Original_To:  BITNET%"MBU-L@TTUVM1.BITNET"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 09:30:00 EST
From:         Alan Girelli <GIRELLI@BRANDEIS.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: gateway 2000

>Locke--about Gateway 2000 machines. I recently bought one for my
>own use and I'm really pleased with it. Great service, great
>price. BUT I don't know about their networking abilities. I don't
>see why not. .... Can anyone else be a little more useful?

>Amanda Inskip Corcoran--TEXAS TECH

Folks;

I inherited this file from a group here at Brandeis evaluating DOS machine
purchases.  The report below was generated by the IBM-clone committee; all I
know about this group is what I can glean from reading the message below -- the
findings are not those of Brandeis University.  Perhaps they will be of
interest to those doing an evaluation of DOS compatibles.

ALAN GIRELLI
Brandeis University
Bitnet: girelli@brandeis
Internet: girelli@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
AppleLink: U0181
Phone:  (617) 736-4592


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



From:   IN%"BWEAVER@WISCMACC.BITNET"  "Bill Weaver - MACC Computer Repair...2-4
760" 13-FEB-1992 19:06:12.01
To:     IN%"HES-FRUM@WISCMACC.BITNET"
CC:
Subj:   Findings of the IBM-clone Committee

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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 09:26 CST
From: "Bill Weaver - MACC Computer Repair...2-4760" <BWEAVER@WISCMACC.BITNET>
Subject: Findings of the IBM-clone Committee
To: HES-FRUM@WISCMACC.BITNET
Message-id: <22021309260572@vms3.macc.wisc.edu>
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directly to the other person's email address


There were quite a few requests for this information so I decided to
sent it to all.  Hope many of you find it of value.


The following (two messages) is the email announcement of the findings of
the IBM clone committee.  They started their work last summer and this was
sent to interested campus departments in December and January.  Acronyms
you will be unfamiliar with are:  MACC = Madison Academic Computing
Center
(at Univ. of Wisc. - Madison), MIC = Microcomputer Information Center,
MO = Microcomputer Outlet (resells computers),  CR = Computer Repair.
MIC, MO and CR are all part of MACC)  Tech Parnters is a campus forum.
@MACC is the monthly newsletter.

From a hardware support point of view, only Everex and Wang presented
significant amounts of information on support programs for a specific
on campus facility.  Zeos and Club AT have support programs but for one
reason or another were not very impressionable.

We are currently setting up support for the Everex line of clones.

-bill w.


(Warning!  This document is not in final draft form and thus may contain a
grammatical error or two!)

Over the past few months, MACC has been conducting an evaluation of IBM
PC-compatibles.  As many of you are involved in your departmental PC
purchasing
process, we felt it best to first release the results of our study to Tech
Partners.  The following information is an adaptation of a forthcoming
@MACC news article.

I wish to take this opportunity to once again thank those members of Tech
Partners who responsed to my September request for personal & departmental
experiences on a variety of PC hardware. This information proved quite
valuable to us and was used in our final evaluation rankings.

As MACC's role is to provide general campus computing support, we desired
to find vendors offering products and services which are of sufficient
quality to give us confidence in recommending them to the campus at-large.
We also desired to find vendors with whom we could work to provide technical
support and service on a level comparable to the present level of service
offered by the MIC and CR on IBM products.

As there are more than 200 PC-compatible vendors, it was obvious that we
could not extensively test all available products.  Thus we had to define
a set of criteria by which to compare vendors and select a manageable number
for in-depth evaluations.   We determined that  Price, Quality, and Technical
Support were the key factors in our decision process and decided to define
them as follows:

Price           Price across their product line had to average  25% below
                the cost of comparable IBM products.

Quality         Reference checks were conducted across the campus and
                with several colleges and universities.  Product reviews
                from several popular PC-oriented publications were
                collected and compared.

Tech Support    Vendor must offer advanced technical support and have
                authority to enact engineering changes to system hardware.

The final criteria was established to guarantee that the recommended
vendors provided technical support beyond the capability of the MIC's
consultants and to insure that the vendor could make modifications to
their product's  hardware or BIOS to address system incompatibilities.

Eight vendors met these requirements and were invited to submit system units
for hands-on evaluation tests.  These eight were Club American Technology
(Club AT), Compuadd, DTK, Everex, Gateway 2000, Northgate, Wang, and Zeos.
Each sent 3 systems, one from each of the following popular microprocessor
platforms;  386SX, 386DX, and 486DX, for a 30 day period. During this
evaluation period, MIC and CR staff scored the systems in the following areas:

Performance     Industry standard benchmark tests were run on each system
                to measure CPU, fixed disk input/output, and video/graphics
                performance.

Tech Support    Several contacts were made with each vendor's technical
                support staff to resolve any problems encountered during
                our testing and to evaluate their response time and accuracy
                on several predetermined test questions.

Documentation   The standard documentation set included with each system
                was reviewed for completeness and ease of use.

System Design   Both the MIC and CR staffs separately evaluated each
                system for design considerations.  This included examining
                each system on such items as:  accessibility of expansion
                slots, number of proprietary parts, quality of workmanship,
                brightness of monitor, and keyboard feel (several other
                design factors are not listed here).

Repair          A questionnaire was sent to each vendor to gather
                information on parts availability, local service provider
                options, service manuals, and other repair related concerns.

References      Using the data gathered in the first evaluation stage as
                described in the category of "Quality", we determined a
                composite score.

Compatibility   A variety of hardware adapter boards and software packages
                were tested on the systems to measure their compatibility
                with the IBM PC standard.

Price           Current educational prices were obtained from each vendor
                and adjusted to compensate for different system features
                and/or software bundles.

SUMMARY

To no one's surprise, all of the systems scored fairly well in our tests.  The
days when claims of being "IBM compatible" when only 50% of the available
hardware and software would function properly are largely gone, we
encountered only a few minor incompatibilities.   Our final rankings, along
with notations of areas where products scored above or below the group average,
are as follows  (Note that we ranked products with very close scores together
in clusters, within these clusters the vendors are listed in order of
preference):

Cluster Vendor          Well Above Average      Below Average

A:      Everex          System Design, Refs     Prices (moderately higher)
        Northgate       Documentation, Price    None
        Club AT         System Design           None
        ZEOS            Performance             Tech Support (erratic)

B:      Gateway         Price, Performance      Tech Supp, Compatibility, Refs
        DTK             Price                   Documentation, References
        Compuadd        Tech Support, Refs      Performance, Price

C:      Wang            Tech Support            Price, System Design, Doc

In our opinion all of the vendors in the first cluster are worthy of serious
consideration.  All provide local maintenance service and have existing
state/system/campus purchasing contracts.   We acknowledge that many of
you have competant in-house PC support staff and may have specialized
microcomputer needs.   It is quite possible that by changing the significance
of vendor-supplied technical support, system video performance, price, or
another variable, that the order of the ratings would be altered.   Likewise
it is possible a lower-rated vendor's 486/33 or 386/40 system may be
better suited for your needs than one from highly-rated vendor.   However
it is MACC's intent to recommend vendors for a campus-wide audience and we
have  weighted our test results accordingly.  To assist you in selecting a
vendor best suited to your needs, I have provided information on areas where
vendor's  products scored significantly above or below the group average.

It should also be noted  that we received several excellent references on both
Dell and Compaq; however, they were eliminated from consideration due to their
current higher education pricing.

Our current plans are to invite each of the vendors in cluster A to place units
in the MIC for demonstration purposes. MIC consultants will work to familiarize
themselves with the product lines from each of these vendors and develop ties
with their central technical support staffs.  We anticipate that it will take
some time to accomplish this goal and so we will begin the process with our
top-rated vendor, Everex, and work down the list.

MACC Computer Repair is in the process of negotiating with Everex to provide
on-campus authorized warranty service.  It will be a few days before we can
make a definitive statement but the prospects appear good that CR will offer
Everex repair services.  However, as adding service support is a much more
difficult task than technical support, it is unlikely at this time that we
will be able to offer similar service for other cluster A vendors.

The MIC staff will periodically review the price, performance, and quality
of the all major PC-compatibles and reserves the right to change our
recommendations if warranted.

Note:  While we found the monitors and laptop computers which are
available from the above vendors to be of good quality, if your video or
transportable computing needs are demanding, then we recommend you evaluate
other competing products before purchase.  We have an ever changing exhibit of
both monitors and laptop computers in the MIC along with reviews from most
leading PC and Macintosh publications.

To obtain additional information about current prices and configurations,here
are the UW-Madison sales representatives for the four highest-rated vendors:

Everex          1-800-821-0806  ext 2369        Jerry Olesen
Northgate       1-800-548-3510  ext 6312        Steve Terzich
Club AT         1-800-368-3288                  David Robb
ZEOS            1-800-245-2449  ext 1173/1174   Renee Granger/Mark Monke

At this time the MACC Micro Outlet will not offer individual or departmental
sales of any of these product lines.  The higher education resell programs
offered by these vendors will not allow us to match current contract prices
and recover our operating cost (a campus requirement).

Note:  Everex has agreed to new contract terms which allow the substitution of
different fixed drives, floppy drives, or RAM to their standard educational
bundles.  The cost of a substitution will be the price differential of the
products plus a $50 re-configuration fee.  They will also allow UW-System
purchasers to specify a different type of chassis (Low-Profile, Baby AT, or
Standard) for a $100 fee.  You may delete the EverSync 500 monitor from any
bundle and receive a $300 discount from standard bundle pricing.  UW System
contracts have not yet been amended to show these changes.

Dana Bunner
Assistant Director
MACC

Begin second message sent on Jan 31 1992:


Since my release of MACC's PC-compatible study results to the Tech
Partners group last week, I have heard a few concerns raised on the
study's objectivity.  In particular, some people have expressed a belief
that MACC overly weighted local repair factors and ranked vendors higher
if their policies resulted in an increase in business for MACC's Computer
Repair.  As there was conflicting information distributed throughout
the studythese concerns with the Tech Partners group and clear up the
any misconceptions before they have much opportunity to spread.

During the course of the study, MACC's Computer Repair did send a
questionnaire to each of the vendors being evaluated.  This
questionnaire did contain several inquiries on such items as;
parts availability, location of local repair facilities, warranty
reimbursement terms, and parts exchange policies.  While this
questionnaire was scored by MACC using various different methods,
the score used in the final analysis did not reward vendors for
policies which would have forced campus purchasers to choose MACC
as their only service provider.  In fact, the top-ranked vendor,
Everex, offers service from a local computer dealer and two
national service companies.

The same philosophy of trying to select the best vendor for the
campus as a whole, was followed in the scoring of technical support.
Rather than give higher scores to vendors who provide poor technical
support in order to induce more campus computer users to call the MIC,
we gave the highest scores to those who provided the best support.

And to answer a few inquiries on how did the vendors compare on non-
price issues, here are the rankings with price excluded.  Again the
vendors are shown ranked in order of perference, with those having
similar scores shown in clusters.

  Without Pricing Factor               With Pricing Factor

 Cluster A:      Everex               Cluster A:     Everex
                                                     Northgate
 Cluster B:      Zeos                                Club AT
                 Northgate                           **Zeos
                 Club AT
                 Compuadd             Cluster B:     Gateway 2000
                                                     DTK
 Cluster C:      Gateway 2000                        *Compuadd
                 Wang
                 DTK                  Cluster C:     *Wang

These rankings were based on each vendor's score in the areas of;
System Performance, Technical Support, Documentation, System Design,
Repair, References & Reviews, and Compatibility.

*Newly introduced (and lower-priced) lines from Compuadd, the 'Express' series,
 and Wang have not yet been tested.

**Zeos has just reduced prices on some models.

The volatile nature of PC-compatible pricing was one of the primary reasons
for deciding to rank the systems in groups or clusters.  Trying to choose
a "best buy" for each Intel microprocessor platform (ie 386sx/20, 386/33,
486/33, etc.) gets to be a daily activity.

Also in our performance testing, we found differences of up to 30%-40%
between similarly configured systems from different vendors.  It is our
intention to make these performance figures available through the MIC in
February.

Dana Bunner
Assistant Director, MACC
                              \/
****************---------->>>>><<<<<----------****************
*    Bill Weaver, Computer Repair         (608)262-4760      *
*    Academic Computing Center, University of Wisconsin      *
*   1210 West Dayton Street   Madison, Wisconsin   53706     *
*   bweaver@macc.wisc.edu         bweaver@wiscmacc.bitnet    *
****************---------->>>>><<<<<----------****************
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