Features - QOTW: Which tech company do you admire the most?

[=assassin=]

I'm a fan of a few companies:

Corsair - I love their cases and PSU's, although they are not the most reliable for parts.
Samsung - nice selection of quality AND reliable products. Not got a bad word to say about them.
ASUS - another company I think of providing quality products
NVIDIA/AMD - for providing great graphics cards all these years, and not taking each other out of competition.

And of companies I'm not a fan of:

Microsoft - because they're too big for their boots and ignore what people really want
Intel - for bullying AMD years ago causing them to suffer lost revenue when they had a lead
MSI - Terrible reliability, every product I've ever owned, and nearly every product that friends/neighbours have owned, that is made by MSI, has failed very early. Quality Control is awful.
Apple - For obvious reasons!
RAMBUS - Patent Troll.

[ionicle]

Admire:
Apple - Quality, good looking, solid products
Arm - British and rolling in dosh ...whats not to like
AMD - The underdog who sticks it to the man ....or used to

Dislike:
Samsung - ScamScum as i call them, copycat phoney ripoff con-merchants
Google - i am a person, not a number, i cannot be quanitified, and i do not enjoy being statisticised
Intel - when they get the monopoly, they milk it...amd never did, or not neerly as bad...shame on you

[fail_quail]

A few that come to mind:

IBM/Lenovo: love their laptops
Razer: Love the Naga mouse range, loads of re-mappable hardware buttons are awesome for games.
AMD: for putting up with the dirty tricks of their competitors and for the most part not joining them in doing so.

I'm genuinely surprised so many people mentioned Nvidia though.
I'm not sure i'll ever forgive them for taking a promising hardware physics platform, buying it out and purposely going out of their way to cripple it on competitor systems.
They effectively destroyed hardware physics on the PC platform for a very long time, just to give themselves a cheap plus point over their competition.

[purnell_emily]

I like Google because they really know in what people are interested about and what they want.

[brasco]

IBM + Microsoft + Intel/AMD for their cutting edge RnD.
ARM for coming out of nowhere and being British of course
Apple for product design, I now don't own any Apple stuff anymore but I still think their designs are tight, couldn't care less if they've only innovated and not invented anything, I do care that they abuse their position (as all the others have/still do).

I'm a bit torn with Google, I think mostly they're awesome but I'm concerned about their stranglehold on our data. I love what they're doing with some of their cash - creating a multibillion dollar industry in self-driving vehicles or their work encouraging space exploration.

[nacasatu]

#1 Gigabyte - Their motherboards have never failed, always stable, always top class, excellent at overclocking.

#2 Intel - No matter what people say, we wouldn't be anywhere as advanced in personal computers as we are today without them. That and they actually know how to do stuff, unlike AMD who just continue to pump out muck products.

#3 Dream MultiMedia - For giving us the Dreambox and leading the way in what a Satellite receiver should do.

---

Dislikes...

#1 Apple - Make nothing but expensive doorstops for metrosexuals.

#2 AMD - For wasting peoples time and money with the amount of utter tat they produce.

#3 Seagate - For all the years they refused to employ Catholic's in Ireland.

[cheesemp]

Google, ARM and ASUS I guess. Really gone off Microsoft recently (trying to be apple+) and never been keen on the fruity company.

[abaxas]

Apple.

Once I moved to OSX, there was no way back to windows or linux. It just works, exactly how a computer should be.

[Pleiades]

Like: AMD for their persistence, and as someone already pointed out, their decidedly virtuous behaviour in the face of unsportsman-like provocation by Nvidia and Intel.

Samsung: the same really. Anyone battling that ridiculous behemoth Apple has my support.

Leap (Motion, if it's as good as it's supposed to be).

Dislikes: Apple (the bullied becomes the bully, how sad)

Google: thrusting its nosey tentacles into every information orifice on Earth (and soon, beyond).

Actually too many un-admirables to mention so won't bother

[bobharvey]

Cannonical - determined to succeed
Red Hat - for really succeeding
Cisco - for doing what they do so well.

[zap117]

AMD, ASUS, Samsung, Corsair, ARM... not sure why Apple is in that list.

[MrBozack]

Gigabyte - I'm always happy with their graphics cards and motherboards. Whenever I build Gigabyte based PC - it always seems to work perfect.

Corsair - The build quality of PSU. I think they offer fair prices on other things like SSD and memory. They tend to offer a good balance between specification, price and build quality.

Nintendo - I really respect Nintendo's constant innovation with hardware. I'd struggle to name another company which spends as much on research. They are good as a game developer too. No other company offers the same level of perfection. It's not often you find something broken on Nintendo!

[saunders]

Microsoft

how can anyone dispute that?

[Abhish_Korah]

Google!!
Reasons: Android, Chrome browser, Google maps, Google search engine (how can anyone forget that ), google goggles, etc...

[jnutt]

1. Google for Android and search both of which I couldn't be without.
2. MSi for providing me with reliable Motherboards and Nvidia graphics for a long while now.
3. NETGEAR for their ReadyNas Duo that has served me well for years now.

[bledd]

Sony. Their computers are nicely designed, their phones are as good as iphones, their tvs are just amazing. Everything i want from a company.

Ever rebuilt a Sony PC / laptop?. Their proprietary utilities/drivers are a cancer. You often need multiple additional Sony programs just to get brightness buttons to work.