(Apologies to God, his writers, and anyone involves with phrasing the King James Version of the Bible)
In the beginning, Asus created iPanel. And it saw what it had made, and said, “Behold, it is very good.”
And Asus said unto its minions, “Go ye into all the world, and preach this good news to every creature that owneth a computer. He that believeth shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
So they did, and man didst buy the product.
They trieth to install it, but it seemed possessed by demons, especially when their machines were inhabited by SCSI or RAID controllers. It often worketh not.
Its owners cried out, “Asus, cast out these demons, or at least issueth a BIOS change,” but Asus harkened not.
Some of its servants denied before them all, saying, “We know not what thou sayest. This is our product, so it is very good. To say not means that it is you who are possessed with evil-speaking demons, not our product.
A few really denied all before them, saying Asus did not make it.
And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst its owners, which increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty after Asus removeth all mention of the iPanel from its holy website, yeah, even unto the mirrors.
The owners saw, and believed not the words of Asus and thought that Asus believeth not any more that it good, but didst not wish to admit it.
So they cried with a great and exceedingly bitter cry, “My Asus, my Asus, why hast thou forsaken us?” But Asus heard them not.
They prayed to the tech gods, “Deliver us out of the hand of this malfunctioning product, and we will serve thee.”
And the tech gods heard, and from the land of Brittania came a man named Jim of Hearne, and he said unto them
“Arise, get thee down unto the Radio Shack; and have them deliver a soldering iron and 1K resistor into thine hands. But if thou fearest soldering, find thee one that doth know it to fulfill thine task.
Cut the wire in the ribbon cable that goeth to pin 19 of thine 24 way connector.
If thou looketh on page 8 of the Ipanel manual; it is labeled PCIRST#. Join the 2 cut ends with thine 1K resistor.
Insulateth the joints and powereth up.”
They listened unto him, and did what he commanded. Lo, and behold, it now worketh!
He spake much more of this, which thou should examine both above and here before thou doeth the deed.
Therefore the iPanel owners’ heart were gladdened, and they rejoiceth: and told Jim of Hearne, “Thou rulest!” and they prayed in hope that Asus would addeth a resistor in the next version.
But Asus sayeth nothing.
A month did pass, and a man of God (or at least he useth the handle Dieu, which meaneth “God” in the language of France) receiveth the iPanel from Asus’ hands.
He testeth it, and it worketh not.
He calleth Asus Technical Support, but they heard him not.
He calleth other servants of Asus, but none moved their tongues.
He sayeth to himself, “This product doth suck.”
He then began to say the same to others and complained mightily at the AMDMb forum.
He wandered through the Web wilderness for forty, nay seven times forty minutes, until he came to the Land of Hearne, where the iPanel Savior showed him the way, the boot, and the life.
Dieu gave thanks unto the iPanel lord, but also sayeth, “Anything which requireth a soldering iron to work still sucketh big time,” which he said unto the AMDMb.com, yeah, even onto the AMDMb front page
Then the fierce wrath of Asus was kindled, and waxed hot and cruel, and they reached to smote this stiff-necked reviewer. From Mount Newark, the voice of Asus spoke, and she said
“Ye are possessed by Satan, or even worse, Abit, to find fault against our faultless product. Ye have rebelled against the greatest commandment of my Lord: Thou shalt not take the name of my Lord my God in vain. Therefore, thou shalt not receive any more equipment.”
Dieu didst not abhor himself, nor repented in sackcloth and ashes. Rather, he returneth back to his forum and said just what he thought of Asus, and provideth email addresses for others to doeth the same.
The minion receiveth emails, and began to wail and howl at this to the AMDMb founder, who thought, “Verily, I say unto me, this is getting out of handeth.”
So he removeth the email addresses by which the minion had heard the righteous anger of the forum members, and inventeth new Constitutional rights of privacy for work email addresses, and spoke of much talk about the business covenant betwixt Asus and AMBMb.
And the forum members muttered, and uttered dark thoughts, wondering at that which had come to pass and if the token of renewing this covenant were circumcision or quite a bit more.
One asketh the website owner, “Just what is the business covenant betwixt thee and Asus? Art thou completely independent in your views from ASUS . . . or art thou just a little independent? . . . . Inquiring minds wouldst like to know.”
The owner replieth not.
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We see here a rare public display of the cost of free equipment.
Update 3/8/00: We would be glad to have Asus state its side of the story.
We’ve gotten some correspondence from some other involved parties, which made some points which appeared contradictory to the evidence, and I’m awaiting answers to a rather long email I sent last night to clear up a number of points.
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