M.2. Please Just Standardize
It would be unsporting to deny players in such an acutely competitive industry any margin for “slick” marketing. Selective editing to accentuate major selling points and expound on unique innovations should not only be spared reproach but permitted reasonable defence on the premise that a buyer possesses basic literary skills, has carried out respectable research comparing the key aspects of several items produced for similar or identical purposes and ultimately, is able to make a free, educated choice founded on prudent practicality or the fiery, irrational desire for patented prettiness.
However, when shortcomings are secluded by obfuscation, omissions and oversights, all too convenient to be excused by typos, memory lapses or Master Asus expounding so extensively on the ingenuity of his hyper intelligent fan management system that he neglects to mention it’s post ventilation wellness program for fans struck down by pernicious particle induced rotational psychosis – otherwise known as dust – only includes stress counselling for those with rifle and sleeve bearings…
Master Asus: I’m planning one for ball and fluid bearings, but since their burn out rate is lower they require less revolutionary treatment.
Customer: Not good enough, I have four nauseous Noctua’s here, all oil bearing PWMs, delusional and steadfastly refusing to swirl for a board you sold me unless they are suitably rehabilitated. They’ve been on relentless duty cycle for five hard years, don’t tell me they don’t qualify.
Master Asus: Woah! Indirectly sold to you. Did you read the details off your e-tailer’s site rather than my own, some things do wander in translation. I know I mentioned fans with endemic weaknesses would be given priority….
Customer: All fans have bearings and some are susceptible to PPIRP. So what? That’s just the way were bred, for the frugally inclined. How in your universe does that constitute an inherent illness and where do you say it? I see no such claim.
Master Asus: Just below the section about Multi-Zone Specific Superfine Granularity Thermal Calibration”.
Customer: No, still nothing, save for your promise that “long spinning fans will be thoroughly analysed in strict compliance with the guidelines for structural and circulatory stability and any job related injury or disorder or will benefit from immediate and appropriate care pursuant to their individual case history.”
Master Asus: Ah!, you’re looking on my “overview” page, not the “specification” page.
Customer: Pardon me?
Master Asus: Look across the top of the page you’re on and you’ll see a tab marked “specification”. Click on it once and you’ll be able to view your motherboard’s unabridged portfolio, including the relevant disclaimer, plus dozens of additional footnotes at the very bottom marked out by stars and numbers. You might need to enlarge your font a tad, just to make them legible, but all that needs to be mentioned is present there, of that I can assure you.
You see, this was when sporting and stimulating promotion mutated into premeditated deception. A bullish and bedazzling pitch to the mentally pliant, saturated with florescent logos, fancifully interpreting innumerable brand decorated bonuses and smothered in enough flash to make your browser falter.
Then, loitering just out of an engrossed eye’s glimpse, behind a link even less conspicuous than a bright Pink Elephant tooting Mozart’s horn concerto…at a the annual “Monstrously Musical Quaintly Coloured Herbivore’s Convention”, a lengthy but similarly low key statistical appendix teeming with allusions to befuddling operational anomalies that compromise many of the product’s most alluring assets. For Instance:
Slots whose broadest bandwidth depended on several other functional forfeits
Sockets and ports that couldn’t be used simultaneously…unless a slot was vacated, a particular CPU installed and the devices wishing to employ them bore officially validated international data transport licences.
Hardly conducive to retaining a consumer’s trust and ensuring their long term satisfaction. Should we afford friends the same attitude? Would I, on a classy, cordial and tastefully oiled evening “graciously” offer to cover for several rounds of exotic and exorbitant cocktails, collect the tab in apparent good grace, then casually produce a carrier back loaded with 3600 five penny pieces – approximately 4540 nickels – before claiming, in an clinically rehearsed tone of regret, that by staggering misfortune and mysterious coincidence, every teller at you local bank was spontaneously struck down with an acute phobia of paper currency and large change.
My Conscience: Hmm. Wouldn’t a carrier bag burst under the strain of all that coinage? How did you get it from the bank to the bar?
Me: Oh. Alright, a suitcase then.
My Conscience: That you produced at the end of the evening? You must have had it all the time then, it couldn’t have just magically appeared after picking up the tab.
Me: That’s correct.
My Conscience: Wouldn’t your friends have found it slightly odd. You lugging around a weighty suitcase on a social evening out. Didn’t any of them think to ask, “Goodness what’s in there?”
Me: Ok, it was one of those light canvas fold up bags, the type you can fit in your pocket..
My Conscience: Not with 3600 five penny pieces you couldn’t.
Me: No, I left home with it empty, then went to the bank after agreeing to pay for the rounds
My Conscience: Hmm. What time did you meet at the bar?
Me: About seven thirty, perhaps eight.
My Conscience: Banks stay open quite late in your vicinity then?
Me: God almighty, is this an inquisition? It was only simple analogy, I agree it was ill-thought out, let’s just forget it.
My Conscience: Sorry, I can’t let you carry on without resolving these logic errors.
Me: Fine. I went to the bank with the bag at 3pm and asked to withdraw £150 in five penny pieces. The clerk was slightly confused to begin with, and didn’t know if the bank could even arrange such a transaction. I told her it was very important and intended for an artistic installation at a small charity funded exhibition to raise awareness of the national debt. After sympathizing and checking with the branch supervisor, she said it would be ok. I left the bank at 3:30 with 3600 five pees in the bag and walked home.
My Conscience: Walked all the way with that bag.
Me: I live quite close to the bank.
My Conscience: Do you know what the weight of a 5p piece is
Me: 3 grams.
My Conscience: Ah! You went to the trouble to verify that one eh? So 3600 times 3 is 10800, there’s your weight in grams, divide by 1000 and we’ve got 10.8 kilos, about the weight of a Scotty Dog, plausible enough, continue.
Me: I left home with the bag at 7:15pm and arrived at the bar at just after 7:30, it was actually more like a restaurant with a separate bar and had a cloakroom nearby where you could leave coats and luggage
My Conscience: Very clever
Me: I met up with my friends in the bar fifteen minutes later. Now, please be satisfied and go away.
My Conscience: How many friends
Me: Seven, including me.
My Conscience: How many rounds of Cocktails.
Me: Four
My Conscience: Hmm, five pounds per cocktail, were they selling them regurgitated?
Me: ALRIGHT!!! Five friends, including me and four rounds.
My Conscience: That’s £7.50 per cocktail, sounds bang on. So you did all this in order to appear generous, but came across more than a little eccentric.
Me: To get out of paying whilst being perceived as selfless and able to back it up with hard evidence. You see the maximum amount payable in 5 penny pieces is £5, the bar would have refused to accept my funds and a friend would have bailed me out.
My Conscience: So, they all believed your story about the bank staff’s fear of paper money high value coins?
Me: Yes, because the cocktails made them pleasantly gullible and they weren’t the brightest bunch besides and no, none of them remembered the next day. Now, LEAVE ME ALONE!.
I’m exhausted. Time to sail with the winds atop a prevalent tide on a welcome return journey to the principal point…what the hell was it?