SCS Is Dead. Long live MaxForce.
It’s been almost a year since we reviewed a couple of PCs from Solaris Computer Systems—a company that has nothing to do with the Solaris operating system from Sun Microsystems, for the record. Those systems proved to offer strong performance at their respective price points. The company proved to be very accessible and willing to accommodate individual customers’ needs and requests. We concluded that the upstart Solaris Computer Systems might have a sunny future ahead as long as it could prove to be a reliable vendor in the long term.
Fast forward to today. Solaris Computer Systems is still doing what it was doing a year ago, but now it is doing it under another name: MaxForce PC. It seems likely that the folks at Solaris were tired of having their company confused with an OS, so the firm chose a clever twist on the first name of the firm’s founder, Max Feinstein.
The new name doesn’t reflect a fly-by-night company, as MaxForce continues to honor all warranties sold under the Solaris Computer Systems banner. In our original review last year, Solaris Computer Systems was having some teething troubles with its Web site. The new site at maxforcepc.com is much more put-together, although when this article was written the site’s online system configurator didn’t spit out accurate pricing—this is a pretty big chink in the armor, but Max let us know it was being changed.
On the plus side, Max let us know that MaxForce is upgrading its hardware warranty to three years instead of the original two, so all hardware is covered for a minimum of three years and labor is covered for each system’s lifetime. A little snooping around on the Web showed us that Max is building a reputation for excellent communication and customer support, so while we don’t have any personal experience with MaxForce warranty issues, we prefer stumbling across positive feedback versus lists of complaints.
Now that you have a little background on the company itself, let’s see if MaxForce can still offer a compelling system at a reasonable price.
