Seagate Reseller News: quotes without comment

[Thad P Floryan]

>From the current edition (Vol.1,No.6) of the "Seagate Reseller Report" which
was just mailed, are the following quotes (without comment) for the benefit
of all those who've suffered a hard drive failure with a Seagate drive:

page 2:

``            INDUSTRY PERIODICALS HONOR SEAGATE PRODUCTS

DEC PROFESSIONAL Magazine recently put the Seagate Sabre family through its
paces in their DP Laboratory and Testing Center.  This state-of-the-art lab
is a multivendor testing facility that subjects products to the rigors of
real-world DEC computing environments.  As a result of the Sabre's
performance under these conditions, the product family earned the DEC
PROFESSIONAL DP Lab Seal.

BYTE Magazine subscribers honored Seagate by voting the ST-251 BYTE's VIP
(Very Important Product) Readers Award in the disc drive category.  Products
receiving these awards were recognized by BYTE readers as outstanding for
day-to-day business and personal use.  "The VIP awards come from a singular
source: 2,000 expert end-users of today's hardware and software," said Fred
Langa, BYTE Editor-in-Chief.  The VIP awards were presented at a special
ceremony at the Capital City CLub in Atlanta during this year's COMDEX/Spring.
''

page 3 (extracted from BORN IN THE USA (which itself is a partial reprint
of a DEC PROFESSIONAL Editorial by Dave Mallery)):

``Seagate is a national treasure and a strategic resource.''

page 4:

``Callers of Seagate's technical support number (1-800-468-DISC) can now
reach a technical representative as early at 6:00AM Pacific Time.
[...]
The automated telephone database service (1-800-468-DISC) and Technical
Support Bulletin Board (1-408-438-8771) continue to be available 24 hours
a day, seven days a week [...] The BBS operates at 300 to 9600 BAUD, 8 data
bits, no parity and one stop bit.
''

=====

OK, OK, I said "without comment"; so I lied.  :-)

BYTE Magazine honoring the ST-251?  [I'm REALLY restraining myself here] The
ONLY way to "honor" a ST-251 drive is to toss it as far away as one can.
This endorsement by BYTE doesn't speak highly for the quality of that mag.
So the awards were presented in a "Club"; so was everyone all boozed up? :-)

The item about "national treasure and a strategic resource" made me want to
puke.  Besides the eleven (ten ST251 and one ST157) drives that went belly-up
for me, I have hundreds of email items from others reporting problems with ALL
Seagate drives, with the ST251 being the prime offender (re: stiction and
non-spin).  I'm still reminded of the "OTHER THAN THAT ..." article about the
IBM PC retailer who said (in reference to the non-spin of ST251 drives): "Other
than that, they're good drives." which was posted by someone else last month.

Hmmm, the single 1-800-468-DISC is described as two different services, one
answered by human(s) and the other by computer; wonder which phone number is
a typo.  Don't laugh, they (Seagate) couldn't even spell my name correctly on
the mailing label (and I have NO idea how I got on their mailing list).

Hmmm, one more item from the newsletter, page 2:

``Seagate, manufacturer of the early ST412 and ST506 drives which established
the interface standard, is committed to supporting this demand [for AT and
386-class machines] with award-winning products such as the ST225, ST251 (still
our most popular drive family), and ST4096.  With formatted capacities of 20,
40 and 80 megabytes, these Seagate ST412 drives deliver the performance and
proven reliability for today's PC users.''

Aha!  So Seagate drives are ONLY for PC machines, eh?  Well, we all know that
"IBM/PC" == "Intel Bowel Movement/Piece of Crap".  So here's Seagate itself
saying one should use those drives only in PC-type machines.  Good idea: don't
ever put a Seagate drive in your Amiga, UNIX, or other machine.  The only award
I'd bestow on an ST251 drive is the Rigid Digit Salute, otherwise known as the
"bird".  :-)

And why does Seagate spell "disk" as "disc"?  I thought only H-P and the French
did that.

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]