Sheevaplug – Why Globalscale suck
In my previous post Sheevaplug – An ideal home server I described why I loved the sheevaplug, now in this post I’m going to discuss why I now have fallen out of love with it. The main reason is shown in the following photo:
For the past six months I’ve been using the unit for 24/7 IRC using irssi, running an MQTT server and broadcasting to pachube, along with allowing me to ssh tunnel into a secure internet connection when using public wifi. So far so good. However during the middle of last week I noticed my pachube feeds had frozen, I tried to ssh into the device and that failed so being at work at the time I was miffed and couldn’t wait to go home to find out what was wrong.
On examining the unit in person everything looked fine, I rebooted and everything worked fine….but only for ten minutes before the same symptoms occurred again except this time I noticed the usb hub was losing power (usb powered). I tried rebooting once again but this time the unit was dead only flashing network lights and 0W power consumption using my power meter. Deeply annoyed that my sheevaplug may have had the fabled failed power supply described many times on the plugcomputer.org forums.
Since it wasn’t working I took it apart and found the psu was indeed dead and only outputting <0.5v rather than the usual 3v and 5 v. I then proceeded to look inside the PSU and found the large capacitor on the top right bulging suspiciously – as I’m no expect I steered clear of testing the capacitor in question and contacted the supplier NewIT.
NewIT first directed me to contact Grace Wu of Globalscale who is responsible for sheevaplug warranty issues technologies who still has not responded in line with GlobalScales line in bad customer support. If you require customer support she is supposedly the person to vent your anger on, she can be contacted at gwu@globalscaletechnologies.com.
I had to point out to NewIT my legal right to have the unit repaired before I was offered this.
This tale serves to highlight some issues that would make me very wary of buying another Globalscale product, first the bad design which caused the problem. second they have never rectified this and new Guruplugs get even hotter and finally the level of customer service I received from Globalscale was none exisitant, if you buy from NewIT then you’re probably ok but buy from Globalscal then you’re on your own!
All in all this makes me sad as the concept is great and while the unit worked I loved it – now I don’t trust it and it’s going to be replaced, probably by something atom based.
/*End of Rant!*/
hah, at least you have a SheevaPlug (albeit not working)…
I ordered a SheevaPlug and a GuruPlug Plus over 6 weeks ago and have not received anything yet. of course, i paid for them, my credit card was charged right away. Now i write them and ask what is the problem and i have never heard anything. how does GlobalScale get away with taking money for something and then not delivering the product???
Globalscale has a lot to answer to. I have both a Sheeva and Guru Plug. The Sheeva died after 7 months and I’m still waiting for my replacement. In the interim I’m using an external 5v power supply.
I pre-ordered a GuruPlug Server Plus in February. The arrangement was if I pre-order and paid for the unit, then I get a free Jtag Module. From my perspective I didn’t mind that they took my money. I have had my Guru for about a month. I only run 10/100M, so the heat has been manageable. I bought the unit mainly for WIFI and eSata. Sure deliveries and communications have been slow but that’s the nature of the business.
Lets face it the units are really cheap. If you want a better service, then that will only add cost to the unit price.
If you are looking for an alternative, try the Seagate Dockstar. It has less RAM and ROM and no eSATA, but besides that it’s identical. And (great improvement over the SheevaPlug) has an external power supply. It comes with PogoPlug firmware preinstalled, but you can replace that with either PlugboxLinux or OpenWRT.
I got mine for 25 € shipped, so it’s a bargain compared to the SheevaPlug.
I have replaced it actually with an atom based system – much bigger but only slightly more power hungry and a lot faster and reliable (touch wood!)
Oliver, which atom-based system did you go with?
The SDcard in my plug got corrupted and a few days later when installing Debian on a replacement, the power supply stopped working. I’m disappointed in the reliability of the SheevaPlug compared to the NSLU2 which it replaced. NewIT replaced the power supply but I had to pay them for the labour & postage back to me which I was not that happy about. To their credit they did return the fixed plug very quickly.
I’m feeling insecure about the Plug and will probably look at buying a QNAP TS-109 as a replacement.
Well I see now that I am not alone in never receiving an order and lack of customer service. I had ordered in Aug 2010 and they charged my paypal/creditcard. In Oct I had nothing from them (they had indicated 6 week back order) so I emailed them and bcc paypal cust service. No answer from Global, so I emailed again 2 weeks later (end of Oct 2010) Nothing.
I have just emailed them now (end of Nov 2010) and warned them that besides copying our company attorney, we would be notifying paypal, visa, MC, Amex, and the BBB. We are also going to begin notifying the trade rags that keep writing article on this company and products and point them to all the complaints. Wish there were some before we ordered, so we could have postponed ordering. Very unprofessional company.
I should have research more before placing an order, anyway i just place an order 17/12/2010. Will update again once I received the items
I’m also the owner of a burned SP I managed to repair. Have you guys taken a look at Cubox?