[ale] Monarch Computer

[James P. Kinney III]

One the one hand, the apparent death of Monarch is a loss. They were the
only quality builder that actively wanted to make Linux systems.

On the other hand, their death is not much of a loss. As their customer
service has been in near freefall for the past several years, I have
been forced to go back to building my own systems.  I have been looking
at adding systems building to my list of other thing I do for an income
but I keep walking away from it as being more of a hassle than I can do
successfully with the size of my organization.

At the moment, I don't know of anyplace where I can spec a system and
have it run (or even get shipped with) RedHat, Debian, Gentoo, or
Slackware AND get great support after the sale. 

If anyone has some leads for a replacement for the Monarch of about 3
years ago, don't keep it a secret :) 

In the meantime, I guess I'll go back to evaluating at the business
model of building solid Linux systems again as the demand for them is
only going to go up once Vista hits the streets.

If you think Gentoo runs slick on old hardware, you should see what it
does on new, fast hardware!

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 02:28 -0500, Vernard Martin wrote:
> The skinny on Monarch Computer is that they were purchased/merged with
> another company. I believe it is StarMax. That is the build/parts
> division of the same company that owns TigerDirect by the way.
> 
> In the last couple of months, the company effectively has laid off most
> if not all of its employees with them given the option of going to work
> for the new company. They are over 40 days behind their standard holiday
> load and customers that are trying to get warranty help have basically
> been ignored. They removed their phone numbers from their web site
> recently if that is any indication.
> 
> I used Monarch computer equipment to build a high performance cluster
> for the Rollins School of public health. Each node costs about $15K with
> the head node coming in at around $29K. We had a motherboard go out and
> it took us over two weeks to get it resolved and that was only with us
> physically driving the unit over to them and with me physically standing
> there helping them solve the problem.
> 
> It is obvious from what I observed that the company is going through a
> transition that has effectively killed all of their credibility. I pity
> the company that tries to use their name in the future. My personal and
> professional experience with them is that they are no longer worth the
> effort to try to do business with them. If you have some equipment from
> them, then you are most likely never going to get any service on it in a
> timely fashion.
> 
> Its sad since they used to be a fantastic company. Alas, all good things
> come to an end.
> 
> If you want more info, then drop me a private email :-)
> 
> V
> 
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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