Tiny PCs goes into administration

[Cyberus]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4719833.stm




I would have posted this to news, but I wasn't sure if that would be the right place for it. Besides, do we want to hear the oh so predictable {bleep}ing and moaning 'What's it got to do with Amigas?' ;-)

See?  This is where the language barrier exists.  I had to read the article to know that "into administration" means essentially "bankruptcy", instead of what I thought.  I thought initially that "into administration" meant that some government or company had bought millions of them for their paper pushers.

Wayne

[blobrana]

Hum,
Tiny was synonymous with `much cheapness` and bad quality.
Just as well they went under, really.

[Framiga]

even in Italy is called "amministrazione controllata"

a sort of: "controlled administration" or "forced amministration" . . . . don't know how to translate it exactly.

[srg86]

Tiny Time, Advent, Patriot and Packard Hell, er.. Bell are both well known for poor quality.

srg

[Cyberus]

Wayne wrote:
See?  This is where the language barrier exists.  I had to read the article to know that "into administration" means essentially "bankruptcy", instead of what I thought.  I thought initially that "into administration" meant that some government or company had bought millions of them for their paper pushers.

Wayne

:-) Yeah, I see what you mean. We do use the term 'bankruptcy' as well, 'into administration' I think means that the companies affairs are being administered by someone else in order to pay creditors etc.

Over the last few years us Brits have picked up a lot of US slang/expressions, mainly due to the TV. But because Britain's so much smaller in comparison, I think there will be a lot of words and expressions that Americans won't have heard. i.e. Brits find it easier to understand Americans than the other way round.

I'm really sorry, miles off-topic! :-o
Back on topic, yeah, they were associated with cheap PCs that used no-name parts. I know a guy who used to sell them over the phone, and he said the computers (and the company) were crap....  

[Tripitaka]

"Into Administration" means "screwed" basically. I've seen it first hand a few years back when Touchstone Productions (not the film company but once a name in sell-through video) died a horid death. The only people who make any cash in this is the lawyers!

[ajlwalker]

@Tripitaka

Not only the lawyers.  Essentially from what I understand administration means a team of administrative accountants/auditors look at the books and see how best to pay the creditors.

If they can, they will sell parts of a company as going concerns as these raise the most money for creditors.  At worst they will sell all assets and wind the company up.

In doing this THEY charge huge fees!  My favourite football team went into administration a few years back and over the course of the process the administrator went from not being a creditor, to being our biggest creditor!  They were charging £5k a week to say "nope, not found a buyer yet".  You can't really sell a football club off in pieces!

Anyway, they ended up being right-royally screwed which was some comfort to me as the club eventually died

 :-(

[Darrin]

ajlwalker wrote:
My favourite football team went into administration a few years back and over the course of the process the administrator went from not being a creditor, to being our biggest creditor!  They were charging £5k a week to say "nope, not found a buyer yet".  You can't really sell a football club off in pieces!

Anyway, they ended up being right-royally screwed which was some comfort to me as the club eventually died

 :-(

You wouldn't be a Wimbledon supporter by any chance?

[ajlwalker]

Darrin wrote:

ajlwalker wrote:
My favourite football team went into administration a few years back and over the course of the process the administrator went from not being a creditor, to being our biggest creditor!  They were charging £5k a week to say "nope, not found a buyer yet".  You can't really sell a football club off in pieces!

Anyway, they ended up being right-royally screwed which was some comfort to me as the club eventually died

 :-(

You wouldn't be a Wimbledon supporter by any chance?

Nope, my team was Airdrieonians.  It is now Airdrie Utd, who play at the same stadium and have the same fans! lol

[lorddef]

Good riddance. They were the biggest bunch of cheap assed cowboys.

[InTheSand]

lorddef wrote:
Good riddance. They were the biggest bunch of cheap assed cowboys.

Exactly! Their PC cases were so flimsy, I'm sure they were made of recycled yoghurt pots...

And the components were always the cheapest rubbish that could be found. PCs would often be poorly assembled, with PCI cards not fully pushed home, etc, and they'd always do the cheapskate thing of having a CD-ROM and HDD on the same cable, rather than spending the "extra" to place them on separate cables/controllers...

It's a blessing, really! Whenever friends or family were looking for a pre-built PC, I'd always advise against Tiny and the other brands mentioned earlier in the thread, but Tiny was the worst!

 - Ali

[bhoggett]

Well, administration is not quite bankruptcy... yet.

It has more in common with the US "Chapter 11", I think, except that the company is run by administrators and not the directors. The administrators' task is to get the best deal for the creditors, and sometimes that means keeping the company trading. During administration the company is protected from any attempt by the creditors to put it into liquidation (which means bankruptcy).

Sometimes companies to come out of administration as trading concerns and stronger than they were previously.

I don't expect that of Tiny though. Along with Time and a bunch of others they were just low-end boxshifters who sold cheap rubbish at low profit margins. Expect pretty much all such companies to go under in the next few years.

[Tripitaka]

It allways amazed me how Tiny managed to put components into machines that should have worked well together but somehow....didn't. They gave a new meaning to backwards engineering. Having said that, my old 486 (IBM Blue lightning) was from Time Computers and that was an ass kicking box. I gloated many times watching DX66 owners as they realised my "slower" SX50 (SX: no fpu) ran Doom noticably quicker than thier own machines. It's not what you do, It's the way you do it.

[bloodline]

I had few friends who had Time computers about 5 years ago and they were good machines... I also had a couple of friends who had Tiny computers... the tiny ones were awful, Tiny already went bankrupt in 2002 and was bought by Time IIRC...