*BSD News Article 65202


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From: deborah@gallifrey.microunity.com (Deborah Gronke Bennett)
Subject: Re: Why to not buy Matrox Millennium
In-Reply-To: mmicek@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu's message of 27 Mar 1996 08:04:16 GMT
Message-ID: <oqwx3w7pr7.fsf@gallifrey.microunity.com>
Sender: deborah@gallifrey.microunity.com
Organization: MicroUnity Systems Engineering, Inc.
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References: <4j21ph$crr@slappy.cs.utexas.edu>
	<4j3muv$34m@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> <3155FA66.167EB0E7@FreeBSD.org>
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Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 01:16:12 GMT
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In article <4jasq0$phk@jaws.cs.hmc.edu> mmicek@muddcs.cs.hmc.edu (Michael J. Micek) writes:

   In article <3155FA66.167EB0E7@FreeBSD.org>,
   Jordan K. Hubbard <jkh@FreeBSD.org> wrote:

   >I believe in a free market economy.  If a manufacturer starts annoying
   >some segment of its potential user base by engaging in proprietary
   >tactics or clubbing baby seals in its daily television commercials then
   >I expect some other manufacturer (like #9) to come along and show it the
   >error of its ways by stealing those users away with a comparable product
   >for which full chip masks are published on the WEB and television
   >commercials which feature Sally Struthers holding a rescued baby seal in
   >one arm and one of the VGA cards in the other.  If the other
   >manufacturers are unable to offer a comparable product then THAT is the
   >real problem that needs to be addressed since it's the only thing that's
   >going to make someone like Matrox sit up and take notice.  A bunch of
   >FreeBSD and Linux users squeaking on the Internet is NOT going to
   >accomplish that, as big as some people think the combined user base may
   >be (compared to the Windows markets, we're not even a registerable blip
   >for Matrox).  Why not instead write to S3 and say "When the %^&*$@! are
   >you guys going to pull your thumbs out and clobber Matrox already!?"


   It would be interesting to know how the income at Matrox is divided
   up.  How much do the actual designers get?  How much do the lawyers
   get?   How much do the fabrication techs who actually produce the
   boards get?  (I don't know too much about fabrication, so...)  What if
   people are wasting money on patent lawyers, etc., that, if they were
   unnecessary, would make the boards much cheaper.  I dunno.  I'd hope
   that most of the money taken in is allready being spent on design and
   fabrication, but I don't know.

Following Jordan's idea more than Michael's, I feel I have to
point a finger at another set of culprits here besides Matrox,
that is, the firms like Gateway who bundle motherboards, graphics cards,
disks and monitors to make systems. The company I work for was happily
buying PCs from Gateway to run FreeBSD on them. Gateway's default bundle
didn't include all the cards that we wanted, but they were willing to
delete the cards we didn't want (and give us credit for them), 
and add in the ones we wanted for a reasonable charge, which was sometimes
very little premium above the credit for the card we didn't want
(like maybe $50 or $100).

Gateway has recently changed their default bundles so that they all
have the Matrox card in them. Furthermore, they have also changed their
policy so that if you want a card which is not in the default bundle,
you don't get any credit for the card which is deleted. So even if
we buy a new PC with a Diamond or ATI card in it, we end up paying for
a Matrox we can't use. This change has made us seriously look for a better
vendor than Gateway. (We're currently trying out Micron, but the signs
are not good at the moment).

So if you're going to try to apply pressure to get Matrox to open up,
don't forget to tell your PC vendor, whoever that is, that you're not
interested in any PCs with Matrox cards in them for the reason that
they're not supported in XFree86.
-- 
----------
Deborah Gronke Bennett 	(WD5HJH) 	kernel and device drivers engineer
deborah@microunity.com			(408)-734-8100
MicroUnity Systems Eng., 255 Caspian Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1015 USA