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And this is why I always buy Crucial. Cruial and Micron are the same company and micron actually make the chips rather than just assemble them. They have contro

by pling 12y ago

And this is why I always buy Crucial. Cruial and Micron are the same company and micron actually make the chips rather than just assemble them. They have control over the entire process end to end and no motivation to pick up chips anywhere else as they already have the best deal. Over the last 10-12 years I've bought about 2000-3000 sticks of RAM from them. Not one failure or problem ever. I used to buy vendor provided RAM (mainly IBM and Sun back then) and just got ripped off every time. Zero failures on Sun stuff but the ECC stuff hurts. IBM sold us crap lots of times. Only pain is you can't get an 8Mb EDO SIMM anymore for embedded stuff so its off to a dealer to be shafted repetitively for stuff like that.

jjoonathan 12y ago
> They have control over the entire process end to end How is that supposed to protect you from a completely intentional shady business tactic? Because that's what this is. "We looked the other way and our supplier screwed us over" is a flimsy excuse at the best of times (quality control and penalties should be built into the contract in the first place), but in the Kingston/PNY example it isn't even that.
- bluedino 12y ago
  PNT's other choice is to pay more for better quality NAND or controllers and then pass the cost along to the consumer.
- kourt 12y ago
  Presumably because semiconductor manufacturing has massive setup costs, so changing anything in the middle of a production run is likely to be uneconomical. But an assembler can simply switch parts or suppliers.
- pling 12y ago
  Well the supplier and the manufacturer are the same for Micron. They wouldn't screw themselves over. That's illogical.
  - dijit 12y ago
    the issue at hand was using cheaper fabrication for lesser quality parts. micron/crucial could still do this. this is all about saving money once the reputation of a model has been established.
Afforess 12y ago
I avoid Crucial SSDs like the plague. They shipped the M4 and similar models with a firmware bug that causes the drive to stop working after 5000 hours of power on time: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Crucial-m4-Firmware-BSOD,14544.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Crucial-m4-Firmware-BSOD,14... Not cool.
- kabdib 12y ago
  Crucial, OCZ and Kingston were the favorite failure complaints on the email list I was on at Microsoft ("Hardware Junkies"). The wisdom a few years ago was to stick with Intel and Samsung. I see no reason to change that. I'd rather spend fifty or a hundred bucks more and get a drive that I'm pretty sure won't fall flat on its face.
  - btgeekboy 12y ago
    OCZ is the worst - I avoid them like the plague now. I've had 2 of 3 of their SSDs fail on me.
- yorick 12y ago
  They actually found the bug and released a fimware update fixing it before anyone's SSD was 5000 hours old, and SSD owners (at least back in those days) are generally expected to install firmware updates. It was quite well-publicised, too; they handled it really well, except for the actual release.
  - grapeshot 12y ago
    That wasn't even the only firmware problem with those drives. There was a later bug that would cause the drive to not be recognized after a hard power down, and it wouldn't show up again until you left the computer sitting at the BIOS screen for at least 20 minutes.
- commandar 12y ago
  It was fixed quickly and that's been the only major complaint I've seen. Further, the bug would cause reboots, but wasn't outright destructive. This is about the same time Sandforce based drives were failing left and right. tl;dr - Crucial is one of a handful of brands I do trust, and I've owned a number of the M4 series.

by pling 12y ago

jjoonathan 12y ago

> They have control over the entire process end to end How is that supposed to protect you from a completely intentional shady business tactic? Because that's what this is. "We looked the other way and our supplier screwed us over" is a flimsy excuse at the best of times (quality control and penalties should be built into the contract in the first place), but in the Kingston/PNY example it isn't even that.

bluedino 12y ago
PNT's other choice is to pay more for better quality NAND or controllers and then pass the cost along to the consumer.
kourt 12y ago
Presumably because semiconductor manufacturing has massive setup costs, so changing anything in the middle of a production run is likely to be uneconomical. But an assembler can simply switch parts or suppliers.
pling 12y ago
Well the supplier and the manufacturer are the same for Micron. They wouldn't screw themselves over. That's illogical.
- dijit 12y ago
  the issue at hand was using cheaper fabrication for lesser quality parts. micron/crucial could still do this. this is all about saving money once the reputation of a model has been established.

Afforess 12y ago

I avoid Crucial SSDs like the plague. They shipped the M4 and similar models with a firmware bug that causes the drive to stop working after 5000 hours of power on time: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Crucial-m4-Firmware-BSOD,14544.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Crucial-m4-Firmware-BSOD,14... Not cool.

kabdib 12y ago
Crucial, OCZ and Kingston were the favorite failure complaints on the email list I was on at Microsoft ("Hardware Junkies"). The wisdom a few years ago was to stick with Intel and Samsung. I see no reason to change that. I'd rather spend fifty or a hundred bucks more and get a drive that I'm pretty sure won't fall flat on its face.
- btgeekboy 12y ago
  OCZ is the worst - I avoid them like the plague now. I've had 2 of 3 of their SSDs fail on me.
yorick 12y ago
They actually found the bug and released a fimware update fixing it before anyone's SSD was 5000 hours old, and SSD owners (at least back in those days) are generally expected to install firmware updates. It was quite well-publicised, too; they handled it really well, except for the actual release.
- grapeshot 12y ago
  That wasn't even the only firmware problem with those drives. There was a later bug that would cause the drive to not be recognized after a hard power down, and it wouldn't show up again until you left the computer sitting at the BIOS screen for at least 20 minutes.
commandar 12y ago
It was fixed quickly and that's been the only major complaint I've seen. Further, the bug would cause reboots, but wasn't outright destructive. This is about the same time Sandforce based drives were failing left and right. tl;dr - Crucial is one of a handful of brands I do trust, and I've owned a number of the M4 series.