Easy. (Score:4, Informative)
Here's early 2013: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-7/ssd.html [hardware.fr]
Re: (Score:2)
Intel has released their own turkey SSDs [pcworld.com] too. And the thing about anecdotal evidence is, every OCZ, Kingston, Intel, Samsung, and Sandisk SSD I've bought and put into systems I've built are still in use and none of them have had any problems.
While I do believe OCZ had a higher failure rate, I also think their poor return figures were mostly a self-f
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that no company bats 100%. But Intel has consistently had very reliable, reasonably performing, and reasonably priced SSD. Of all of the brands, if I had to pick a random brand and model, I'd take any Intel model over anything else. That's not to say Samsung doesn't make good products(they clearly do). But you never know what you're getting into when you buy something new, so there's always that risk you get a crappy model for any one of 100 reasons.
Intel seems to be pretty darn good at having a
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, I think that's right. I had an early OCZ drive blow up on me quite a few years ago and never bought another since. I have bought several SSDs from Corsair and most recently Samsung instead.
First impressions often matter, especially when the industry itself (SSDs) is new.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The reputation for unreliability is deserved. I even had one drive that would return different data on reads (about 10% of the time for the affected area) and never reported a checksum violation. That is only possible if disk checksums are not implemented, which is gross engineering negligence. Never had any funny business with several Samsung SSDs and they are neither slower nor more expensive. OCZ was a player that tried to make it with speed as its main argument but completely overlooked what people use
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to ask what happened? (Score:2)
Shitty unreliable drives that are way over priced and they treat there customers like shit ... this was easily predictable
Rebates (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rebates (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny... Similar experience didn't convinced me to avoid company XYZ, but instead to completely avoid any and all mail-in rebates... The whole idea is a complete scam that is easily and frequently abused.
Re: (Score:2)
Vertex 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Vertex 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
In fairness, most vendors have this option.
You can either choose a 3/5 year warranty, and the drive will slow itself down to guarantee it lasts.
Or, you can choose to go by the "gas gauge" and your warranty may expire after 8 months or whatever of full-speed IO.
When you buy server-grade drives, they usually sell you a gas gauge model.
Reputation killing them (Score:5, Interesting)
To add financial injury to insult, in the UK, RMA'ing an OCZ drive requires you to send it insured and recorded to the Netherlands. It cost me around £20 to send it off. I'm certainly never going to buy OCZ again. The 15% return rate for OCZ drives that failed after 1 year is unacceptable and frankly, should've been grounds for a recall.
Re: (Score:2)
..uk doesn't have laws that the place that sold you the drive is responsible for dealing with the rma (that is, you "rma" the drive to the company that sold it you since it's defective and broke under 2 years..)? that's how you deal with it in most of europe.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that's bad. Here in Finland, it's usually one year of specifically stated store warranty, and often more.
Only when there's a second or third year of warranty is it common to have to deal with the manufacturer.
Good riddance (Score:5, Informative)
I had terrible experiences with their drives and tech support. In one instance, to solve a Windows blue screen problem, their support told us to update the firmware on the drive, which bricked it. They then refused to return/repair the drive because "firmware updates void your warranty." In another case, we needed a quick replacement on a failed drive so we requested advance replacement. They immediately charged our card MSRP (double the actual retail price), but then it took them over 30 days to actually ship the replacement.
Re: (Score:2)
>their support told us to update the firmware on the drive, which bricked it. They then refused to return/repair the drive because "firmware updates void your warranty."
I think my response to OCZ would have been: "I am contacting my state attorney general and petitioning that your products be banned from sales here."
capital constraints, not supply (Score:5, Informative)
The quote in the article blames capital constraints, and difficulty acquiring, not a shortage. They are likely buying cheaper supply with higher failure rates, creating a death spiral.
If that is not the case, the author should kick himself in the balls repeatedly for using unrelated quotes to support a point, as I can't be arsed to dig past that stupidity.
Non story, failing company cuts corners and fails faster.
Bad products, bad customer service (Score:2)
I don't know about other people, but I had nothing but bad experiences with their DRAM products. I would call their tech support and usually get a voicemail. They would never return those calls. If I called anothe department (sales always answered), they would just forward me to the same voicemail. If I was persistent enough, calling enoug times per day, I might get someone on the phone with technical support.
Their "performance" DRAM products seemed to deteriorate over time. I would configure my system
so much for earlier mover advantage (Score:2)
Can we finally put the to bed the idea that being the first (or near first) mover into a specific market is important in carving out a long-term leadership role in that space, and perhaps have people focus instead on making a superior product instead?
Re: (Score:3)
No. Being the first mover with a mediocre product might have worked. Being one tenth as reliable and dodging warranty fulfillment wipes out any advantage.
Myth it may be, but this does nothing to bust it.
Linked article is clueless (Score:3)
The article quotes the CEO as saying the company is struggling due to "capital constraints". Then right below that, "This has been a common refrain. OCZ reports lower sales, it blames a shortage of NAND." Does the author truly not understand the difference between a shortage of cash to fund ongoing operations, and a shortage of parts?
Regardless, I don't see their departure from the scene as a great loss. Their spotty reputation for quality and customer service has caused me to avoid their products in general, and has apparently come back to bite them in the ass. The only sad part is that they might take PC Power and Cooling (one of the premier PSU manufacturers from back in the day, which OCZ acquired a few years ago) down with the ship.
OCZ hurt the entire SSD industry (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an even better reason why nobody wants to sell flash to OCZ -- they've tainted the entire SSD industry so badly with their crap drives, no reputable manufacturer of flash wants to have its good name tarnished by association with them.
A lot of OCZ's problems were self-inflicted, with Sandforce's active complicity.
For example, Sandforce's engineers came up with an ugly, performance-killing hack that allowed the drive to avoid corruption if it were powered-down mid-write so they could officially claim that the ultracapacitor was "optional" in "cost-sensitive applications". OCZ built drives without the ultracap, then had Sandforce furnish them with firmware that DISABLED THAT SAFETY MEASURE to avoid killing their drives' write performance in benchmarks.
Mark my words. If OCZ doesn't go bankrupt on its own accord, they're eventually going to get put out of business by a class-action lawsuit like the one that nailed HP almost 20 years ago. I'm talking about the one where HP's management intentionally ignored their engineers, and sold CD burners that didn't have enough RAM to buffer a complete track & instead depended upon Windows to feed them a steady stream of data with a degree of lockstep precision that Windows could neither promise nor reliably sustain even though their own engineers told them it couldn't work reliably, and was GUARANTEED to turn at least 5-20% of discs burned into coasters (back when a blank CD cost SEVERAL DOLLARS).
HP's engineers DID have a way to allow the drives to be reliably used without the buffer... write the .iso file to a FAT16 volume, then boot directly into DOS from a floppy to do the burning. However, like OCZ's management (who wanted the performance of an ultracap-protected drive, without the cost of the ultracap itself), HP's management wanted a cheap drive that could burn CDs under Windows, even if it meant they had to knowingly LIE about its ability to actually DO it.
Re: (Score:2)
sold CD burners that didn't have enough RAM to buffer a complete track & instead depended upon Windows to feed them a steady stream of data with a degree of lockstep precision that Windows could neither promise nor reliably sustain even though their own engineers told them it couldn't work reliably, and was GUARANTEED to turn at least 5-20% of discs burned into coasters (back when a blank CD cost SEVERAL DOLLARS).
..but that's how I remember every cd burner to have been back in the day. would have been absurd to stuff 600mb of ram(one data track) into the burner when your pc had 4-8mbytes... only after 4x speed drives or so the drives(no matter which manufacturer) started to come with some tech which made buffer underflows non-fatal for burning..
Re: (Score:2)
...but that's how I remember every cd burner to have been back in the day. would have been absurd to stuff 600mb of ram(one data track) into the burner when your pc had 4-8mbytes... only after 4x speed drives or so the drives(no matter which manufacturer) started to come with some tech which made buffer underflows non-fatal for burning..
Hint: when they said 'track', they probably meant it in the same sense as a hard disk track: one write around the circumference of the disk. CDs are spiral, aren't they, rather than divided into tracks the way disks are?
Yes, in the old days, we had to be very careful to ensure that the drive buffer never went empty when writing to CD, but the best way to ensure that was to have enough RAM in the drive to cover any conceivable delay on the machine providing the data. Even a small reduction in the amount of
Re:OCZ hurt the entire SSD industry (Score:5, Insightful)
It didn't need 650mb, it just needed to be a lot bigger than the absurdly small buffers HP shipped with.
Think of an assembly line at a cookie factory with a badly-designed packing mechanism that blindly assumes (and depends upon) there being a cookie every 24 inches -- centered on a white dot printed onto the belt -- without fail, and shuts down the entire assembly line if it finds a gap without a cookie.
Now, assume the cookies get placed on the conveyor belt by one person who has a bucket of cookies in hand, seated in front of a 12-inch gap where the conveyor belt emerges from one slot, passes across an open area, and disappears into a second slot. The employee has exactly 5 seconds to grab a cookie from the bucket, and exactly 5 seconds to place the cookie on the dot on the conveyor belt before repeating. Now, suppose the employee is holding the cookie, ready to place it on the conveyor belt, and sneezes. To avoid spreading infection, he or she turns around to sneeze away from both the cookies and conveyor belt. Unfortunately, the sneeze takes 6 seconds to perform and recover from, so the dot disappears into the second slot without a cookie. If we're burning a metaphorical CD with those cookies, that sneeze has just caused a coaster.
THAT was the fundamental problem with HP's small buffer. It depended upon having the undivided attention of Windows for frequent, short intervals of time with ZERO tolerance for distraction.
In contrast, a larger buffer would be like an assembly line that shuffles cookies towards multiple bins. As soon as a bin is full, the flow of cookies into it gets temporarily halted (with enough room to buffer/queue a few cookies in the meantime), a new empty bag falls into place, and the queued-up cookies are allowed to fall into it immediately, then continue until the next bag is full.
In the real world, it's ALWAYS harder to guarantee data at some precise trickle than to allow it to just gush in spurts and be buffered at the same net data rate.A lot of people think "realtime" means "fast". It doesn't. It just means "deterministic" (often, deterministically-constant). A large buffer allows you to deliver a deterministic trickle of data transmitted in a bursty, non-deterministic manner.
2 words (Score:2)
Fast, reliable, Name brand SSDs arrived (Score:2)
I think this is the SSD market maturing. For a while, Intel had good, but expensive drives. Then Intel stagnated for a while, as OCZ aimed to be the performance leader, but firmware issues and failed drives burned a bunch of us. Fast forward to today, and we see Samsung being very price aggressive with fast drives that are reliable. That's a perfect storm for OCZ.
Customer service was so bad, that I couldn't hear a word of their marketing.
Avoid all brands with "4 GAMERZZZ!!11" marketing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
To be fair, I've only had one pair of Corsair DIMMs fail, ever. That one was because a power supply failed and shorted the motherboard and RAM as a result. less than 5 minutes on a phone call to Corsair and I had an RMA number. I even told them exactly what happened, I think they even sent a postage paid return shipping label. I now have 3 Corsaird Power Supplies in use (one for almost 3years, the other 2 less than 2 months) no issues with any of them yet.
Oh, and I'm 34. I'm more than happy to pay a premium
Re:Avoid all brands with "4 GAMERZZZ!!11" marketin (Score:4, Informative)
I'd not put corsair in the same bucket as the other two. Their RAM, for instance, will not spontaneously combust. The other two... yeah, you don't have to look very far to see that they have the build quality of white branded parts.
It's a problem when you look for, say, mechanical keyboards. Even companies that used to make good stuff, like das, now have cut costs so that you are going to get more life out of a random membrane keyboard.
Re: (Score:3)
Even companies that used to make good stuff, like das, now have cut costs so that you are going to get more life out of a random membrane keyboard.
Das doesn't make the switches; Cherry does. Nearly every mechanical keyboard manufacturer these days uses Cherry MX switches, which are rated for 50 million cycles. Whether you're buying a mechanical keyboard from Das, WASD, Ducky, Razer, or any of a host of others, you're getting the exact same 50-million cycle switches.
In contrast, a membrane keyboard's switche
Re: (Score:3)
I disagree. Corsair products are almost always of high build quality and reliability. They use reputable OEMs to manufacture their high end products (Flextronics/Seasonic for their PSUs) and have some of the best cases around. I wouldn't trade my Obsidian 800D for anything except for a 900D.
OCZ not bad & cheap, failed disk not big probl (Score:3)
I bought a couple of OCZ drives over the last few years for different computers and they all work fine. I'm not worried that they will fail and wipe my data because I only put programs and operating system stuff there (as shouldn't all of us here on /.?). I never bought the 'high end' gamer stuff. My data goes on a HDD and when I compile stuff and install it, it then goes on the SSD for fast performance. When I am working on something distributed from SSD it is backed up online through a version controll system so I don't lose anything major in the event of a fire or disk failure. For servers, you should have an RAID array of SSDs and the OCZs have been cheaper, so you should expect that they might fail -- but this should not impact what you do.
Pity PP&C goes down with the ship (Score:3)
Pity PC Power & Cooling is apparently going down with the OCZ ship. For the better part of a decade, I always heard PP&C PSUs were the best and they had prices to match that rep. I could never hope to afford one.
And then OCZ bought them, and curiously, the positive reviews became harder to find and the off-the-cuff remarks ("Hey so and so is a good brand of whatever, check it out!") stopped entirely.
Suddenly the prices had dropped into the normal range and now a 760 watt PP&C PSU is like $60. And you get an AMEX rebate card with it. The PSU itself is just some outsourced part they got from who knows where.
Do watch the SSD market (Score:3)
Do watch the SSD market. I noticed that the local Frys is looking to all but purge their
inventory.
Is there a price jump, a price cut or some new stuff hitting the market?
I was all set to buy a SSD disk but the prices did not make sense and
the display astoundingly bollixed and confused.
My current plan is to move to a SSD and the new AC network links.
I can have large storage on my router/ cloud/ drive/ dropbox/ resource
and a light quick laptop with modest storage. The speed of SSD devices
is getting to be a serous game changer at home and at work.
But these OCZ folks seem to have stepped in it badly.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm wondering what is their burn going to though.
if they have no production due to shortages how are they still burning through money as if they had produced stock but failed to sell it.
Re: (Score:2)
That's basically the difference between capital gains, and dividend stocks... There are fewer dividends than there used-to be, but all indicators show companies that pay dividends are healthier and more stable, long-term. And the investors buying the dividend-paying stocks are in it for the long-term, and vote accordingly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ok then, word of advice, make sure you have daily backups of all your critical stuff. Image the drive, so that it is easy to restore when the drive fails.
Which is true for any type of drive, anywhere, anytime.
Murphy was an optimist.
Re: (Score:2)
Great point, hopefully that division doesn't sink with the ship. Assuming they're still the best and OCZ didn't screw it up since they bought them.
I still have three PCPCs running 24/7 going on 4 years now. Worth every penny.