Dumped

Well, yesterday I finally dumped the two Shuttle boxes I bought. I got the first one a long time back, in October, and it was a cunt. Never worked, and we finally established that the motherboard was fucked. Nothing worked on it, couldn’t install an OS, and ended up testing the memory, the hard drive, the processor, the optical drive, everything. No joy.

Shuttle wouldn’t replace it, and nor would the supplier, MicroDirect – despite repeated letters to both, they both just put their hands in the air, shrugged, said “Not our problem, mate”, and because it was a self-build system, they pretty much insisted it must be my fault, and I didn’t know what I was doing. Smug cunts.

Anyway, glutton for punishment, I ordered a replacement Shuttle box, this time from Dabs. Some people have said they’re useless fuckers, but when it comes to ordering stuff from them, I’d have to say that they’ve been OK with me. Somehow, I managed to get another box that didn’t work, and had another motherboard problem. All the components, and some new ones, got tested, and no fucking joy.

So I gave up, and ended up ordering a PC from Dell, which is an absolutely storming bit of kit. And I’ve been able to add in pretty much all the components I bought for the Shuttle boxes, with the exception of the processors – Dell use intel, the shuttles were AMD 64-bit processors.

Despite repeated contacts with Shuttle, they’ve absolutely refused to acknowledge any problems with their boxes, even on evidence of everything I’ve tested.

I’ve spent about £600 on the boxes all told, and there’s fuck-all I’m going to get back for them. So now the two boxes have gone to the dump, and I’ve just had to write the loss off. However, what it does also mean is that I would never recommend a Shuttle box to anyone. Maybe – just maybe – if you can buy a system that’s pre-built, and sold as a unit, then OK. But a DIY kit? Don’t touch Shuttle with a shitty stick. In my experience, their products are crap – beautiful, a great idea , but ultimately crap – and their customer service is worse – well, if something non-existent can be deemed to be worse than crap.

And am I fucked off about throwing £600 of stuff on the local dump? You bet your arse I am – but sometimes even I just give up the fight, because I know it’s one I will never win, and in fact never even get a draw on. In this case, it’s just not worth fighting any more. Even when that leaves me almost as pissed off as the battle did in the first place.