Interesting Turn ...

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Greebe
Kurt, I am fully knowledgable of what is online and also what is not online. ie know perdy much the entire story from the inside out. Wanna guess what the projected and anticipated clock speeds were supose to have been? Why there is banding, why there were huge delays in getting out to market, why features were not implemented, why they cost so bloody much etc etc etc?

This is kinda like you telling Haig he doesn't know his products lol

You know what it could have been, but I'm not interested in that

I bought the product knowing what it does, not what it could. I'll buy something insanely better when it comes out, until then I'm satisfied with a product that's been crippled (but only you know that, I don't ).

gittit? I know you know we know that you know more, but I'm sticking to the implemented features not the ones that have been disabled.

[IM_Riktar]

Originally posted by Kurt
I bought the product knowing what it does, not what it could. ,,,,, but I'm sticking to the implemented features not the ones that have been disabled.

This has been my philosophy ever since Matrox began it's back peddling. While I am still a bit miffed over this I have become wiser in my purchases from ANY company. And that is a plus.

Q: What is the difference between sales pitches and political promises?

A: [Insert witty reply here]

[moreau]

For the record, I'm not a lawyer. My brother-in-law is.
I'm not a buisinessperson. My wife is.
Me? I'm just a humble physicist (and Matrox users).

As we discussed this issue (as we have others in the "Matrox Revisionist Past"), the one conclusion we inevitably come to is that you cannot advertise a product one way, and after the sales revise its specification.

You as a consumer can determine that the change is not cause for your anger. But, that bears no impact on the legal rights of another consumer to demand that the product perform as advertised.

A company cannot claim that a feature has no usefulness, and therefore doesn't need to be implimented. Afterall, it was advertised to entice buyers, thereby implying usefulness.

Oh, and Haig... I, like many, bear you no specific ill will (in fact in all of this current discussion I'm rather disinterested), but your comment about "I hope we go back to our previous practice of not releasing clock speeds..." in this or another thread may send a message you didn't intend, especially when viewed in the light of the current problem. i.e. it sounds like you are saying "if we don't tell you what the product is suppossed to do, then there will be no accountability at the end of the day". I doubt that is what you meant, but unfortunately it is often the message we don't intend that sounds the loudest. (if you are married you really know what I mean! )

[Peter Aragon]

A company cannot claim that a feature has no usefulness, and therefore doesn't need to be implimented. Afterall, it was advertised to entice buyers, thereby implying usefulness.

That's the most intelligent post I read on this topic in a long while. But I'm sure this won't change anything to the attitude of Matrox

[Tomasz]

From the Matrox website (http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia512/home.cfm)

Note: Information presented here is in relation to the Parhelia-512 GPU. Feature support may vary with drivers and board-level products.

Although what Matrox is doing is perhaps a bit unethical, there is nothing illegal about it. Physically, the Parhelia-512 chip contains certain transistors which are arranged in such a manner that there is a DirectX 9 Vertex Shader array on the chip. That is all that they advertised. This is similar to the way that they advertised the chip to support AGP 8x transfers, but did not extend this support to the manufactured boards.

Now, if they had advertised that they would provide driver support for DirectX 9 Vertex Shaders, then the situation would be a little different. But, I cannot recall them ever saying that such drivers were planned. Of course everyone probably assumed this, but we all know what happens when we start to make too many assumptions.

Once again, this is a shady practice, but it appears to me that they are legally covered. Regardless, it is a PR disaster. They only reason it is not a big story is because Matrox sold very few Parhelias; and of the people who bought a Parhelia, probably fewer still are interested in gaming.