jimmysmitty writes:
> I didn't state these specifically but you can imagine that having 12 of them fail
> like I stated puts a bad taste in your mouth. ...
Yes indeed, very understandable from your point of view.
> ... It was a bit ago bit I think they were the Vertex 3s ...
Yup, that figures.
> .. and they were all up to date with firmware ...
Remember though there were further updates after all the failure issues.
Latest release is 1.37 I think.
> Maybe we got a bad batch ...
Probably, though it's peculiar that this whole thing seemed to pan out in that way,
ie. what seems to be a combination of fw bugs and some kind of manufacturing flaw.
Otherwise, I can't see how one person can have such terrible issues as you did,
while others (eg. me, I have loads of V3s) have no issues at all.
> ... but in the end we stopped selling OCZ because beyond that we had more customer
> returns with them than we did with most other brands we sold.
Certainly from a biz perspective that makes perfect sense.
I can only conclude that within OCZ back then, the majority view was that, a bit like
MS and Windows releases, it was better to release fast & try to grab market share,
effectively using the early adopters as bug finders. False economy IMO, never understood
why any business would think that makes sense, but sooo many companies do it. Look
at all the car recalls we've had in recent years, now another massive one this week (what
is it, more than 8 million due to faulty ignition systems or something?).
After the Vertex3 though, things changed at OCZ. The Vertex4 was sooo much better,
perhaps in part due to it not using a SF controller, and the performance was a big leap too.
Even today, a 256GB Vertex4 is a very potent unit.
> If it happened on one or two I wouldn't have cared but 12 along with ones going bad that
> customers bought? That makes me stick to other brands.
Understandable, and proof of my comment above about a company releasing unfinished
products being such a bad idea. Once bitten, twice shy; an aggrieved user, especially any
commercial user, often just won't come back, no matter how good the later products are.
The modern OCZ doesn't operate in that old way I'm sure, but it will take a long while for
them to claw back a decent reputation, even if newer products are indeed way up there
with the latest Samsungs. Hopefully Toshiba can chop away the fluff and get them to
release a rival to the 850, because based on how well the Vector performs I would have
though that's easily doable. Atm they're a bit in the doldrums IMO though because their
pricing is just too high. The Vertex3 used to be very much competitive when it was
mid-life, but the Vertex 460 is too expensive, the Vector 150 is often out of stock (and it
needs to be cheaper than the EVO to really sell well), and on some sites the 240GB
Vertex 460 has vanished entirely.
I hope OCZ can get back into the game, because we need the competition, which atm
seems to be mostly coming from Crucial and SanDisk instead.
Ian.