mobo's & on-board devices

[mofo]

what a pain in the groin! I've just finished "playing" with my first board that has on-board peripherals. I didn't buy one, mind you, was just helping out a friend who was having problems with his machine. You just cannot do anything above average computer work. me thinks they stink! rant done.

[archie]

Me agrees.
One of my first hand experiences with on-board anything was getting two motherboards by the same manufacturer, same model # except that one came with the on-board sound. The cost difference was only $5.00. What I noticed was that everytime the wheel button on the mouse was used on the one that had the on-board sound chipset, it would cause a noise to come out of the speaker ... kind of a low-level white noise ... annoying it was. I ended up disabling the on-board sound and getting a Creative Labs sound card. In my day to day work, I deal mostly with these 'on-board everything' motherboards. In the old days when this phenomena was not so common, it was easy to replace a card and take it from there when troubleshooting. Not anymore.
rant done

[HAL9000]

Motherboards with everything onboard have their place. For the average user that wants word processing and e-mail, it works fine. For the business that needs anything but a high end workstation, fine, for the person that wants to play games and tinker, it's totally wrong and becomes nothing but junk.

[mofo]

Yea Hal, and unfortunately the poor folks who don't know much about computers get sucked in by those $699 computer specials, only to find out soon after that they can't do much with them besides playing minesweeper and notepad. Well ok i'm over-exagerating but you get my point..

[HAL9000]

I know all too well what you are talking about. Last year FutureShop ran a Boxing Day special and was puking out a cheapie E-Machine (fine print specified refurb) for $399.00CDN with monitor. I had every cheap SOB wanting me to beat that price and say that I was gouging them when I gave them system prices of $1100.00CDN with a monitor. I told them whatever, go buy it then, my service rate is $65/hour and I am not forgiving about my time when I work on junk.

I've used all in one boards, but try to stay with a good name brand board. I have a few systems such as these as workstations in schools and businesses and they all work great, but then again, a P166 would work fine for them too if they were available.

[lovitz]

HAL,

I remember those " too good to be true " E-Machine deals. A buddy of mine bought one ( without my knowing ) and it worked for like 6 months then it crapped out.

You get what you pay for.

[HAL9000]

He got 6 months, why did it last so long

[DrZaius]

Hopefully nVidia will help put a good light on all-in-one boards with their nForce setup. The problem with most all-in-one mATX/FlexATX boards is that they use very cheap parts for the video (usually S3 or SiS or other junk) and same for onboard sound or modem, and they don't make the boards so they can at least manage the onboard components correctly (drivers, IRQs, etc.), they just stick 'em in and hope it works. I'm looking to build a small development box (for programming) soon and I'm really looking forward to the nForce: SB quality sound and MX quality video all in one nice board for a nice price.

[lovitz]

HAL,

also didn't the purchaser have to buy like a 2 year internet subscription with that E-Machines package?

[HAL9000]

No, there wasn't any additional baggage such as that, just a POS.

[lovitz]

hahaha


Point of Sales machine?

haha

j/k