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by roarcher 82 days ago
It's also funny that they explicitly list driver quality as "good" for the base option and "great" for the intermediate one. You're really going to deliberately provide worse drivers for the machine I paid you for, just because I didn't buy the more expensive one?

I mean I'm sure lots of companies do this in practice because tickets for higher-paying customers naturally get prioritized, but directly stating your intention to do it on your home page is hilarious.

3 comments

Nvidia drivers are better than AMD. It's not really something they have control over. Geohot is definitely obsessed with bitching about driver bugs though.
That may be, but then it's an inside joke that many of his customers won't get. It just looks like a "fuck you" to anyone buying the cheaper system.

This guy desperately needs a marketing intern to look over his copy. Or hell, anyone who knows how to talk to humans.

Not a joke. It's just true.
It doesn't matter if it's a joke. The non-technical manager or VP making this purchase will not understand it and will expect poor treatment from this vendor, an expectation that will be reinforced by numerous other things on this page. There is no reason to include it at all.
It doesn’t read as if they actually care about broad appeal, given their plain refusal to accommodate traditional procurement processes
So they're only interested in taking on customers who are OK with being treated poorly?
To me it signals honesty. But this is a subjective judgement. It really sounds like you subjectively disliked the page, and you're trying to present that dislike as objective fact. It really annoyed me the way you kept changing your argument to justify that. Why not just say "I dislike their marketing copy, it rubbed me the wrong way" and leave it at that?
I'm confused by this comment. Is it not obvious that everything I've said is my opinion?

Not everyone feels the need to hedge everything they say with "to me..." and "it really sounds like...".

> It really annoyed me ...

I have no idea what you expect me to do with that information.

> you kept changing your argument

I'm not sure what you're referring to. Are you talking about the joke/not-a-joke thing? I didn't change my argument, I dismissed a shallow objection to an irrelevant detail. My point is that regardless of why the driver quality was included on the page, customers are going to take it the wrong way. Yes, that is my opinion, because apparently that needs to be explicitly stated.

Everyone else who disagreed with me seems to have understood all this so I don't know what the source of your confusion is.

It seems that you work a lot with managers who have no clue what they are buying and why.

I mean, you're not wrong: buying enterprise software from Oracle or Microsoft or Salesforce is pure pain.

But nobody expects buying niche hardware from a tiny vendor to involve the usual 128 pre/post sale meetings and 256 hours of professional services.

Also, relevant VP buying these things usually do understand the difference between AMD and Nvidia stacks really well. Like, really-really well.

> It seems that you work a lot with managers who have no clue what they are buying and why.

There are certain quirks of this platform's user base that always make me laugh. For example, HNers absolutely love to imply something condescending about the other guy's workplace in order to make their point.

Watch this, I can do it too: Working with managers who make $65,000 (or $10 million) purchases with no more due diligence than reading a marketing page and clicking "Buy it now" is not the flex you think it is.

I took that as a dig against AMD vs Nvidia driver quality.
I guess it is called ‘honesty’.