Comments on the Marvel g400 for w2k situation.

[jjn1056]

Anyone wonder how it is Matrox can provide w2k drivers for their new g450 but not for the Marvel g400? Those drivers have been in beta since April!

It took less time for me to be conceived and born from my mother's womb...

Sounds fishy to me...

It's not like my video card is five years old or something like that. I've only had it a year!

I can still buy spark plugs for my 40 year old ford truck, but I can't use my 1.5 year old video card on my 1 year old OS. Why do we let these hardware manufacturers constantly scam us into upgrading like this?

I'm seriously considering my legal options. Matrox needs to support the products it already has in the hands of consumers before it supports those that are only starting to show up in retail. AOL pulled the same BS a few years ago. They accepted more new users then they knew their intrastructure could handle. They chose to put their future sales goals ahead of currently paying customers.

For all you g450TV owners, you could be in the same situation as us Marvel g400 owners in one year when Microsoft releases the next version of it's OS.

Let me know if you want to join in.

Peace, John.

[sergiovalentino]

I agree, now Matrox for me is only a great disappointment, i'll buy no more a Matrox card.
However i think this situation is caused by the incoming release of g450TV card...another dirty buisiness at all!

[Sciascia]

I am not here to defend Matrox. But As far as I know the drivers that did come with the G400 worked with the operating system at the time. Now if I was going to develop a new product, I would focus on making it compatible with the newest products (ie. Win98 and the G400 or Win 2000 and the G450). With all of the rage going towards DV and MPEG2; and you already have an outdated card in the G400 (realistically), would you dump a lot of time and money into developing SW for something that has no monetary return? Honestly? If there is enough lack of support what could 1 person do? Are you going to stop using your computer? Are you going to die? No, you are going to be forced into buying the newest, fastest, baddest toy of the week. More money for them, more NEW problems for you and just when you think they are gong to get it working just right, M-$oft comes out with some new "must have or I'll die" lump of bug-riddled code that throws the whole industry out of whack and your "(insert component name here)" card is outdated and you are out of luck once again. It is just good business savvy. If you bought a computer today that did everything you ever needed forever, where would these big companies be at today or tomorrow. If they didn't make millions and millions of dollars making you feel like you have to upgrade and then forcing you, the economy wouldn't be where it is today. Think about all of those jobs out there...You should be proud of doing your part to contribute to your countries economic prosperity.

So when I can't get anything to work with my G400, I'll upgrade to Win2000 and the G450. Until then, I'll just muck around with my beloved G400 and the almost great drivers (finally)written for it on Win98.

(too be read with a bit of sarcasm)

[This message has been edited by Sciascia (edited 29 November 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Sciascia (edited 29 November 2000).]

[This_Idiot]

I'm not going to defend Matrox either - they're big enough to do their own work.

But your 40 year old Ford still uses an internal combustion engine, same as today's Fords. Give it a few years and Ford will have a hydrogen engine/electric motor/plasma drive, and those that bought this years compact will be in the same boat as you - sparkplugs aren't for sale anymore. OK, the analogy is a bit different, since 3rd party manufacturers are making a tidy living making sparkplugs and will continue to do so while there are sufficient gas-heads out there to make them a profit.

In the digital world, things are moving a bit quicker - W2K is whole different proposition to W9x, and Matrox priority is on new sales. I don't think that you'll find that most other capture card manufacturers are providing any better service.

Maybe someone from Matrox could weigh in here and tell us what is going on ?

[coolfish]

I'm not going to defend Matrox either. Wait a second, i'm going to do completely the opposite:

would you dump a lot of time and money into developing SW for something that has no monetary return?

That's where you are wrong. Partially. No one expects Matrox to develop drivers for the G400 for OS/2, or Win 3.1, or even 95. We're talking a relatively new video card, and a relatively new OS, win2k. We're not talking age old products here - they are BOTH pretty recent (1-2 years or so). It is NOT unreasonable to expect some sort of support for within that timespan. Matrox IS losing money by NOT supporting win2k+g400/rrg users. Poor driver support is a definite turn off for most video card buyers. Add on to being burned by crappy drivers on a pretty new card and a pretty new OS, and odds are many of us will never buy Matrox again.


No, you are going to be forced into buying the newest, fastest, baddest toy of the week.

And it's going to be from a company that has great driver support. IE, NOT MATROX!

[This_Idiot]

Well I agree that poor support is a major cause of not capturing repeat business. Catch me buying another S3 card !!!!

But (stretch your imagination here), if Matrox came up with a 3D card that blew all rivals into the bushes, and also offered flawless MPEG2 capture into the bargain for a price that was well within your pocket....

Are you going to turn that down on principle, or are you going to buy ATI (heard plenty of moans about their support/lack of features) - or mebbe Dazzle ? How are Miro doing right now ?

I'm not disagreeing here - I happen to think that customer satisfaction should be the aiming point for any company. Unfortunately, the video accelerator/capture market has become so fast moving that most companies can't afford to look back. I've upgraded my PC's 3 times in the last 3 years, and most of the kit that I have installed doesn't even have an entry on the manufacturers "support" list anymore. We're talking AMD, Gigabyte, Fujitsu, Creative here !

[wkulecz]

Hey bad example about poor support! The three S3 based boards I have lying around do work in w2k about as well as they did in win3.1 and win9x!!!! (two are variations from Diamond, the other is a noname clone).

--wally.

[Michel Carleer]

Not to mention that the Marvel G400 was only on sale a couple of month before W2K (and a lot of month after the beta releases) and that for about a year now I have a non-working Marvel and still cannot buy a new comparable product from Matrox: the 450 is still not on sale in Europe, and still for a while I think. And the 450 is certainly not the killer 3d gaming and all plus capture card. Up to now, the same is true for the RT2000.
Meaning: I am now fully equipped with Pinnacle products.
Michka


[This message has been edited by Michel Carleer (edited 30 November 2000).]

[dZeus]

Pinnacle sure does have nice Win2k support (or driver support in general).... NOT!