386 questions

[Daniel Ray]

In article <4219 at ihlpf.ATT.COM>, weave at ihlpf.ATT.COM (Weaver) writes:
> -What is a good machine to buy?  Obviously, cost is a primary consideration.
> Has anyone had experience with the Northgate or Quantus 386 machines?  Their
> advertised prices are lower than most.
> 
> Thanks
> Jim Weaver

Hi all, this is my first USENET posting ever. Let me tell you about the Quantus
MT/386 machine. When I had decided to purchase a UNIX system and all that goes
with it, due to financial constraints I wanted to go mail order wherever 
possible. The Quantus (from Quantus Micro Systems, Spofford, NH) was the only
machine that was cheap as well as having an 80meg drive and 2megs of RAM, so
I was sold, not knowing any better (sometimes I do the smartest things! :@).
They were real nice over the phone, and I drove down to their plant (since I
live in Vt), and paid $3760 in hard cash and picked up my machine. At the time
I was still waiting for the SCO XENIX software to arrive, so all I could do was
to experiment by running some MS-DOS stuff I had. Exactly 8 hours after I 
turned it on, the machine crashed. It lost the CMOS setup configuration that
told it about the hard disk, the time, etc. I also discovered that Quantus had
forgot to give me the security key *and* the setup program with the machine.
So I called them and asked for it, thinking that running SETUP would fix things.
A week later, it came in the mail, but when I ran it it didn't work. Somehow
the controller card flaked out. I decided that I wanted my money back. So I 
returned the machine, but they said that I'd have to wait 30 business days
before I could get a refund. That time has passed, and still no word from them.
They have both my machine and my money. Very soon now I shall take them to
court. When I was down there waiting to give back my machine, there were two
other customers in there waiting to get their machines fixed. Turns out that
they bought the 286 machine, and each, independently had disk failures within
a week of ownership.

The moral of the story: DON'T BUY A QUANTUS! 

Btw, I never encountered such a mean (substitute more potent descriptor here)
group of people, when I wanted a refund. I mean its only money, no need to
get so bad. Oh well.

northstar (of The Northern Lights)  uunet!uvm-gen!tnl!norstar
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