[ale] Monarch Computer

[Mike Millson]

James,

My father-in-law has had very good luck getting his custom built systems 
from  here:

Apaq Digital Systems
ebay at apaqdigital.com
(770) 908-2522
Chong Lee

James P. Kinney III wrote:
> 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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