Subject: COMTRADE Opinion/Information/Review File (Long)
Supersedes: <pc-hardware-faq/vendor-reviews/comtrade_825451240@rtfm.mit.edu>
Date: 28 Mar 1996 22:02:10 GMT
Summary: Information & opinions of people's experiences with
         the Comtrade computer company, makers of PC-clones
X-Last-Updated: 1996/02/03

Archive-Name: pc-hardware-faq/vendor-reviews/comtrade
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-Modified: 02/02/1996
Version: 3.1

______________________________________________________________________
Comtrade Opinion/Information/Review File            By: John M. Grohol

______________________________________________________________________
Information about this File:
 
First, this file is LONG! Second, it is only updated once every
other month or so, on a very irregular basis. Third, the only
organization of this file is as follows: 
 
It is filled with individuals' opinions and experiences with
the COMTRADE computer mail-order company, which sells a wide
line of computers and products. I originally compiled this file
because I was looking to buy from them. As noted below, I did
buy from them and have had no problems with my machine, monitor,
motherboard, or anything else since the purchase. Would I buy
from them again? Probably not, given the wide variability
of quality people experience with their computer components.
Calls to technical support are nearly never answered or
returned.

The most recent experiences are at the beginning of this file.
 
If *you* have bought from them and have not yet made your
contribution to this list, simply email me your experiences
with COMTRADE and they will be added to the beginning of this
file. Thank you and Good luck!
 
_________________________________________________________________
General Information Regarding COMTRADE ELECTRONICS:
 
Information from July, 1993. Call the BBB for the most recent
information on COMTRADE (located in City of Industry, CA, USA).
COMTRADE is actually Comtrade Electronics U S A, Inc. and is
owned by Mr. Christopher Luke. BBB File Number: 48505.
City of Industry's area code is 818.
_________________________________________________________________
Other Experiences with COMTRADE (Most recent first):

Date - Thu, 1 Feb 1996
From - MSUSPLN1.SHAMP@eds.com

My experience with the Comtrade has been great.  It was purchased in
April 1992.  It's a Comtrade Express DX 486-33.  It originally had 8 meg
of memory which was upgraded to 16 a couple of years ago.  Also the
original 200 meg hardrive was replaced with a 500 meg Conner.  The Conner
quit working after about 6 months and was replaced under warranty.
 Actually we had several Conner drives all quit in the same week.  Bad
Batch I guess.  I have since added a CD ROM and Modem to the machine.  I
also attempted to add a second hard drive, but the BIOS chip is too old
to handle the 1.2 gig drive.  I have never had to call Comtrade so I
don't know what their customer service is like.  In defense of their
products, my machine is now also four years old and has been altered and
added on several times and keeps on running.  I plan to get a new one
soon, but it's hard to justify the expense when the old one keeps on
going.  After reading some of the negative experiences with Comtrade, I
don't know if this is any better or worse than other mail order places.
 I have heard first hand of several horror stories from some of the
biggest in the business.
------------------------------------
Date - Fri, 2 Feb 1996
From - "D. Pennington" <dpenn@midwest.net>

I may regret writing this, but I ordered a P100 w/16mg ram, 1.27G hd, 4x CD
Rom ( I believe it was called the Multimedia Dream Machine) in August 1995,
and Have had NO PROBLEMS with the system whatsoever.  I use my system mostly
for Architectural CAD drawings, and it has worked like a dream.  Well, it
will probably go out tommorrow!
------------------------------------
Date - Mon, 15 Jan 1996
From - "Christian A. Mayer" <ares@pgh.nauticom.net>

 I am a user of a Comtrade p-75 Multimredia Dream Machine 4x. I bought 
it in May of 1995 for $2095. I have to admit that it was nicely loaded 
for the price, HOWEVER, the harddrive(Quantum 540 Magnum) went bad after 
1 month (bad sector errors left and right). The Tech support was very 
hard to reach as though they were all sleeping at the phones, but after 
great persistence, I finally reached them (2 hrs. average time for me to 
get to them). I spoke with a Tech and he had me format the Hard Drive 
and then reinstall my OS... after that it worked fine for about a week. 
Then I had them send me a new one and it arrived fairly quick. I opened 
the new drive and to my surprise it was USED and it had software already 
installed on it !! (I think they ripped it from another system) This 
drive worked for about 2 weeks and finally made this *grinding* noise 
that sounded like a water faucet turned on slightly. Finally I ended up 
just buying myself a Western Digital 1.6 gig and had no problems at all 
with the compatability, as a matter of fact it made my system seem to 
run alot smoother!! Transforming from Win 3.11 to 95 was not a problem 
either and I run apps like TrueSpace 2 just fine. But all in all I will 
never ever suggest Comtrade to anyone at all. If you want a constant 
worry or headache over a machine then this would be the way to go. So 
far, nothing serious like my motherboard has fried, or my monitor 
started to flicker... KNOCK ON WOOD. Anyone who wants to share their 
info about this company can reach me at:

ares@nauticom.net
http://www.nauticom.net/www/ares/mayer.htm
------------------------------------
Date - Tue, 02 Jan 1996 18:15:15 -1000
From - Mark Ryan <kermit@mcn.net>

        I bought a P90 with 16 megs of RAM etc. etc. from them last year.
I'd like to go through the entire opera that defines my experience with
comtrade in just one year, but it would be as long as your entire file so
far.  Briefly, I have never been so angry with a company I have ever dealt
with in the past.  I've had a faulty mouse, monitor, video card, fan and
CD-Rom, and all for just under $3000.  The expense of shipping, lost time
and phone bills (you'll never get through on the toll-free line) is
miniscule in comparison to the frustration you'll experience with the
absolutely asinine secretaries, sales reps and tech support individuals they
employ there.   In the about 20 calls that did get through to them I had the
pleasure of dealing with ONE nice, helpful person. 
     This company has nice ads and seems O.K. until your check passes, but
after that watch out!  Two opposible digits down and I hope that Satan has a
nice corner of Hell reserved for them.                kermit@mcn.net
------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 27 Dec 1995 
From - kgowen@efn.org

My old computer crapped out last year, so I leafed through Computer 
Shopper looking for a new one.  I did some price comparisons, and it came 
down to Comtrade vs. Gateway.  I chose Comtrade (slight break on price)
but even though everything they sold me worked OK, if I had to do it over 
again, I'd spend the extra buck and go with Gateway.

As I said, *every* component in the unit they sold me (484-sx33, 4 meg 
RAM, 340 meg IDE drive, 2X cd-rom drive, VGA monitor) works fine.  But it 
all feels so *cheap*.  The cabinet, the keyboard, the mouse, all feel 
like they each cost 3 cents.  We're talking bottom drawer here.  The mouse 
was so bad I threw it away.  I've since since Gateway merchandise, and 
all of them seem to be solid, well-built units.  

Also, a minor gripe, there's no PS-2 style mouse port on the unit I
bought, so not only did I have to buy a real mouse, but I had to buy an
extra serial card for it because I didn't want to be stuck with no
external serial ports. 

Even though I've had no trouble with this unit, it feels so cheap that it
makes me feel all "squishy" inside when I use it, like it'll fall apart
any day now. I know that's not real scientific, but that's how I feel.

As I said, next time, it'll be Gateway.
------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 20 Dec 1995 11:55:18 -0800
From - Prasad NSB <pn28@andrew.cmu.edu>

Thanks for your great service. Here is a narration of my experience with 
Comtrade.

"I bought a Comtrade Multimedia MPEG DreamMachine 4X (90 MHz) in the last 
week of September '95. My computer was delivered in about two weeks (I 
placed one call to Comtrade in between since I was expecting it to take 
only a week and was asked to call back if I didn't get it in another 
week). The total price of the system came to $2095 (including $75 for 
S&H). I opted for 8 MB of RAM instead of 16 MB which reduced the price by 
$250 and went in for a 28.8k modem instead of the base 14.4k for an 
additional $75. 
My experiences were similar to those of Phil Lochner. 
Everything worked right out of the box and I didn't have to send back 
any component. I sent them a fax as to why I couldn't install the Diamond 
Windows driver which they didn't reply to. And just like the other 
Comtrade customers, I was not been able to reach their Technical Service 
by telephone. I gave up for a couple of months since there were no 
operational problems without the Windows driver. Finally, after a couple 
of months I sent them another fax using rather strong language and 
received a satisfactory reply after a couple of days.
As far as performance goes, it didn't do too well on Winstone 96 which I 
obtained from Ziff-Davis. I was a little surprised because the reviews in 
PC Magazine indicated it to be a good performer. But then, those machines 
were tested with 16 MB of RAM and not 8 MB which is what I have. All in 
all, I am satisfied with the computer. Their technical service can 
definitely improve but hopefully, I won't need to call them.
------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 20 Dec 1995
From - Mark_Solomon@mm.cobb.ziff.com
 
I bought a 486-33DX from Comtrade back in 1992. I've had problems with my system
and had to return the system once, and get a replacement monitor but only
because I found my original invoice. They claimed then that the only means they
have of giving you the service they require is by giving them your invoice
number. The service was OK because my unit was under warrantee.
 Question: Why do they need my invoice number if the serial number of the
machine is on the back of the machine? Anyone remotely familiar with a database
(hopefully a computer sales company) knows that you can associate an invoice
with a serial number to provide a customer lookup. Maybe it's that real
companies use real databases(you may be able add to this list).
  We'll this is December 20, 1995 and I've bought a 486 66-DX2 Intel CPU to
replace the original DX-33 chip. I call Comptrade for some information on my
machine's motherboard, and guess what? They need the invoice number and can't
help me with out it. (Still using that database huh?--bloody likely). Anyway I
told them that I bought the machine from them and expected the information I
needed from them(Rhrrr!!!). They said they'd call me back (suprise--they never
have). So, until I buy another computer, I'm left with an expensive CPU I can't
use and a computer company I can't trust--go figure.
------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 15 Nov 1995
From - ef <moschaef@mailbox.syr.edu>

.Leaving for college to become a computer engineer, my father 
and I decided to purchase a new system. After raking through Computer 
Shopper, I stumbled upon Comtrade. The prices were good and the promises 
of good performance seemed to good to be true. In June I ordered the 
Hyperspeed P100. I hooked it up with a 28.8, wavetable soundcard, 1.3 gig 
drive... I thought I was set. Well, nearly two weeks later, after the 
expected due date, I recieved the machine. After turning it on I learned 
that I had a bad meg of video ram. I made the call to the service techs 
and they sent me the part in a few days. I was very upset with some of 
the accessories though. The keyboard was tiny, the mouse was unusable and 
the speakers were laughable. 
.About two months later at college, my motherboards keyboard 
interface craped out on me.  My computer was rendered unusable, but the 
techs assurred me that a technician would be out quickly to replace the 
motherboard. To make a long story short, that happened almost 6 weeks and 
10's of hours of phone time to 18008994508 getting there answering 
machine. When the service tech came, he opened up the computer and 
laughed. He said that the configuration of the 64-bit Pentium on a 32-bit 
interface was not only considered insane, but that this was the first 
time he had ever seen it. 
.Well, that's not where my troubles ended. I purchased Win95 about 
a month and a half after I recieved the computer. I find out that my 
motherboard is not compatible. Later calls told me that not only was my 
mother board not compatible, but neither was my sound card or CD rom. 
.Basically I got screwed. I Thought I was buying top of the line. 
Instead I got last years computer with a a pentium. You'd be better off 
paying the  extra money for a system that works than one that just 
promises to. 
------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 15 Nov 1995
From - Josh Vaughn <JV8816@cnsvax.albany.edu>

Today after class (I'm a university student in Upstate NY) a few of 
us were discussing PC's and mail-order vendors when I happened to 
mention I bought a Comtrade and was real happy with it...and that's
when I heard about this FAQ.  I went out on the web and hunted it
down and needless to say I'm somewhat surprised that so many people
have had so many poor experiences.

I purchased my Lightning 4x 486DX2-66 in December of '94 and it arrived
just after Christmas.  The only problem I had was that the mouse was 
not functioning in Windows:  I called my sales rep (Tyson) and he was
very quick to help me reset a switch on the bottom of the mouse which
set it straight.  Other than that the system has worked flawlessly
and is noticably faster in both DOS and Windows apps than other similar
486 systems I have seen.  I installed a Soundblaster AWE32 Value Edition
with no compatability problems whatsoever;  also upgraded to Win95
w/out a hitch.  

If I had to voice any complaints they would only be the following:  the
mouse and keyboard are cheap components but they work fine;  the 14.4
modem is a generic and has been a hassle to configure with some comm
programs but I managed to work it out;  and I did notice that the 
few times I tried to call TS to find out more about the modem it was
either consistantly busy or I was left to an answering machine,  so
I gave up and just worked around it.

Just one more thing:  I *have* noticed an intermittent buzzing coming 
from the inside of the case from time to time,  and I chalked this up
to my computer being slightly off level on my desktop (which I corrected)
and/or a loose screw in the fan.  But after reading the horror stories
about the fans in here I'm not so sure...and wouldn't you know it,  my
1 year warranty is almost up!

My theory is that in order to sell fast systems at the prices they do
they skimp on some of the non-critical (ie mouse, keyboard, modem)
components that are not directly related to the performance (read:
speed) of the system.  The bottom line is that the system works
exceptionally well for everything I use it for and small problems
and computing go hand-in-hand:  I never expected every little thing
to be perfect right out of the box.  So far so good...
------------------------------------
Date - Tue, 14 Nov 1995 21:57:47 -0500
From - MacGyver75@aol.com

Well, I to bought a Comtrade Multimedia 4xMPEG "Dream Machine" and so far I
have not had any problems. I am scared that something WILL happen, though.
 At the time,
I spent $2600 on this P100 and thought I got a good deal. With any luck,
things will continue to go well,seeing as this is my first computer..
However, I did find that Comtrade SUCKS on its customer service. I was given
such a runaround there that I would NEVER buy from them again-but what do
they care? They already got me the first time.I would NOT recomend buying
from them to ANYONE!!!!! Even my worst enemies. I am so disappointed in the
way I was treated(which is much a longer story than I have time for now) that
I would be interested in having a class-action suit filled against them. I
know that there is something illegal going on there, and I would love to have
it proved. If anyone ever requires my assitance in this matter feel free to
reach me here at MACGYVER75 @aol.com or email me at: jrose@odin.cbu.edu

Thanks for all your help and compilation of this wonderful file!
------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 8 Nov 1995 
From - "The Artation (CMS Account)" <amm80215@mis.finchcms.edu>

I have an older COMTRADE system, the EISA/VLB 486/66 DX2 with the G486HVL 
motherboard.  I am submitting this primarily to let people know what hell 
they will have when trying to upgrade!

Problem #1)  When the system arrived, the CTX monitor went bad within a 
month.  I was sent a replacement, but I had to pay the $75 shipping on 
the defective unit, and the replacement arrived with cosmetic damage 
suggestive of it possibly being a USED unit (I have no way to prove this).

Problem #2) As others have mentioned, the system has 8MB, but it is 
supplied as eight 1MB SIMMs in two banks of four -- the minimum upgrade 
is to buy four 4MB SIMMs, since the motherboard will not accept 2MB 
SIMMs (ouch!)

Problem #3) The supplied Actix video card is WAY substandard.
.3A) When a window in WIN 3.11 is re-sized, the card leaves "ghost"
        images of the window borders.  Note this does NOT occur in WIN95.
.3B) Several high-end DOS games caused a clicking noise whenever the 
        mouse was moved -- this was solved with an alternate video driver 
        (It's freeware - if you need a copy, please do not hesitate to 
        E-Mail me).

Problem #4) Whenever I use my LANcard (to play DOOM, DESCENT, etc...) I 
lose my EISA CMOS settings.  This is only an annoyance, but still...

************************************************************************
Problem #5) The G486HVL motherboard does *** NOT *** accept the P63 or 
the DX4/100 overdrive chips.  At this point, I am too frustrated to even 
TRY the P83!
************************************************************************

In the interest of fairness, the system IS blazing fast compared to other 
486/66 systems, particularly in its hard drive access.  (And that's 
BEFORE the I/O card was tweaked by yours truly to make it faster still!)

In summary:
After putting in a lot of work to fix things that should have been right 
in the first place, I am now stuck with a decent system that I cannot 
upgrade.  I do plan to keep it as a file server, since that is the one 
place where the system does truly shine!
------------------------------------
Date - Sun, 29 Oct 95
From - Paul Hruska <Paul_Hruska@msn.com>

I just purchased a 120mhz box from Comtrade and so far all is well.

My previous computer was a Dell 100mhz Dimension which I was unhappy with and 
returned.
Here are the particulars...

COMTRADE....DELL
120 mhz....100 mhz
16 meg....16 meg EDO
256 pipeline burst..256 pipeline burst
1gig Quantam Fireball..1gig Quantam Fireball
Diamond Stealth 2meg Vram.#9 GXE Pro 2meg Dram
6x CDROM....4x CDROM
Socket 7....Socket 5

$2225.....$2150


Shipped in 4 Days...Shipped in 2 weeks


The Dell system was nice but it lacked the 17 inch monitor I wanted plus it 
didn't have socket 7.  Intel slashed it's prices during my 30 day price 
protection and Dell couldn't tell me if I was going to get any sort of 
refund.  The customer service rep failed to return my calls so I decided to 
send it back and get a little more bang for my buck.

The Comtrade system I have now is everything I expected it to be.  The mini 
tower is a bit smaller than the Dell and it's casing is metal, instead of the 
plastic Dell uses.  It worked right out of the box, just like the Dell.  It's 
amazing that I placed the order one night and four days later I have the 
computer on my desk up and running.  I know I'm not going to get the customer 
support that a company like Dell can offer but I never liked the maze of 
phone calls Dell puts you through in the first place.

The sales staff at Comtrade was top notch, I talked with Terrence and Jason.  
They NEVER pressured me into buying something I didn't want, nor did they 
ever try to cut a conversation short.

When I dealt with Dell it seemed like they were VERY eager to get me off the 
phone so they could answer the next phone call.  I don't know how many times 
my conversations with them started off with "are you buying a system today?, 
if not let me send you a catalog.".  Thats not good service in my book.

The only thing I've noticed with the Comtrade is that they don't cut their 
ribbon cables down very much.  So I've got a little ribbon to weed through 
when I want to install a new tape drive etc..  Other than that everything 
looks clean.
------------------------------------
Date - Sat, 30 Sep 1995
From - Stauf <bennes@rpi.edu>

  Well, I was going to go to college in the fall of '94 , so my father and I
sat down to decide what kind of computer I'd like to have.  We were looking
through PC Magazine, and Comtrade had a good system for a good price.  Well.
We ordered it, and it arrived no problem.  It was one of the multimedia
setups, with a ProAudio Spectrum 16, a Mitsumi 2x CDROM, 8 megs ram, and 400
meg hard drive.  When I plugged it in, I noticed the cdrom wasn't working,
so, being the computer minded individual I was, I opened the case and looked
inside.  Well, the cdrom wasn't plugged in; the power cable had "fallen out".
 Ok, it was a shipping problem, bounced around, no problem.  So I plugged it
in and it went.  Reading your list, now I'm not so sure.
  Everything was going great.  The PAS16 isn't ]the best of cards, but it did
what I wanted it to...  The manuals were very lax in how to configure the
card; I didn't know that I wasn't getting 16 bit sound until someone at
college told me that I had it set up wrong...  Something about high and low
DMAs...
  Winter 94, the monitor started "flickering" and the top of the monitor got
real warm.  I have a MAG MX15F monitor , running off of a Cirrus Logic GD5434
PCI card.  Well, no problem.  Just turn it off when I'm not using it, which
is most of the time, and it goes away for a week or so.  Then my computer
started making this odd humming noise.  Then one day, my mouse stopped
working.  First it just started to lose tracking, then one day it just up and
died.  Well, maybe it was my problem, I said to myself.  So I went to CompUSA
and bought a $10 mouse.  No problem.  Christmas break.  I take my computer
home, 5 hours sitting in the back of the car.  I turn it on when I get home,
and I hear this funny rumbling sound in the case.  I open it up, and its the
chip cooling fan.
Oh, it must have been all the bumps on the ride home, since the fan blades
were loose.  I pushed them back in, and the noise went away.  For a while.
Now I hear it all the time; the power supply fan runs ok, and the chip fan
still runs, but there's this soft rum-a-rum-a-rum sound...
  After all that, I still haven't gone to Comtrade to report a problem. I
believe my warrenty has expired anyway, so there's nothing I can do.
  As for adding hardware, when I bought my computer, it came with one 3.5
floppy drive.  When I wanted to add a 5+1/4, there weren't enough power
cables inside, so I needed to go to Radio Shack to buy some splitters.  Since
then I've also added a tape backup and a 1.2 Gig drive with no problems.
 Then again, the manuals were a bit skimpy, but who reads the manuals anyway?
 I'm still not happy with their policy to not give out OS disks (when I
turned on my computer, there were disk images of DOS and Windows sitting on
the hard drive)
  I'm satisfied with my computer, but if I ever need to buy a new computer in
the future, I'm looking somewhere else.

-- Scott
root@mindwerks.stu.rpi.edu  <--  my Comtrade PCI 486 DX2/66
----------------------------
Date - Tue, 12 Sep 1995
From - lestrade@Ra.MsState.Edu

I bought a P90 from Comtrade and it was delivered on Aug. 29, 1994.
I also bought a P133 from them and it was delivered on Aug. 6, 1995.
Before that I bought a 486/66 also from them.  All in all, i have been a 
`good' customer because i liked their prices.  Well, you get what you pay 
for.

I sent them a fax on aug 25, 95 telling them that the 1-gig fujitsu drive 
from the 1994 P90 
was acting a little flaky. I wasn't sure if it was the power supply or 
the drive or the new controller card.... (If you want an exercise in 
futility, try getting through to their tech support on their 800 line! 
(800-899-4508) I wasted days trying to get through to see if they got the 
fax!)

Finally on Sept. 2 the drive completely died. I called them and asked 
could I send it back. They said they would get back to me. (Keep in mind 
tat the 1-yr warranty was up on aug 29, but the first fax complaining of 
a problem reached them 4 
days earlier on 25th.) They finally called back on the 7th of sept saying 
that no, it was out of warranty.  Maybe I am old-fashioned, but in the 
spirit of warranties, I would think they would take the drive back.

Meanwhile, my new p133 is already showing signs of flakiness. (and it is 
out of the 30-day money back guaranty :-( )
The new eide drive sometimes boots up and sometimes doesn't.

My other complaints about them are the components that they choose to put 
in their systems.  They seem cheaper to me. (e.g. a non-standard scsi 
adapter that is difficult to find drivers for. This is probably their way 
of cutting corners.) 

I will never buy another computer from them again!
----------------------------
Date - Fri, 8 Sep 1995 11:47:33 -0400
From - Phil Lochner <decker@mail-e1a.megaweb.com>

Here's an addition to your helpful Comtrade FAQ.. I'll have to follow it up
in a few days (hopefully!)..

I purchased their Multimedia 4x Dream Machine from them on August 28th,
1995. The salesperson (Byron) was knowledgable and friendly, and seemed to
know his stuff when I drilled him for specific information. It's a 100mhz
Pentium, with sound card, 15" flat screen, 16mb of RAM, 1 gig hard drive,
WFW3.11, DOS 6.22, and Windows 95. The purchase was originally supposed to
happen on the previous Saturday (August 26th), but when I called at 7:42 PM
EST, I was told that all the salespersons already left. Must be nice to
clock out 20 minutes before it's time to go home.

Total came to $2320 after shipping, excluding the 14.4k modem. I was going
to get an additional $50 knocked off the price by allowing them not to
include Windows or DOS' disks and manuals (although they come preinstalled
on the hard drive), but after much confusing run around regarding getting
Windows 95 with the system, I decided I just better spend the $50 and get
both the disks and manuals for both operating systems. After chatting with
him on some other issues not regarding the sale (I guess I'm just friendly),
I asked him how they sell their computers cheaply, but received just the
standard 'We buy our supplies in bulk so we can offer the discounts to you,
the consumer' line. 

Unfortunately, I've not been able to compare  the performance as it has yet
to be delivered. If it does not arrive today, it'll be 2 weeks Monday, and I
was informed that the computer would be shipped on the 30th.  Hopefully, I
will have a positive follow up letter shortly.
--
Date - Thu, 14 Sep 1995
The following is the follow up to the previous message regarding Comtrade.
---
The computer did not show up until Tuesday. After calling the company on
Monday, I was told that it would show up 'definately by Friday'. It is
unclear whether or not it is a UPS problem or a shipping problem, as I
received three different dates from the service representatives about when
it was shipped.

One of the first things I noticed about the system is that it did not come
with DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.11 as promised, but rather with just the Windows
95 installation CD-ROM, and Windows 95 was preinstalled and preconfigured.
They automatically preconfigured the Diamond GO-95 monitor selector to
prevent interlaced Windows 95 screens at the higher resolutions (something
which took me a few phone calls to fix up when I installed 95 on my work
computer), and the autoexec, config, and registry all checked out OK. 

The system runs great. It's a bit tough to compare without DOS 6.2 or WFW,
but it screams for a 100mhz machine. The Diamond video card is nice,
although the Top Gun MPEG disk I ordered was on back order (and I have yet
to call to find out when I'll get it). The Spectre monitor is also nice, and
offers programmable resolutions, pincushion, and rotation controls.

Sound card is acceptable, and the included Hi-TEX speakers are also OK. Note
that an A/C adapter is NOT included with the speakers, but the machine was
preset so that Windows and DOS games run at a loud enough volume anyway. The
4x CD-ROM is an IDE drive (so no, they did not include a SCSI card with the
computer), and the 1.08 gig hard drive is nice and quick.

The keyboard is OK, although a bit mushy for my standards. One big problem I
noticed was the included mouse... very sticky and flimsy buttons.
Fortunately, I had an extra Microsoft mouse which works great.

On the inside, the motherboard is as promised: 4 PCI and 4 ISA. The COM
ports and LPT port have external docking slots, which take up the back
access bay for two of the PCI slots. Fortunately, it looks possible to take
out these slots and mount them into the case itself (which has the
unpunched-out holes). Three SIMM banks are on the motherboard, and my 16 MB
machine came equipped with a single 16MB SIMM. All manuals except the 3 1/2"
disk drive and hard disk were included.

All in all, the system performs up to standards, and the only downside I saw
was the slipshod mouse and the lack of knowledge by the salespeople on
exactly when the system would show up. I'd recommend them to a friend, but
inform them that PCI-card upgrades may require a bit more than just sliding
the card in.

Phil Lochner
----------------------------
Date - Thu, 07 Sep 95
From - "T.E. Allen" <tallen@bigtex.ci.dallas.tx.us>

On Tuesday September 5, 1995 at about 9:00pm (cst) I called the Comtrade 
1-800 number to enquire about a system.  After about 2 rings a female 
answered who then transferred me to a sales rep.  He politely stated he 
would call back soon.  About 15 minutes later he called me back and asked 
what he could do for me.  I asked about the HyperSpeed MultiMedia system 
and he seemed to know what he was talking about.  I then told him I would 
call back soon to order.  He gave me his name (Tyson, ext. 133).  The 
next day around 10:00am (cst) I called back and he was there.  I ordered 
a Hyperspeed Multimedia system and dropped the monitor and upgraded to a 
28.8 modem and a Triton motherboard.  He stated it would be about two 
weeks before I would get it because they have a mandatory 72 hr burn in.
My entire session with the sales reps have been ok so far.  They have not 
tried to sell me anything I did not want and seemed computer literate.

Once it arrives I will then notify you what my experiences are.

-T.E. Allen
----------------------------
Date - Tue, 5 Sep 95
From - snelson@skidmore.EDU

.A couple months back I bought a Comtrade Sound WinNote
notebook computer to travel overseas with.  So far everything works
great.  It's very fast (for a DX4-75 notebook), and I've had no
problems adding peripherals on to it, including modems, CD-ROM drives,
a Zip Drive, and a few other odds and ends.
.However, their tech-support is not good.  Nor is it bad, for
that matter, as it absolutely DOES NOT EXIST.  I called Comtrade to
find out about a few things concerning using my computer in Europe,
and to find out why there were no DOS or Windows disks supplied with
my computer.  I was told that the number I called (the one in all their
advertisements) was strictly a sales number, and that I should call
their customer support line.  The sales people, as always, were very
polite.
.Then I tried calling customer service.  No answer.  After
calling back the sales line to check the number, I called again, but
this time let the phone ring 20 times.  Finally a machine picked up
and told me no one was there and that I should call back during
regular business hours, though it did not tell me what "regular
business hours" were, besides which it was 11:00 am their time.  I
tried calling back a few more times that day and through the rest of
the week, but eventually got the info I needed of the portables
newsgroup.  I stil have not received my Windows or DOS disks, and have
decided not to pursue that issue as I have the disks from my desktop
computer.  However, I have called Comtrade Customer Support many times
since I've owned my laptop to find out why they were not shipped with
my computer, and I've yet to get them to even pick up the phone.  No
matter what time I call, it never seems to be during "regular business
hours." 
.Comtrade's prices are good, but I'd be hard-pressed to buy
from them again.  Of all the computer companies I've ever dealt with,
in fact of all the companies I've ever dealt with at all, Comtrade's
post-purchase support is the absolute worst.
-Stuart Nelson
----------------------------
Date - Thu, 31 Aug 95 
From - "D. Kersh" <douglask@primenet.com>

I Didn't buy from comtrade! Thank goodness.
I live about five miles from their new address but was fearful 
of the problems I had heard about.

I had almost bought from them but changed my mind. When I 
canceled my order I first got a rude female operator who then 
put me on hold-hoping I would go away. With persistence I 
called back and was able to speak to the sales rep-maker of 
stories-who cancelled my order. (The operator had been told 
me only the-My-sales rep could cancel the order no one else. I 
was bothered, what if this person took a day off, I would be 
in trouble!) After all the trouble, I wondered what would 
happen  if  I decided to return a system or had any type of 
problem?

I will buy a machine but not from these slick ad, quick talking 
small(ish) type mail order houses. There are many. I've visited 
some and they usually are not interested in seeing a walk-in 
nor in helping sell a machine!!
-Doug
----------------------------
Date - Sun, 30 Jul 1995 
From - "Jon C. Sayer" <jcs3c@bif.che.virginia.edu>

Here is my experience buying Comtrade computers for our
engineering lab.  

I first purchased a 486DX33 and was rather pleased with it, it
had no problems, so I decided to order more from them.  This
was about 1 year ago, so I don't remember all the details.

I then ordered a 486DX4/100 from them.  It arrived with the
floppy cable still folded with a rubberband loose in the machine.
Obviously this computer had not been properly tested/burnt
in.  This was a simple enough fix.  However the monitor simply
stopped working after a few weeks and I called to have it
replaced.  I was able to get through to tech support pretty
fast.  I cannot remember if they had to receive the broken
monitor before shipping the new one.  I do remember that the
monitor was shipped to another department at UVA with someone
elses name on it (someone who had purchased a computer from them
a few years before).  I finally got a call from them after 2 weeks
telling me where it was.  After one week I had started calling them
but NEVER got through their busy signal even though I would call
at all hours.  It seems the other department had called them and
asked why they had this monitor sitting there and eventually Comtrade
got around to informing me where it was.

At this point I had already had an order in for a DX2/66.  I don't
remember specifically what was wrong with it when it arrived, but
there were several problems.  I was NEVER able to get through to
there tech support to correct the problem and eventually had to fix
all the problems myself.  Since I never was able to get through to
even complain to them, I filed a complain with the University 
recommending that we no longer deal with Comtrade and sent a copy
of it to their Customer Service manager.  I never heard back from 
them.

As far as their computers go, they were capable machines, but not
extraordinary.  The minitowers had a power button that you pushed
in a long way and would normally get stuck on the way back out.
If you did not notice it was stuck, the computer would be in a 
quasi-ON state where a good bump to the computer would release the
power button and the computer would turn off.  Not quality hardware, IMO.

I would definately recommend staying away from Comtrade.  Other
companies offer similar products at similar prices and cannot
possibly be as inept at customer service as Comtrade is.
----------------------------
Date - Thu, 27 Jul 95 
From - "The WorkPlace Inc." <wkplace@pcnet.com>

I bought 5 systems from Comtrade in 1993 and 1994. They had very good
price and all equipment (2 386DX-40, 2 486DX-33 and 1 486DX2-66) worked
well (and still working well).

No hardware/software problems were encountered, so I didn't have to call
tech support.

-Alex
----------------------------
Date - Sat, 08 Jul 95 
From - Michael Lax <lazarus@bga.com>

I purhcased a Comtrade system [486/66 EISA/LB with 16mb RAM,
545mb SCSI2 HD, 15" monitor, Speedstar Pro video] on September
14, 1993. It arrived several days late, despite paying $110
for 2nd day air shipping.  I'd also asked it be shipped to my
work address, but they shipped to my home address instead
(fortunately someone was home).  Not a great start.

Although I'm hardly a newbie, I did not think to check the 
source of the insides of my PC.  Silly me, I assumed you 
got what you paid for and was told was there.  It appeard to
have everything it was supposed to and it all seemed to work
well.  And coming from a 286, this new machine smoked.

About 2 months later I tried to install a scanner with no 
success.  I called EVERYONE - only Comtrade NEVER answered any 
of my calls or faxes.  I also discovered that for several months
their BBS *did not work*.  The number they gave simply did not
work.  I finally gave up on installing the scanner and recently 
gave it away.  I'd already installed an internal CDROM drive and
a sound card.  I know how to track down DMAs & IRQs.  Comtrade 
tech support apparently did NOT.

About 6 months after I'd bought the machine I started noticing 
the monitor was giving me fits.  It would just go off - I'd 
flick the switch a couple times and everything would be fine.  I
contacted Comtrade SEVERAL times about this; finally, about a
week later when the monitor totally went out, they told me they
did not warrant the monitor.  CTX was about as reliable as 
Comtrade.  They told me they'd pick up my monitor on a certain 
day - they did not.  They told me my new monitor would be to me 
two or three days after that.  It took TWO WEEKS.

At the exact same time my keyboard went out; given the 
repeated complaints, even from 'fans' of Comtrade, about this, 
I'm not surprised.  Still, 'you get what you pay for' should not
mean disposable components.  The price was good, but not THAT 
good.  I even had problems - some serious - getting the keyboard
replaced.  It took three phone calls.  And I forget already how 
long it actually took for them to send it - longer than they'd 
said.

About a month later my power supply started making a racket - 
the fan was going.  Again, a half dozen calls & faxes.  This 
time I'm told they will not fix this because I did not return 
the keyboard.  WHAT!  No one EVER told me I needed to return the
keyboard.  I can understand returning a monitor - but a $10 
keyboard?  I had done with the keyboard what I *should* have 
done when I got the computer - thrown it away.  And what the 
HELL does this have to do with living up to their warranty?

People have said the machines are good and the service sucks. 
I wonder about this - three components, within 6 months of 
purchase, all fail.  This is a HOME PC, not a business computer. 
I use it a lot, but not 9 or 10 hours a day!  I keep wondering 
how long my $3500 investment - which I expected to last several
years - is really going to last.

As for their service, I do not buy "they're a growing company" 
tripe.  They've had *plenty* of time to grow, and this hardly 
explains their lying.  "Express shipping" -- sorry, to *me* and 
the shipping industry, that means OVERNIGHT - or at the absolute
minimum two day air.  NOT UPS GROUND.  It also means parts go 
out the SAME DAY, not three or four days later.  Technical 
support?  HAH!  I never even got CUSTOMER support.  I've had 
several traps that I cannot explain - thankfully not too
regularly.    Comtrade never even bothered acknowledging them.  
Of all the problems I've had - and there have been several - I only 
talked to a human once or twice, and NEVER got any help at all. 
People complained about Gateway's busy lines and difficulty getting 
into tech support - but I never heard anyone complaining about it 
once they GOT THERE.  Comtrade could give a s***. 
After a while, especially after their refusal to honor what 
little warranty they give, I filed a complaint with the Attorney
General - both Texas and California.  One of their responses - 
which was a TOTAL LIE went as follows:

 The Attorney General has notified us that we can seek
 legal action against you for filing mutiliple false
 claims.

 If you continue to file the same claim over and over again
 we will have no other choice.

Except the AG does not GIVE legal advice.  Nor was I filing
false claims, nor was I filing the same claim over and over 
again.  I called the AG's office and asked if they'd told them 
this and was told they had not.

I'd warn anyone even *looking* at a Comtrade to stay away from
them as if they were the Black Plague.  Their machines are okay,
but not great; fast machines at good prices can be found 
ANYWHERE. And the service isn't bad - that would suggest some
level of service EXISTED.

If anyone else believes as I do that Comtrade needs to be held
accountable for their lies and misrepresentation, please send me
email (lazarus@bga.com).
----------------------------
Date - Fri, 30 Jun 1995
From - "Christopher L. Williams" <psy2clw@cabell.vcu.edu>

I ordered a 486/33 from Comtrade three years ago and I must say that
overall I have been pretty disappointed with the machine I
received and the support provided.  First of all, the machine
wouldn't work out of the box, parts had come loose during shipping,
which I guess isn't totally their fault (but if they had put it
together well, it wouldn't have come apart), and I had to call
technical support to find out what was wrong and how to fix it.
Since then I have had many interesting problems.  For some reason I
can't use anything on Com2.  Everytime I try and setup anything for
Com2, the machine refuses to boot .  I have nothing that I know of
setup to com2, and I have tried everything I, and everyone I have to,
to fix it.
The inside of the machine is a mess with cables and junk
everywhere.  I added a second harddisk to my machine and I had
to remove both floppy disks just so I could install it, that
was no fun.  If I wanted to add ram or even try and put in an
overdrive processor, I would have to remove the motherboard,
because those slots are seriously blocked and imppossible to
get to.

I was pleased when I ordered my machine because I thought I had
gotten a really good deal, but I have since seen computers that
friends have ordered from other mail-order companies, such as
Gateway, and their machines arrived in pristine condition, set
up to fully exploit every ounce of speed those machines had.
This was in sharp contrast to my machine from Comtrade, for
which I spent considerable time fine-tuning the machine just so
it would run Windows smoothly.

Overall, based on my experiences and the write-ups I have seen
in PC-World, I would have a difficult time ever reccommending
Comtrade to anyone who wasn't an enemy.
-------------------------------
Date - Wed, 21 Jun 1995
From - "Kurt A. Schramer" <kasosaka@gol.com>

I purchased a Comtrade HyperMedia system in Dec of 94, and I had a very
irritating buzzing noise ever since.  It has steadily gotten worse, although
it doesn't seem to affect performance. 

Last night I finished my full back up,  and today I took off my cover to
investigate the noise more closely.  When I first started using my current
news reader, I came across your Comtrade file, it had been updated since
reading it earlier, and a lot of the complaints were about fan noise and Not
drive noise, which is what I first thought it was.  So since then I just
wondered, but then recently my friend suggested I physically take a look
under the hood, so I just did and I'm still not sure what is what.  But I
can see the component
that's making the noise.

According to my Comtrade book,  the fan is together with the power supply,
and to confirm this, air is blowing out of the rear of the power supply.
The C drive is with the other drives in the drive bay area right?  Well
there is a small device directly mounted on top of (a processor?) on the
mother board that is spinning and making the noise.  It looks like a little
generator more than a fan, and I felt no air coming from it.  It says SOCKET
to the right of it, and it seems to be on top of something.  The mother
board is sitting vertically.  Could this be some kind of special fan for the
Pentium chip?  It is about 2 inches by 2 inches.

It has a red and black set of wires going to a plug with other wires so
there is no way I can unplug it that I can see.

Comments about this noise and repair options would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, I also found the service at Comtrade horrible,  since this is a
consistent complaint, isn't there anything that can be done?  Has Comtrade
read your file?  [Editor's note: Not that I know of. -JMG]
------------------------------
Date - Thu, 15 Jun 1995
From - jkinner@wsnet.com

      After a tragic power storm claimed the life of my old 
computer, I began to look a new system. I had a 486dx40 and 
now that I had a perfect opportunity, I wanted to upgrade big 
time. I scanned the Computer Shopper and cam,e out with two 
finalists, Gateway 2000 and Comtrade. After comparing ths 
systems, it was obvious that while I had heard legends of 
Gateway, Comtrade gave the bigger bang for the buck. I decided 
on the MultiMedia HyperSpeed system.. I got a p90, 16m ram, 
1.3 gig HD, 4x cd, stealth 64 w/2m dram, 28.8, GameWave sound 
card, 15" monitor, the works.. $2665 + shipping.        
      The system arrived about 4 days later, which was 2 days 
ahead of schedule. It set it up immediatly and turned it on.. 
as it booted i noticed an error somewhere near the sound card 
initialization from the autoexec file. I figured maybe an IRQ 
needed to be set or something and blew it off for then. Next I 
loaded windows and recieved 3 error messages about my cdrom 
and soundcard. Then I became a little more worried. I tinkered 
around withthe drivers and after an hour of tweaking, I gave 
up upon seeing "NO ORCHID SOUND CARD IS CONNECTED." I opened 
the case to find a neatly packed system.. I located the sound 
card and after only a second I located the error: The sound 
card wasn't plugged in. It was just sitting on top of the 
socket. I found this to be quite a relief, though a bit 
perturbed by this slight overlook in the "burning in" process. 
After throwing the system back together, everything worked 
great. The only regret I have about this system, ironically, 
is the sound card. It will only play adlib music in stereo. 
Everything else is played in mono. While this situation may be 
adequate for most people, I am an avid gamer and found a 
lack of stereo disappointing. 
     All in all, I love my system, it is increidbly fast and 
smoothly running. I found the price to be very low and the 
quality to be extrordinary. I called TS twice about my sound 
card and was helped after only 2 rings both times. While he 
suggested that the error was only an IRQ conflict, he was 
knowable and fast in response. I would recommend to everyone a 
Comtrade system!
 
Oh yeah.. one other problem.. the mouse (which is great) has 
an unsheilded cord which plays havoc with my cordless phone. 
(But I can live with that) :)
---------------------------------
Date - Thu, 15 Jun 1995
From - Wallace Hendricks <wally@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>

    Three years ago, I purchased a 486 DX 50 EISA machine from COMTRADE.
Two months before the warranty expired, the motherboard failed.  It took me
two days of constant phoning to get through to their technical support.
When I finally got through, they told me to send the machine to them.
    After they had the machine for three months, I became concerned and
again spent two days constantly dialing.  When I finally got through, the
technical person told me that they could not duplicate my problem.  He said
that they would try for a couple of more days and get back to me.  After two
more days, I phoned them back.  They now indicated that they were having a
difficult time finding a replacement motherboard.
    They indicated that they wanted to replace the motherboard with a
non-EISA motherboard.  They also indicated that they could not guarantee
compatibility with my components.  For example, I had originally paid a
sizable upgrade to purchase a very fast, EISA caching controler.  I told
them that this was unacceptable and that they had to make me at least whole.
If they could not find an appropriate replacement then they needed to
upgrade the machine.
    Two days later, I received my machine.  It was very slow.  I checked it
and found that I now had a 486 DX 25!  No way.  I phoned them again (it took
a day) and sent back the machine.  This time, the machine came back in a week.
    My machine is now back to a 486 DX 50.  It is still much slower because
the controler card with the new motherboard is much slower than the original
caching controler.  The original controler also had the parallel and serial
ports so they gave me an IO card.  The IO card must have been the cheapest
available:  the COM ports use very old 8250 chips!  I had to replace the IO
card to use a decent modem, but I got tired of trying to get COMTRADE.
    I also purchased a 486 DX 66 from COMTRADE for my RA.  It came with a
strange combination of chips to make up 4 MEG that could not be upgraded.
She had 4 1 MEG chips that she wanted to use to upgrade the machine.  I
tried to call COMTRADE to get them to replace the 4 MEG in the machine with
4 MEG that could be upgraded.  They told me that they would send the chips
and I should send back the other chips.  When I got the chips, they charged
me $200 and gave me credit for $35 for the return!  After a great deal of
hassle and intervention from VISA, COMTRADE credited me for the difference.
.In my opinion, COMTRADE makes good machines.  But they are trying to get
every ounce of profit that they can from you.  If anything goes wrong, be
aware that they will try to put it to you.  It is almost impossible to deal
with their technical support.  They will try to cheat you if they can.  If
you aren't a well informed consumer, I would stay away from them period.  If
you are a well informed consumer who likes to play the lottery, then take
your shot.  As for me, I will spend the extra $500 to get a comparable
machine from Dell and take my chances with them.
------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 3 May 1995
From - Bryan <bryan@eskimo.com>

I bought my first 486-66 computer from Comtrade about three years 
ago or so. The only problem I had was that the CMOS lost it's settings 
for the hard drive. I called Tech Support, got promptly answered and I 
was up and running in about ten minutes.

.I recently upgraded and got a Comtrade P90, 16 MB of RAM, Seagate 
850 MB drive, Diamond Stealth 2 MB DRAM card. I have had no problems with 
the system thus far save one: I purchased a 4 MB VRAM Velocity 64 STB 
video card <PCI> which the motherboard doesn seem to like. (It just beeps 
at me 8 times, which means "the video card is loose"). However, the video 
card isn't loose and I know it works because I've installed it in another 
machine. On the other hand, this isn't really a Comtrade problem just 
yet-- I've got some other video cards I'm going to try plugging in to see 
if they work. If they have the problem as well, it may be related to a 
BIOS/OPTI chipset bug regarding S3968 video accelerators, but I'm still 
looking into this. If anyone knows about this, please mail me at 
bryan@eskimo.com! If there is a BIOS or Flash BIOS update I can get to 
correct it (I've heard of some, but haven't found any yet), please let me 
know where I can get it!

Anyway, despite my initial struggle to transplant a CD ROM drive, sound 
card and secondary hard drive from the old system to the new (none of 
which was Comtrade's problem, though some documentation on the Seagate 
hard drive would have saved me the trouble of downloading it so I could 
configure the slave drive), I have had no problems. I was somewhat 
disappointed in the PCI/VLB/ISA motherboard, but on the other hand I 
didn't ask them about the motherboard when I ordered so I can't really 
fault them for that. I would have also liked to see an integrated 16550 
UArt instead of having to order it special and ending up with an extra 
slot being used up by an IO card. Again, however, this isn't really 
Comtrade's problem. I should have asked.

To Sum UP: Overall, I've had good experiences with Comtrade, and I've 
recommended them to several friends who were also happy with their 
machines. . Despite talk of performance sacrifices with PCI/VLB 
motherboards, I'm happy with it, and doubt the supposed performance hit 
will be overly evident. (The review I read about this was with a 
different motherboard anyway.) The two times I talked to tech support 
they were friendly and relatively quick. Since I work in tech support, I 
know the ropes and that you can't call a 1-800 number and not expect to 
wait -- just try calling Gateway sometime !! Admittedly, I'm sure they 
can improve, and I'm sure some people have had bad experiences, but I've 
been pretty happy.
----------------------------------
Date - Fri, 07 Apr 1995
From - Tom Geiger <bakereng.com!TGEIGER@bakereng.com>

My experience with Comtrade has been a little bit rocky.

I purchased a Comtrade 90 MHz Pentium PCI system with 16 meg RAM,
Diamond Stealth Video with 2 meg DRAM, 730 meg HD, quad speed
cd-rom, Orchid Soundwave32, 15" CTX 1562GM monitor, 14400 fax
modem, and mini-tower case.  The purchase was made in November
1994 and arrived on the date promised.

The computer worked right out of the box, but the system seems to be
shabbily built.  I have never been able to set up the CTX monitor correctly
with the video card.  This Diamond Stealth Incontrol tools do not list this
monitor in the setup for the drivers and you have to configure the monitor
yourself.  If I switch out of Window and run a dos program I always
have to play with the monitor controls to resize the display.  And then
resize it when I get back into Windows.  And God forbid I load a program
in that changes the threed.vbx file.  The Diamond stealth tools won't
work and the system hangs.  I have reloaded the video drivers three or
four times already.

When I had this problem, I tried to call technical support to no avail.  No
one would answer the phone or I would be put on hold for long periods
of time.  I had to start faxing my questions in and even then the fax
number would be busy or not answer for long periods of time.

The system is very noisy.  This was compounded by the fan in the
power supply going bad and making a commotion.  After several tries at
phone calls and faxes, I finally got through (via fax) and Comtrade did
replace my power supply (I installed it).

The system does not come with original disks for DOS or Windows for
Workgroups and you are forced to make your own backup copies from
the files stored on your computers hard drive.

The system came with little extras.  The only software, other than
essential drivers, that I received was a CD-ROM containing US Atlas,
World Atlas, Mavis Beacon, and Chessmaster, Delrina FaxPro Lite, and
Comit Lite.

The modem is a no name barely Hayes compatible clone which I have
only been able to get to work with the software included in the package
(Comit for Windows Lite).  And Comit Lite is barely usable.

Even though the above problems seem minor (such as the mini-tower
case which has a fake 3.5" drive to cover the unused 3.5" drive bay in
the front of the case), they all add up.  I just don't have any confidence in
the system or Comtrade.  I bought the system because it had gotten good
performance reviews in PCMAG and Computer Shopper.  Had I known
more about the company and my system, I would have bought
elsewhere, even if I had to spend more money.  

I guess that you could sum up my comments by saying that Comtrade
does not give you that "warm fuzzy feeling".  The market being what it is,
the "warm fuzzy feeling" adds up to a lot.
----------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 29 Mar 1995 
From - Edward Cuccaro <ercst2+@pitt.edu>

Two years ago I purchased a 
Comtrade system And every time I ran windows I would get chronic GPF's.  
Comtrade insisted that Windows was installed improperly and treated me as if 
I were an idiot.  They had me perform no less than 10 low level formats of 
the HD and had me reinstall windows no less than 15 times.  Finally my 
computer began locking up or rebooting for no reason at all while running a  
windows session.  After six months of misery with my then new $2400 nightmare 
Comtrade decided to send a new motherboard and a repair person to take care of 
the problem.  2 weeks later the MB arrived.  I was somewhat disturbed to see 
that the MB was used.  When the man installed the MB the computer would not 
get past himem.sys line in autoexec.bat.  Another format from cmos and new 
installation of dos the system locked up on himem the first time.  At that 
point I had to return the computer to Comtrade.  1 Month after I returned the 
system to comtrade and 8 months after I purchased the system I got it back.  A 
look inside the box revealed a brand new MB.  I haven't had a problem since 
but the first 8 months were pure hell and misery.  On the bright side, I 
learned all too well the value of backing up irreplacable data.          Even 
though my problem was correctedI was very dissatisfied with the service and 
lack of curtisy recieved.  It will be a cold day in hell before I even look at 
another Comtrade advertisement let alone consider purchasing one of thier 
systems.
----------------------------------------
Date - Tue, 3 Jan 95 
From - Blair Martin <blair@hal.com>

My experience with Comtrade has had its ups and downs. I will relate
the whole story.

In August of 1994 I decided to buy a Comtrade PCI Best Buy P5/66.
I made this decision based on price/performance. Every review I could
find of their Pentium systems was very favorable performance-wise. And
a thourough scanning of Computer Shopper revealed that they had some
of the most competitive prices.

The system arrived only a day later that was initially projected by
the salesman. Unfortunately, I had made some unwise assumptions about
what I ordered. My system came with a) a PCI/VLB motherboard and b)
the OPTI chipset. Both of these are a drag on performance. Since all
of the reviews I had read had PCI/ISA boards with Intel chipsets I
had assumed the system I ordered would too. My fault. The good news
is that when I talked to tech support they promptly shipped me the
"upgrade" free of charge.

Now the problem began. The system with the new motherboard worked
quite well with one exception. The video performance (as measured by
several benchmarks and game frame counters) was almost a third as fast
as I was expecting given what I had read in reviews (eg. my PC Bench
8.0 video score was about 2500 versus the the 6500 I saw in a review
of a nearly identical system). After tweaking the BIOS settings I
got the performance to an acceptable level but these setting caused
the system to hang after it had been running for about 15 minutes
(it appeared to be a heat problem). Well, numerous calls to tech
support and the Comtrade BBS didn't help at all. Ultimately, they
all came to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with my system
and that I had nothing to complain about. Well, eventually I just 
said "to hell with this", called TS, and lied and said my system was
hanging regardless of BIOS settings. I asked for a new motherboard.
About five days later I got it and everything is running fine, 
regardless of how I configure the BIOS. Video speeds are as fast as
I had initially hoped for.

My main complaint comes down to this. Getting through to tech support
is a f---ing pain in the butt. Usually, the line rings about 20 times 
before answering with a message saying all personnel are busy, please
call back. And when you finally get through, plan on being put on hold
for a minimum of 45 minutes. The TS people themselves were reasonably
helpful/knowledgeable but I'm a little peeved that I had to call so
many times and ultimately lie to get what I wanted.

I have heard quite a few nightmare stories about Comtrade but I don't
classify mine as such. The system was a good deal and it does perform
well. It all comes down to getting a bargain while sacrificing accessible
support.
---------------------------------------------
Date - Thu, 22 Dec 1994 
From - Ben Culwell <ae069@detroit.freenet.org>

I ordered their PCI home Office, 60 Mhz Pentium system.  A few days later 
I read some of the horror stories reported here, and frankly got worried.
I think someone should point these out to Comtrade, then maybe they'd 
straighten out their act.  
.Anyway, I ordered my system 11-23-94, and they said it should 
arrive by 12-9-94.  When it still hadn't arrived by late evening on the 
tenth, I gave them a call.  Turns out they shipped it on the sixth, and I 
desided that with Christmas and all, to give them a few days before I 
canceled my order.  (I'm evil that way.)  
.It arrived on the thirteenth, half an hour before I had to leave 
for work, so all I could really do was pull it out of the box and look at it.
When I got home that night I expectedly put it all together, and cranked 
it on.  ...NOTHING...  No video!  I was worried remembering the other 
stories I'd read.
.The next morning I tried it again, and still no video.  I could 
see the system checking the keyboard and drives.  So I reasoned either the 
monitor, or the video accelerator was bad.  So before I called Comtrade I 
cruised down to the local Radio Shack and asked them if they could test my 
monitor.  It worked, so I narrowed it down to the system.  
.I came home determined to speak to tech support.  fifteen calls later
(each time the phone rand twenty times before a recorded anouncement came on)
I finaly got through.  A lady took my call then put me on hold for 
another forty five minutes.  I was determined, and their Christmas music 
wasn't too bad.  I actually started singing along.
.Anyway, I finally got a tech on the line, explained everything, 
and he told me to take the cover off and reseat the video accelerator.  I did
to no avail.  He seemed puzeled, then asked if I knew what the memory 
chips were.  When I replaid, "You mean those standard looking SIMMs right 
beneath the power supply," he almost seemed relieved.  He asked me to 
reseat the memory cards, and presto, it's amazing how much better your 
system works when it has memory.
.everything was as advertised. I have no other complaints.  In 
fact, they accidently shipped me a video accelerator with 2 Megs of RAM 
instead of only one.
.All in all, I think we have the making of a very good company.  
But they definetly have their problems. mainly tech support.
---------------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 07 Dec 1994 
From - What could possibly go wrong? <dwyche@giant.IntraNet.com>

 I first read this collection of COMTRADE nightmares after purchasing a
 pentium from them.  Had i read it first i'm not sure i would have dared use
 them as a vendor.  so far my own experience seems to be ok, though not
 without problems. hope this is not too wordy...

 my wife and i wanted a high-end machine that would stand a chance of lasting
 us at least two years.  so we got a COMTRADE P90 with 32M memory, 1G drive,
 17" monitor, stealth-64 with 4M, orchid SW32 sound, a 4X mitsubishi CD, and a
 couple of vanilla NE2000-clone ethernet cards so we could network with our
 existing 486 using WFWG.  (the 486 has a DAT tape drive which we planned to
 use to back up both machines.)  anyway, it seemed like a pretty good deal at
 just over 4K$, and PC magazine gives COMTRADE good marks.

 right out of the box the machine hung early in the boot.  after hitting reset
 it got a little further but still hung.  i turned it off and back on and this
 time it got to the dos prompt.  then it hung going into windows.  next time
 it made it all the way and then behaved properly for the rest of the day. 
 over the next few days this behavior continued; it would only work properly
 when warmed up.

 also, though WFWG seemed to work fine, the tape backup failed by hanging the
 486 somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes into the backup.

 when we started dealing with COMTRADE's Tech Support we found them to be a
 little sluggish in responding, though based on what i read about other's
 experiences i guess we got lightning fast service.  they returned every call,
 and never took more than 24 hours to get back to us.  the 24 hour experience
 happened just once.  FWIW, the salesman, Tom, was helpful in making
 connections.

 TS had us dorking with all kinds of things to solve the boot problem, none of
 which worked.  some of their ideas made sense to me (fiddle with the
 connectors, wriggle the chips, etc.) and some didn't (diddle with config.sys,
 autoexec, CMOS etc.)  at this point we were sure that the failure always
 occurred when accessing the disk.

 Along with COMTRADE we had other vendors helping with the backup problem, and
 the general feeling was that the low-end cards couldn't handle the high speed
 transfers and that we should get better cards.  COMTRADE recommended 3COMs. 
 so we packed up both cards, sent them back to COMTRADE and ordered a pair of
 3COM Ethernet-III's.

 The last round of dorking (including reformatting and restoring from our
 30-floppy backup of the original system) ended up corrupting the hard drive. 
 format actually failed, and scandisk reported lots of physical problems.
 Without a lot of hassle COMTRADE sent us a new drive which arrived 2 days
 later.  we installed it easily enough but things basicly didn't change except
 that it was even harder to boot than before.

 at this point we agreed with COMTRADE to return the box and they would send
 us a new one.  They were to pick it up in a day or two.  before they did,
 someone in TS called and had my wife make one more try.  so she took it out
 of the carton, took off the cover, and did whatever it was they asked,
 something about the drive cable.  anyway, just in passing she mentioned that
 the cable was stretched pretty tight between the controller and the disk. 
 the TS guy said wait-a-minute, you mean between the controller and the CD,
 right?  no, the CD's on the end and the disk's in the middle.  turns out the
 disk has to be on the end of the chain.  there was no way the original cable
 would do that so they sent us a new cable (regular mail) which took one extra
 day to get to us than it should have.  my wife called to confirm that it had
 been sent and they immediately sent us another one FedEx.

 now the machine works great.  the new cable made all the difference.  the
 disk even sounds more normal...  i hadn't noticed at first, but after
 replacing the cable it makes a much more normal and healthier sounding
 chatter.

 the 3COM cards solved the backup problems too.  File transfer is much slower,
 somewhere around 6M a minute (down from 10M/min with the orginal cards) which
 i guess is good, assuming that too much speed was the problem.

 bottom-line: we're real happy with the machine. it's VERY fast.  i know P90's
 are supposed to be fast but this one screams...  ACCESS loads in about 1
 second.  The CTX monitor is great.  rock-solid, no flicker, good color.  we
 haven't spent much time examining the higher resolutions, but things look
 pretty good at 1024x768 which is all we need.

 I assume the wrong cable was a matter of the assembler grabbing the cable out
 of the desktop bin instead of the minitower bin.  these things do happen. (i
 have a friend who had a gateway delivered 3 years ago with two mouse ports
 and no keyboard port!)

 i personally am happy with their support.  i don't feel they ever let things
 get out of hand.  having worked closely with the support people in my own
 company i know how hard it can be to respond instantly.  For the most part i
 thought TS was knowledgable and took reasonable approaches to resolving the
 problems.  (Even if i didn't agree with some of them, i thought that they
 were at least reasonable...)

 I would definitely be willing to buy from COMTRADE again.  They give great
 value for the money, and (at least for us) resolved the problems in a timely
 fashion.

Addendum to the above article:___________________________

i thought i'd check out the CTX behavior at higher resolutions and color
densities and wonder of wonders, there was only two Meg on the card and not
four...  looked at all the invoices/proposals they had sent us and they all
said two.  not sure where i picked up the idea we had four.  still seems like a
pretty good deal.  Turns out that this particular CTX model can't handle 1280
(60hz which produces unacceptable flicker...) unless using the 1024 viewport.
Not a problem for us as neither of us likes that resolution anyway.  

also the CD is Mitsumi, not Mitsubishi (of course...)

glad to hear that you're still satisfied with yours.  I still can't get over
how FAST it goes...   oh, btw, it IS the buggy version of the pentium chip
according to the test of dividing 5505001 by 294911 and getting 18.66600093
instead of 18.66665197.  not sure what we'll do about it but for the moment
we'll keep our ears and options open.
---------------------------------------------------------
Date - Thu, 15 Dec 1994
From - semen@acs.bu.edu

I can't say it is super company, nobody is perfect under moon
but I run into following problems with Comtrade computer:
their 32 bit disk  driver doesn't work under windows at all
what is noticeble when I run big applications
the rest is perfect, so I actually recommnend my friend to buy
Comtrade computer,
---------------------------------------------------
Date - Sat, 19 Nov 1994 
From - Alan Santos <asantos@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>

I called comtrade towards the end of November abd spoke with Paul Stiglich. I 
told him I was interested in their newly advertised P90 system the Lightning4x,
but only if the motherboard was a PCI/ISA combination and not a PCI/VESA
combination.  HE assured me that it was.  I then placed an order for the 
machine.  Two days later I called back to verify that the machine had shipped.
It hadn't and no ship date was specified except RSN.  After talking to a 
different sales representative (Paul wasn't in) he mentioned that the 
motherboard I was buying was indeed a PCI/VESA combination.  I thought there 
was a mistake, thanked him and waited.  Several days later when my machine did 
arrive I looked and sure enough it was a PCI/VESA combination.  I called to 
complain to Paul Stiglich who told me that it was a PCI/ISA combination, and 
that VESA was only an extension of ISA.  Well, that is true, but I 
specifically told him that I hadn't wanted it if it wasn't a PCI/ISA only.  
Blah Blah, to make a long story short, I ended up having to pay extra money to 
get the correct motherboard.  Besides the lying, and nonexistant support, the 
manual for my CDROM which still hasn't shipped, the absence of *any* manual
for the computer itself, the lying, the lying and the outright lying by Paul 
Stiglich I am relatively happy with my computer.  I will *never* buy another 
thing from Comtrade and will gladly let anyone who is buying a computer in the 
future hear my story if they are interested.  
--------------------------------------------
Date - Wed, 16 Nov 1994 
From - Angie Garcia <angie@elf.etsu.edu>

I purchased the Comtrade Multimedia Dream Machine (486DX-66)w/ upgrades of 
810M drive, 14.4 fax modem, & full tower case.  Total = $2440.

I am extremely unhappy with the company.  Alex, the salesperson, told me 
the enhanced IDE controller card would control 4 drives.  The controller 
is actually an on-board controller that will only handle two.  The driver 
for my EIDE will only recognize 16-bit I/0.  The CPU cooling fan 
rattles(it sounds as if there is an angry bee trying to escape the box), 
and the keyboard frequently locks up in all applications.  Also, whenever 
I called Alex to get the status on shipping, I was always told the 
computer shipped that day.  I have found that one cannot believe anything 
the sales department says.

When I tried to contact tech support about the above-mentioned problems, 
the phone would ring 20 times, then relay a recoding to try back later.  
I tried many times through sales to contact tech support.  I was always 
told they would call me back.  They never did.  After 6 weeks, I finally 
got a man whose accent was unintelligable,to answer the phone.  All I got 
out of him was, reseat the fan which will solve your keyboard problems.  
Get real! I have been a computer repair technician for 16 years.  There 
is no way the cooling fan has anything to do with the keyboard.  The 16 
bit I/O(supposed to be 32 which makes a huge difference in hard drive 
speed) problem was brushed off with an "if you knew anything about 
computers, you would know that it makes no difference."  I'm unsure, but 
I feel he thought he had some ditzy female on the phone and would believe 
any line of garbage he desired to feed.  I told him I wanted to upgrade the 
system to a P90 at which he gleefully laughed that it was past the 30-day 
limit.  

When I asked to speak to his supervisor, he told me he is in charge and 
hung up.  The galling thing of the whole experience was I totally kissed 
his fanny, never telling him I am a tech.  Whatever garbage he spewed, I 
pretended to believe, never losing my temper.  He treated me as if my 
problems were of no concern to comtrade and even went so far as to say, 
that "after 30 days, it's not our problem."

I will never purchase nor recommend to any of my customers the purchase 
of a Comtrade computer.  I replaced the defective cooling fan and 
keyboard, and am purchasing a new motherboard.  The $2440 price sounds 
good until you realize your paying $2440 for a $300 monitor, $350 video 
card, $550 for drives, $16 I/O card, and a $150 case which is all that 
remains of the original system purchase.  In this case, one doesn't even 
get what one pays for.
----
I want to give you an update since my last message.  My motherboard went
kaput.  I'll be purchasing a new motherboard sooner than expected.
-------------------------------------------
Date - Tue, 15 Nov 94
From - dsass@VNET.IBM.COM

I bought a Comtrade 33mhz 486DX about two years ago and it was a
terrible experience, both after I bought it and then 1 and 1/2 years
later.  When I received the machine the CTX monitor did not work
and the 5&1/4 inch floppy drive did not work.  I went through two more
defective monitors and a new machine before I had a working PC.  I
eventually went out and bought my own monitor to get one that worked.
Oh...I almost forgot the modem was also defective.

A year and a half later I had a problem where the cpu would not boot up.
I attempted to call technical support multiple times with no response.
AFTER FOUR WEEKS of trying with no success I finally got hold of someone,
after threatening to write the California Better Business Bureau, etc.
They told me that I had a bad mother board and to send the machine in
for them to fix it.  (Yea right...I said, I will never see my machine
again after going through what I did with the telephone support)

I finally resolved the situation myself:
I found out it had a bad video card that would not transfer the bios
when it booted to the mother board.

In summary:
The hardware is fair in quality.  The service is the worst anywhere.
I had to write to three PC magazines, and to threaten to sue them
before they would take any action.  BUYER BEWARE.  If you buy from
them you will get no support.  I won't be buying my next pc from them.
In my opinion this Company does not deserve to be in business and I
will cherish the day when they close their doors.
-------------------------------------------------
Date - Tue, 18 Oct 94
From - jjf@unx.dec.com

I bought a the following from COMTRADE in April 1992:
.40 Mhz AMD
.125 Meg HD
.4 Meg
.etc...

1) The 5.25 inch floppy did not work out of the box.
.They replaced it via US mail.

2) The CMOS would intermittently forget its settings (Sometimes 
.as frequent as once a week) COMTRADE support
.told me.to let the system run overnight to allow
.battery to charge.  No result.  Didn't pursue further.
.Since I installed 4 more Meg of memory and wiggled
.the battery (4/94), I haven't had any problem.

3) The CTX monitor has a burn hole in the center of the screen
.and one quarter of an inch from the top.  The hole is
.about the size of a broken pencil point and is NOT growing.
.The monitor also makes this awful sounding zzzzzzClick when
.starting/stopping windows (entering/exiting graphic mode?)
.which I hope is normal.

4) I recently purchased an internal modem.  I had to disable a
.COM port but couldn't find the serial board's guide.
.(The serial board doubles as a driver controller.)  I called
.for tech support (and was on the line for well over 30 minutes
.waiting for attention).  Even though I had not supplied
.an purchase number (or whatever they call there customer verification
.number) the tech support spend a good 20 minutes with me trying
.to identify the board (There is nothing printed on the board.)
.Then he spent 5-10 minutes looking for the board manual.  And two
.seconds telling me which jumper to flip.

Overall, I'm moderately satisfied with the purchase.  Tech support
is reliable if you can handle the wait; use their 800 number.
I'm not sure I would buy from them again: I'm not *that* wild about 'em.
-----------------------------------
From - Derek Upham <upham@cs.ubc.ca>
Date - Thu, 1 Sep 1994

I bought a Comtrade computer in July of '92 and have been reasonably
satisfied with it.  It was a 386/40 IDE with 8MB RAM (upgraded from
4MB), a 210MB HD (upgraded from 150MB), a Trident video card and a 14"
monitor.  The base system was their cheapest available (US$1475 before
upgrades, $1775 with upgrades).  Since then I've added a V.32bis modem
(with a 16550 UART) and a 400MB HD.  Comtrade shipped it on-time, via
UPS.  I've run Linux on it for the past two years, and everything has
worked fine, save the following:

(1) The keyboard is extremely low-end.  I replaced it with a Northgate
OmniKey, saving the original for emergencies.

(2) The ribbon cable connecting the floppy drives to the controller is
long enough to make the 5-1/4" drive "A" and the 3-1/2" drive "B", but
not long enough to swap them.  If you put the 3-1/2" drive on "A", you
lose the 5-1/4" drive.  This is occasionally an issue with Linux boot
disks.  Note that, in my full-tower case, the 3-1/2" drive has its own,
mini-width slot, so physically exchanging the drives is not possible.

(3) Putting 8MB of RAM on the motherboard requires filling eight slots
with 1MB SIMM chips.  The next available RAM size is 16MB, with four 4MB
SIMM chips.  This makes upgrading a pain (although people who can scav-
enge half their original 1MB SIMMs can go from 16MB to 20MB for free).

(4) The CTX monitor stores in its box using two square styrofoam
``donuts'' on either side.  You fit the monitor between the donuts,
lift everything up, then slide it all down into the box.  The problem
is that there is no stable way of holding everything together while
the monitor is going in or out of the box.  The monitor can slide out
from between the donuts and fall to the carpet from a height of about
18 inches.  As I can recall, it has happened to me twice.

The monitor still works, but it has picked up some irritating
problems:

* It doesn't go smoothly into 1024x768 mode (and often 800x600 mode).
  The screen fuzzes, and the electronics squeal.  Cycling the monitor
  off and on fixes the problem.  I generally turn the monitor off just
  as X is initializing, and turn it on a few seconds later as the
  window manager is coming up.  (Unfortunately, I didn't have X before
  the falls, so I can't compare the two cases.)

* Under certain conditions, some of the electromagnets in the picture
  tube go out.  The screen flickers noticeably for a bit, then the
  entire picture shrinks to half-height.  As far as I can tell, this
  problem is dependent on the weather; when the air gets ionized, this
  starts happening in 1024x768 mode, and moving down to 800x600 mode
  solves the problem.  More ionization, and I have to move down to
  640x480 mode, etc.  Occasionally it gets bad enough to happen in
  standard text mode.  Turning the monitor off seems to drain some of
  the charge, thankfully, so I can get a few minutes of emergency use.

* Recently I've noticed that the standard text mode has gotten
  _extremely_ dim.  It's only useable in a dark room, even at maximum
  brightness and contrast.  (I first noticed this problem playing
  Doom, but I thought the dimness was just part of the game...)
  Strangely, this has not been a problem in 1024x768 mode; I still use
  light-grey windows and have to keep the contrast down somewhat.

Unfortunately, I've never invoked warranty on the monitor, because I
moved to Canada soon after I got the machine, and because the monitor
_works_ most of time.  The difficulties with the monitor are just
outweighed by the difficulties with getting it fixed (CTX, not
Comtrade, covers the warranty).


In summary: Comtrade gave good hardware, cheaply.  My RAM and HD up-
grades were described and priced in the advertisement itself, so I
wasn't stressing the salesdroids there.  In addition, I was on the
back-end of the technology curve (AMI BIOS, IDE, Trident card) so all
of the technology bugs had long since been worked-out; I've never
needed to call Comtrade tech support.  The monitor difficulties are
irritating, but not inherent to the hardware.  People who deal with
Comtrade should keep a close eye on the motherboard/RAM restrictions,
but the same probably applies to most of the other companies out there.

I do not expect to buy another computer from Comtrade, but this is due
to my own buying habits.  Instead of getting a completely new system,
I'd prefer to upgrade my existing system piece by piece (it works,
it's just underpowered).  An IBM PowerPC system that could run the
Hurd might change my mind, however...
------------------------------------- 
From - geertges@rintintin.Colorado.EDU
Date - Mon, 20 Jun 1994
 
I have just recently placed an order for a Comtrade PCI SCSI-2
system. 
 
Here is what I ordered:
    DX2/66 PCI
    540meg 9ms SCSI-2 harddrive
    16megs RAM
    Diamond Stealth 64 w/ 2megs RAM
    15" CTX monitor
    Plus the other usual stuff (DOS, Windows, keyboard, mouse, etc.)
 
The total price after shipping came to $2640. I placed the order on June 
9th, and was told that the system would be shipped on June 16th. I expect 
to have the system anytime between June 20-25. When I called Comtrade on 
the 16th, I was still told the shipment was 'to be that day', but they 
didn't actually say it _had_ been shipped. I haven't called back yet to 
see if it was actually shipped. I will send you another reply when I 
receive my system (or get into an argument with Comtrade, which I'm 
hoping I don't have to do!). 
                                --=O=--
   My system was shipped on-time and arrived even ahead of the schedule 
they told me. The system was complete with all appropriate hardware, and 
it ran on the first try after setting everything up. I have only a few 
minor complaints: I don't feel I got all the documentation I should have. 
I felt that much of the hardware documentation could have been much 
better. If this is Comtrade's fault or not I don't know... it may be just 
the documentation from the manufacturers was bad. Also, I did not receive 
DOS or Windows manuals. When I called and asked about this they said they 
were on 'backorder' and they would be sent out when they came in. I have 
yet to receive any. Otherwise I am completely happy with my system. It is 
so far the fastest system I've seen in my dorm, so that's enough for me 
:) I'd still recommend Comtrade to anyone looking for a powerful, 
moderately priced system. 
-------------------------------------------  
From - teffta@cs690-3.erie.ge.com (Andrew R. Tefft)
 
I bought their "spitfire" system in May '93. It had the features
I wanted all bundled; other places' "upgrades" totaled significantly
more.
 
My salesgirl seemed especially clueless. Rather, hapless. She was able
to answer my questions on the system, but she took down my address wrong
(delaying my order) and generally bumbled around when it was actually
time to order. A couple months later I found out she no longer worked
there. A connection?
 
A friend at work wanted to buy a system similar to mine so I sent him
there. The price had dropped about $125 which was nice for him. But
after the thing hadn't shipped on time, he called them to find out where
his system was. Turns out it was waiting in the shipping department!
It had had a problem fixed during the 72-hour burn-in so it missed the
shipping for that week; that was just when memory prices shot up and it
seems they had been calling people who had placed orders not-yet-shipped
to get more money out of them! He hadn't had a call (probably since the
system was supposed to have already been shipped, or perhaps it was
because his salesgirl had left the company) so he yelled at them and
they overnighted it to him.
 
It took nearly a month from my order to receive it (longer for his).
It seems that they only ship one day a week, and there's the three-day
burnin, so if you order on the wrong day it takes an extra week. And UPS
takes a week-10 days to get here from there.
 
The quality of the system itself is acceptable. The case is sturdy
except for the latch on the little door in front (that door is a nice
feature, IF you don't use your floppy drives much!). The hard drive
cable came semi-unplugged when I added memory, really threw me when it
didn't work when I rebooted. The floppy drives are quiet (no-name brand
as far as I can tell though). The WD caviar drives are fast but noisy
(no fault of comtrade).
 
The keyboard feel SUCKS (yes, in all caps) and you can't type certain
key combinations quickly (e.g. mount comes out mout). I no longer use
it. The z-nix mouse tends to skip -- I have adjusted the contacts inside it
more than once; next time I will buy a $12 replacement from Lyben.
 
It came loaded with dos & windows ($25 credit each for leaving them
off) which came with original disks but only teeny-tiny manuals,
not the full-blown ones. Good thing I don't use dos or windows much.
They seem to have added some windows fonts and backdrops -- no idea
where they came from or whether they're legal -- as well as a couple
windows benchmarks which are free but not necessarily freely distributable.
 
The system was purported to have a vlb ide (it's on the motherboard),
along with serial, parallel, and game ports) but I can't tell that it's
really vlb (I figure I should have some sort of driver for it if it is).
Other than that, it is as advertised.
 
The ctx 15" monitor is ok, actually seems to be quite nice compared
to the generics you get with some systems. The warranty on the monitor
is from CTX, not comtrade -- you have to return it to ctx for service.
 
Oh, and that "nationwide" on-site warranty -- it's not really nationwide,
it is a warranty provided by a company called Nationwide, and they
do have offices all over, but they only come to your site if you're
within 50 miles of one of their service centers. Otherwise you can
bring it in or ship it (and they will reimburse you for that).
 
My only experience with their tech support was a pretty simple situation.
When I added RAM the first time, my cmos got reset (think I unplugged
the battery by accident) so I called them for the hard drive parameters.
They had written them on a sticker on the back of the case, old me so,
and that was that. Sounded like a bored teenager working the phone.
-----------------------------------------
From - Christopher Wingert <crw@ncrtory.TorreyPinesCA.ncr.com>
 
 Here goes my experience with Comtrade, I thought that it might be useful
 to others in making a decision
 
 THE COMPUTER
 I bought 486/66DX VESA Local Bus System, 8 MB Memory, 17" CTX Monitor,
 420 MB Hard Drive, 14.4 Fax / Modem, CD ROM, and Irwin Tape Backup.  
 Cost $3020
 
 One thing that I noticed about the motherboard that I didn't like was 
 that I had all the slots filled.  No more expandability.  :(
 
 THE PROBLEM
 When I first got it, it worked alright.  A few days into setting it up,
it 
 would not boot.  I had to press the reset xx times (lets just say a lot)
 to trick it into re-booting.  Ctrl-Alt-Delete did not work either, it
 froze up the system.  I had to wait fifteen minutes between boots.  I
 also very frequently got Memory Parity errors.  It still worked but was 
 a pain in the ass to work with.
 
 So anyway I tried to call Comtrade Technical Support..here goes the fun...
 -Given this was December 27, 0700 PST (they're supposed to be open then) 
  First day back from Christmas should be a bitch, right?
 -Called Technical Support and let the phone ring about 20 times each, 
  about ten calls over two hours.
 -Finally called the Sales line and asked the problem with the Technical
  Support Line. She said, "The ringing phone was Tech Support People 
  who were not in."  I said "Ok, I'll try again."
 -Called Technical Support, another 5 times, 20 rings per call, still no
  answer.
 -Called the Sales Line, explained the problem, she happily took a message and
  explained that a Technical Support person would call within the hour.
 -Needless to say I didn't get a call back
 -Called the Sales Line back explained that I had not received a call back
  and stated that I was getting aggravated, and magically she put me
through 
  to the technical support supervisor.  Explained the problem : he said it
  was a BIOS problem and I needed a new motherboard (Ahh...duhhh...no
  kidding).  Anyway he said, "He would send a board out that day and that
  the on-site service would call me within the next two days."  I asked
  him, "Are you sure that I would have a working computer before the end
  of the week."  He said, "Yes."
 -Still having problems with computer, barely working with it.
 -The board still has not arrived on December 29, so I decide to call
  Technical Support Back.
 -I tried to get through to Technical Support about ten times over an hour,
  the phone line was always busy (At least they were there :) )
 -I got aggravated again, called the Sales Line, explained my problem, and
  she stated that she would be happy to take a message.  I explained my
  aggravation, threatened that I wanted an RMA and magically was put
  through to the Technical Support Supervisor (same guy I talked to before)
  I began to wonder if there was only one technical support guy.
 -Talked to the Technical Support Supervisor and he said "The motherboard
  had not been shipped out yet," hung on for about five minutes till he
  tried to figure out why.  Then he said "The board had been shipped"
  (he had just not updated his system) and it was shipped out second day air.
  Well I usually can subtract 29 - 27 = 2, right?  :)  I also asked "Why
  I had not been contacted by the on site service people," and he said
  "I faxed the order through and They'd call me."  Anyway I said, "Thanked 
  you" and hung up.
 -December 30, the On Site Headquarters in Orange Country called me and
said 
  that their affiliate by my home would contact me on January 3rd.  I
figured 
  that I was not going to get it working that week.
 -Finally got the board on December 30, magically the Federal Express tag said
  that it was shipped on December 29, hmmm....  :)
 -Couldn't really wait till Monday to get the system going, so I opened up 
  the case to find a jumper flying around the case....hmmm...  Anyway 
  compared the new motherboard with the old motherboard and found where 
  the jumper goes.  I plugged everything back in and the system seems to 
  work fine now.  Magic, huh?
 -Finally contacted by the Local On-Site Service on January 3rd.
 
 Most consider that a horror story, but I figure you get what you pay for,
 right?  I mean it is a *really* good price, and I guess I got time to
 be aggravated.  I must admit that I got *almost* all the manuals with the
 system, and all the software on disks, unlike other slap together shops
 I`ve dealt with.  The people at Comtrade are very friendly, even while 
 their giving you the run around.
 
 Good Luck and buyer beware.
-------------------------------------------  
From - tong@diddley.rsip.lsu.edu (Zhen Tong)
 
I have bought a Comtrade 486DX/33 Diamond SpeedStar VLB system in July.
 
The video speed is around 11.7 M pixels/sec by using Winbench 3.11 at 
1024 x 768 w/256 color. And 15" CTX1561 Low Radiation monitor looks good.
 
But the hard drive speed is around 850 K /sec, by using PCTOOLS V8, which
is a little bit slower than Gateway and Zennon's.
 
After seeing my system, at least 2 of my friends bought the same machine
for $1825 w/8M RAM, 250M hard drive. I have talked to the salsperson
Sue Chen, who is nice and helped me to separate my invoice so that I could
charge the monitor and hard drive into a credit card that has extended
warrenty. (Since Monitor & Hard drive only have 18 month warrenty)
-------------------------------------------- 
From - gt1603d@prism.gatech.EDU (Wesley Alan Slone)
 
I saw this post and thought I would add to it as I have purchased
a Comtrade 486 DX 33.
 
The sales staff was very helpful and they were quite
pleasant about upgrading my monitor once I had bought my system
and wanted a better screen.
 
Tech Support is not always availible, but when I do get them 
they are always able to answer my questions.
 
The only Gotcha I experienced was the fact that my
VLB motherboard has the drive controller built in.
Therefore if something happens to the controller
the motherboard has to be takwn out.
 
Otherwise I am extremely happy with the system.
   486DX33
   250 HD
   8 Mb Ram
   Diamond Viper 2 Mb VLB card
   Mag 15F Monitor
 
I would not advise (as was previously stated) anyone who needs
their hands held to buy from Comtrade.
For me it was just what I needed, good equipment at a good price
without any fuss.
--------------------------------------------
From - xjam@cork.CS.Berkeley.EDU (The Crossjammer)
 
I just recently bought a Comtrade EISA/VLB Winner (or whatever the damn
thing's
name is) for the express purpose of running free UNIXs and general home
hacking. Here's the result:
 
HiNT SuperISA (EISA) Motherboard
        Gotcha 1.) Only three real EISA slots.
        Gotcha 2.) No DMA over 24 bit addressing.
 
8 Megs 70ns ram
        Gotcha 3.) The machine has two banks of 4 simms. Ergo I have to buy
                   16 Meg to actually upgrade my machine.
 
340 MB Western Digital
VLB IDE hard drive
        Gotcha 4.) I probably should have gone SCSI-2 but I wasn't
                   thinking.
 
17" Viewsonic 17 monitor
STB-VL/24 S3805 based graphics card
1.2 MB 5.25" and 1.4 MB 3.5" Floppies:
        Gotcha 5.) You have to open the box and fool with the cables to get
                   the 3.5" floppy as bootable.
3 Button Mouse
Baby Tower Case
        Gotcha 6.) I was thinking I wanted a full tower, but the baby case
                   has enough bays for what I want to put in later. Still...
 
It took them approximately a week and a half to ship. This didn't irritate
me in the least but it was a couple of days later than they said it would
ship when I first ordered.  It arrived safely, booted promptly after
plugging in, and was already loaded with DOS 6.0 and MS Windows 3.1 .
Warranty is 30 days money back no questions asked. The clock starts ticking
when they ship. I specifically asked this just in case Linux didn't run
since I really wanted to run a free UNIX.
 
I called tech support a couple of days later to find out if the bootable
floppy could be set from BIOS. Had to leave a message. Never got an answer.
Called back a day later and got a human. The answer was "No", and the guy
seemed overworked and frazzled. Take it for what it's worth. The insides
seem relatively well put together and neat, but I'm not a stickler for
that.
 
Linux loaded and booted fine. I installed from an SLS set of disks that a
friend of mine has. That was 2 SLS releases ago though. Straight X386 I
never got to work with the card, but I didn't fool around much with that. I
proceeded directly to XS3, the accelerated version. Took me 1/2 a day to get
that working. I now have X running in 1024x700 pixels of 8 bit color. Looks
pretty damn good.
 
Linux runs fine. Check that, it runs FAST AS HELL. I had X, Emacs, Lucid
Emacs, and gcc running all at the same time. The load average went to a
whopping 0.5 . My preliminary xbench test showed the server outperforming a
SparcStation 1+ (without an accelerator on the Sun). In a couple of tests,
it outperformed a SS 2 (with gx). Then again there are lies, damned lies,
statistics, and benchmarks.
 
I now have at home an acceptable UNIX development environment. My
suggestion is that if you don't need a lot of hand holding go for it. If
you think you're going to need tech support any time you have a problem, go
with Zeos or Dell or somebody else who isn't treading thin ice on their
margins. I paid approximately $3600 but California got me for 300 bucks and
I splurged on the monitor.
 
I really like my machine, but if you have any variations/concerns on the
standard configs *WRITE THEM DOWN AS A CHECKLIST* and ask them of your
salesdroid.  Mine (Penny) was polite and efficient. All of the gotchas
above, I probably could have taken care of by asking before I purchased.
---------------------------------------
From - lynne@troy.cc.bellcore.com (presley,lynne d)
 
I purchased this system and ended up returning it, the Comtrade one,
that is.  I was having a problem in Windows, getting a lot of random
application errors.  Comtrade technical support was helpful and tried
to solve the problem, even sent me a new Viper card, which didn't fix
the problem.  I probably could have eventually solved the problem but
I decided to just return it before my 30-day money back guarantee ran
out.  The Comtrade system uses the G486HVL motherboard with 3 EISA
slots (the manual calls them Super ISA but says they are 32-bit DMA).
I also had the DTC 3292 SCSI controller in an EISA slot that appeared
to be working fine.  Their tech support is hard to get a hold of
sometimes, expect to leave messages sometimes.  The day I called to
get an RMA number to return the system, I couldn't get anyone to
answer the phone at tech support until 12:30pm when they supposedly open
at 7 AM.  I did not feel 100% comfortable with the motherboard (with
the EISA/ISA slots).  Next time around I'll go with all EISA or all
ISA on the motherboard, and of course with 2 or 3 VL-Bus slots!
--------------------------------------  
From - chrisg@henson.cc.wwu.edu
 
I went with the VL-bus too, since Bill told me the same thing, it being
faster and all.  When I mentioned the unreliability of that Steve guy 
before that's what I was referring too. Steve said the Eisa was faster
(or apparently he was ASSUMING so because it was $50 more). Gee, after
all, if it is more expensive it HAS to be better, right?
 
My system cost me $2540.  The whole system was a 486DX2-66 EISA Dream Machine
w/340 MB IDE hd, 8 megs 70ns RAM, Morse VL-Bus IDE HD Controller, 
15" CTX-1561 SVGA monitor, WinPro (Powergraph) VL Video Card, Mid-Tower
Case ($40), and $70 Ground UPS shipping.   Yours probably differed slightly,
but I imagine we paid about the same? (i hope)
 
Anyway, yeah, it does scream, quite a jump from the 386SX-16 i've had for
the past 3 years and just sold.  Oh yeah, just installed the Proaudio 
Spectrum-16 SoundCard in, and that thing is wicked.
 
Haven't had any problems yet. I think you'll like it. (The Eisa is actually
Super-ISA tho, still have to figure out if that will really make a diff
in what i'll be doing).
---------------------------------------
From - mark@lightning.ofps.ucar.EDU (Mark Bradford)
 
I've owned a Comtrade 386/33 for over two years now -- I bought it in
early 1991 (when I went on a money-spending binge after my girlfriend
dumped me :-).  I'm very much a hacker type, so I've done all my own
support and maintenance, and haven't even called them since I ordered
my machine, so I'm not a good person to ask about their support.
 
I'm quite pleased with the machine -- it's very speedy, and works
perfectly with DOS, Windows, and Linux(*).  I've replaced the video
card and hard drive -- no compatibility problems.  Alas, I bought it
just before non-interlaced monitors hit the scene, and a 386/33 is
hardly the state of the art any more -- but I've kept my eye on their
ads, and they still have excellent prices, so when I go for that
local-bus 486/66, you can be sure I'll consider them.
 
Oh, I have had one problem with it -- one segment of the speed-indicator
LED has burnt out.  I don't think it's under warranty any more.  :-)
 
(*) Well, as perfectly as DOS and Windows can work.
----------------------------------------------- 
From - adamsr@umcc.umcc.umich.edu (Rick Adams)
 
        I'm using a Comtrade "Dream Machine" (486/66, 8MB, EISA/VLB, etc.)
and I can't recommend them highly enough.
 
        My system is the fastest machine I've ever used (I have Gateway
486/66 machines at work and they're like 386s next to this computer), and
their prices can't be beat. For a system with 8MB, 256K Cache, a 210MB
WD2200, EISA IDE controller, VLB accelerator, full tower (with door), etc. I
paid less than Gateway wants for a 486/25.  Even after adding an additional
WD2350 (340MB) it still came out cheaper than anyone else's 486/66 - and
gave me EISA/VLB in the process.
 
        I did have a problem with the system when it came - one key on the
keyboard "stuck" and the STB Powergraph it shipped with was not working
correctly. The company was _very_ supportive and helpful - even letting me
select the replacement graphic card from those they ship (I chose the
Volante Warp 10 VL, and would recommend the selection as an initial one if
you order). Coupled with the included on-site service for problems they
can't "fix" by telephone, I see their service as clearly superior. Certainly
I've never received the kind of immediate concern from Compuadd (source of
my previous system) that I did from Comtrade.
---------------------------------------------- 
From - jjhoxsey@vela.acs.oakland.edu
 
        My experiences with Comtrade have been less than spectacular.
When my mouse no longer functioned, I called them and asked for a
replacement to be shipped.  The tech support man said it would take 1
to 1-1/2 weeks for a replacement mouse to arrive.  Since I do a lot of
Windows work for Ford, I told him I could not wait that long for a
mouse to arrive.
        Eventually, (actually, 20 minutes later) I was on the phone
with Mr. Paul Stiglitch who said he could ship out a mouse to me the
next day, but I would be billed for the mouse ($40!) and then credited
when my faulty one arrived at their shop.  I sent out the faulty mouse
three days later (it was a Friday).
        Three weeks later, my replacement mouse arrived.
        Over a month later, I still had not been credited for the
faulty mouse.
        Despite my continued attempts to contact Comtrade, I never
received a response regarding my faulty mouse's status.
        I filed a dispute with Citibank who removed the $40 charge
from Comtrade.
        When I was speaking to the tech support person, they sounded
like I was wasting their time, or was interrupting his time.  I sent
Mr. Stiglitch a letter with my concerns.  I have never received a
response.
        In general, Comtrade systems are terrific boxes, but don't
expect much from their customer support.
-----------------------------------------
From - Danny.Spalt@launchpad.unc.edu (Danny Spalt)
 
A few days ago I posted a message asking whether anyone had any experience
with a mail-order company called COMTRADE.  Here's what I found out. 
Different people have had vastly different experiences with them.  Their
service has been described as minimal ("take your money and run") to
superb.  Everyone seems to agree that their hardware is decent, although
several have stated that the guts of the machine inside of the case are in
disarray.  Also, their SIMM banks are interleaved, so you have to buy four
at a time (this is probably only on systems that say "expandable to 128
MEG" - I think most expand to 32).  One buyer said that he received a
different graphics accelerator than the one listed in the ad.  Express
parts replacement has been smooth for some, sluggish at best for others. 
Bottom line: the hardware is pretty good, but they obviously cut some
corners to get that attractive price tag.
__________________________________________________________________________
My Personal Experience with COMTRADE (grohol@coil.com)
 
I purchased a VESA VLB/EISA Dream Machine 486/66mhz machine
from COMTRADE on July 6, 1993. With the replacement of the 15" 
monitor with a 17" Viewsonic. I'm still running the same machine
with no problems. I have since upgraded its original 8 megs of
memory to 16, added a sound card, CD-ROM, and tape backup.
I was one of the lucky ones... Nothing on this machine has yet
"gone." But I cannot recommend buying from Comtrade anymore,
given some of the horrible service (or lack thereof!) stories
contained herein.
_________________________________________________________________
Note:
 
This list was begun in July, 1993 as a response to my own
buying needs. If you'd like to add to it, simply send me
Email with your own personal experiences! Thank you.
 
I make no warranties, express or implied, about the validity
or accuracy of the above opinions or information and disclaim
all liability resulting from them. Buyer Beware.

Copyright 1993-1996 John M. Grohol

