Just built a computer for a relative. The project started off as a maintenance call on his Pentium III machine but quickly evolved into a major project once I discovered the drivers needed for this integrated sound, video and modem board were unavailable from the Matsonic motherboard making company (now making motherboards under other brand names).
It really bothers me when tech businesses do not support their products with online complete documentation, drivers, and other utilities that may be necessary for their motherboards. Matsonic falls into this category and I would not recommend any of their motherboards under any brand name at this time. Things could change. Most companies try to improve their products and/or services.
Anyway this Matsonic micro board lacked an AGP slot, and only had three PCI slots. To buy the video, sound and modem cards to make this motherboard functional without the Matsonic board utilities CD would be costly and not worth it.
I ended up getting a new motherboard (essentially a new computer) and CPU. It was an Intel micro board. It had to be one of the stupidest planar boards ever conceived.
It had integrated sound but no onboard sound connectors (the connectors are not really necessary in a Windows system with an upgraded media player but some people don’t want the upgraded player…..what are they to do?). Who the heck thought this was a good idea? It had no AGP slot either.
The Intel board also gave me strange problems like not being able to detect certain CD burners attached to the secondary channel in a Windows XP environment. The CD burners worked in a XP environment on the secondary channel on other motherboards but not Intel’s board for some reason. This Intel board just would not work with certain CD burners.
If it were my board I would have definitely forced the seller to take it back. I don’t need weird unexplained problems in motherboards that are most likely due to some minor defect that Intel or the seller thought would not be noticed or present a problem.
No matter what caused the problem I would not accept such a board for my personal use but I was building a computer for someone else.
This person did not want to spend a lot of money on a computer. I had to fight to keep the price down as low as possible while maintaining a decent level of functionality.
His knowledge of computers was limited but he wanted some multimedia abilities. He wanted a DVD player and a CD burner.
Ease of use was important which meant Windows XP was necessary (has a lot of built in drivers which means less installing of third party drivers).
The CPU was a Celeron D 2.4 gigahertz chip. His old computer was Intel so I surmised he would want to stay with Intel (I prefer AMD boards and chips).
Dial-up Lessons: I messed around with several computers that were not mine these past weeks and I have learned a lot.
Many of these people were using dial-up ISP services so I got a chance to check out many dail-up Internet providers. I was not impressed with what I saw.
I used dial-up ISP services in the past and is it may imagination or was web browsing using dial-up faster than it is now.
It seems like one who uses any one of the providers of dial-up Internet access will be forced to pay a little extra for so called accelerator software (which many of these companies charge an extra four or five dollars for………..talk about squeezing every penny out of a person) which makes browsing the web quicker.
It’s like these companies are slowing Internet access down on their network in order to make you pay for their accelerator software.
With the new standard modems that were released on the market one or two years ago (I think they call it the V.92 standard) I think web pages should display much faster than they do when going online with a dial-up modem.
These dial-up ISPs also lie to get you to attempt to sign up with them. They prominently advertise, “sign up now, no credit card necessary” but what they don’t tell you is that in order to get service you’re going to have to give them some type of number that enable them to access cash for your Internet access.
You are going to need some type of account that they can access to pay your bill a week, month, forty-five days or one thousand hours of Internet access later. They want a credit card, debit card, or checking account number (they don’t want you to say, “bill me later”). You will not get on the Internet without giving them a number where they can access your cash.
I think they know the average customer is thinking if the ISP doesn’t want a credit card number then they’ll offer to bill me later but this is not the case. These ISPs are playing an advertising mind game that is equivalent to false advertising in my opinion.