Mr. Crusty's Guide to Tech Companies

**mrcrusty** · March 06, 2011, 12:53 AM

Okay, I have a couple of unfinished incoherent ramblings in the works, but a serious bout of Broken Crescent syndrome recently has prevented me from completing any of them.

So I've decided to spend the afternoon today working on something slightly more useful for the inhabitants of TWC than a broad article on various technologies in the PC and computer world.

Now this topic is somewhat contradictory of my typical attitude of never suggesting something purely based on brand alone as it's a stupid notion and I stick by that attitude, but rather than propagating the myth of one brand being better than the other despite selling the same product, I hope get people away from the "x brand is better than y brand because x brand is awesome" attitude that many people (not necessarily in the basement, but just in general) seem to have.

This will be part 1 in my series of posts on this, later posts will either be edited into this one, or I'll create a new thread or post for them, depending on how this one turns out.

I intend to focus more on companies that have a larger market penetration with various products, not just one. For example, I will not do a write-up on a company like Seasonic, which only makes power supplies.

The way this will work is I will split my write-up into different categories. It will begin with an introduction section which will briefly give a history of the company and hopefully give insight into how the company operates. It's usually taken from a wikipedia page or an "about us" page, it's surprisingly hard to find an accurate bio or history of hardware vendors.

I will then give the company an aggregate score based on four categories.

These categories are: Product, Service, Pricing and Availability. Each have a different weighting and will impact on the final score differently.

Product will make up 35% of the final score and is based on a general rating of the company's products. It will be judged according to performance, quality, reliability and ingenuity. I added ingenuity in as I believe that a company that designs and builds it's own products deserves more credit than a company that takes someone else's designs and slaps a sticker on it.

Service will make up 20% of the final score and is based on a general rating of the company's service. This includes things like sales support and warranty service. It may also include how receptive a company is to it's fans (giveaways, forum support, etc).

Pricing will make up 35% of the final score and is based on a general rating of the company's prices. This is basic too and I will take into consideration it's price relative to the product's quality, it's competition and service. I won't blindly rate a company poorly if it makes one product absurdly expensive but the rest are excellent value. I will however, rate this with a global audience in mind. A company with products that are priced well in North America, but priced poorly internationally will be scored lower than a company with products priced well globally.

Availability will make up 10% of the final score and is based on how easy it is to obtain a product from the company. This isn't just in North America, this is also based on global availability, so companies with a larger market presence all around the world will be scored higher than a company which limits itself to a certain geographical market.

Each of the categories will be given a score out of 10. I'll be generous with my scoring, so the numbers won't represent a linear progression in rating. While 1 still represents crap filled crap with crap frosting and 10 represents as good as humanely possible, 5 won't represent average.

In my scoring system, 1 = absolute crap, 5 = mediocre, 7 = average, 8 = good, 9+ = excellent.

I can't stress enough how choosing to buy a product based on brand alone is not a good idea, this is mainly for someone who has done their research on what product they want to buy, but want to know a little more about the companies selling it and how good they are in general terms.

I've already said that this is part 1 in my series. For this one, I'll go for the more well known and beloved companies who have their tentacles in multiple product areas. So, this one will include CoolerMaster and Corsair. Part 2 will be EVGA and OCZ. Part 3 will be Antec and Thermaltake. Haven't decided beyond that, though I may go Asus and Gigabyte.
So, let's get to it shall we?

Cooler Master