RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

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RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by Apoptosis »

Yesterday, I got this e-mail from MSI. It was a mass e-mail that looks like it went out to everyone on their mailing list. Including vendors, customers, forum members and so on.

RTFM stands for Read The F'ing Manual and clearly someone just went on a rant.... Check it out:
The MSI-forum and MSI-support team are fed-up with explaining you what can be found in the manual.
I mean, come on, how hard is it to read a manual?

They are printed on paper so you see them.

We have been talking to MSI for a couple of years and came up with a solution.
It has been implemented on a few boards for some time and with big success.
It had various names, like CoreCenter (1st gathering tool) upto DrMOS (fully automatic)

Some of you noticed because Windows wanted you to install a driver, but you couldn't find the manufacturer.
On AMD systems this was called the Away-driver.

What you didn't know is this, this driver activates the RTFM-chip. (Re-Turn inFormation to Manufacturer chip)
It means it can detect if you read a manual as well stores the parameters you have set in the BIOS.
As soon as you start Windows we are informed about your settings and manual readings.

As we have been monitoring peoples behavior for some time and combined those with the RMA information from returned boards.
At the same time monitoring questions on the forum and matched the IP's.
We have made a discovery.

A lot of RMA is unneeded and unwanted, many happens due to user mistakes, numbers show that 90% of the RMA is OC people killing boards and
newbies connecting the wrong connectors or insert parts that should not be inserted.
Or simply forget to remove standoffs or CPU-power.
MSI plans on tackles those numbers, and the RTFM-chip will give a readout of what you have done when it did post or attempted to post!

Checking on you isn't new, Homeland-security done this ever you installed XP-SP3 or above, but their info in encrypted so useless to MSI.
So MSI decided to ban people from support, RMA and the forum who has done the damage themselves or didn't read the manual the first of next month.
We know who you are, and we have gathered enough information via our RTFM-chip.

The only question is, should MSI continue to do this? As some information is real bad.
Will this hurt your relation towards MSI products?

Please let us know, as we have to talk to MSI management the first of next month and make them decide what to do with the information.

To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck "Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email." in your profile.

You can view the full announcement by following this link:

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=136806.0

Regards,
The MSI HQ User to User Forum Team.
Today I get this E-Mail:
Hi there,

We are sorry people took this for prank for serious.

Nobody seem to have wondered what RTFM really means.
If you put the term in Google, you will find it is telling you to read the manual.

Just think, how would a chip check if you read manuals?
We thought of this prank after answering the many posts where people ask the obvious that is already in the manual.

But we learned a valuable lesson, no more April-fools jokes from the forum, a 10 year old thing just died.

Sorry that you took it for real and got mad.

To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck "Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email." in your profile.

You can view the full announcement by following this link:

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=136959.0

Regards,
The MSI HQ User to User Forum Team.
Is it just me or is April Fools day 7 days away from when this first started? What are your thoughts on this matter?
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by bubba »

I think its funny as hell. As I get questions at work all the time that can be handled by using F1 in most cases.
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by mcyuke »

I received the email and was a little confused at first, seeing as I haven't been to the MSI forums in years since I had my S939 board.
I didn't really think it was ALL that funny, but I wasn't one of the ones that blew my top and starting flaming. :lol:
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by geokilla »

It's said that an admin sent the e-mail out. I'm sure he/she will get fired and be sued. This has a huge impact on the customer's view on MSI, and it's supposedly not that great already.
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by mcyuke »

Yeah, the original thread was locked/deleted pretty fast and they were cleaning up any posts relating to it.
I haven't bought anything from MSI in a while and they aren't really at the top of my list anyways but I can see this hurting them a little, every little bit counts and it all adds up...
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by FeRaL »

Cute, very tongue and cheek... :rolleyes:
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by FZ1 »

Hard to RTFM when their English is so poor. :P
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by skier »

MSI just released some PR on this on Facebook/twitter:
[City Of Industry, CA] The joke post on the MSI EU forums referring to the RTFM manual was in no way officially endorsed by MSI and was a post made by a user-to-user forum administrator. While some types of April Fool’s joke may have been approved in the past, this had not been thoroughly vetted before being posted. The poster was not a native English speaker and therefore a lot of the joke was lost in translation. Combined with the lack of a sufficient context, the post also came off more abrasive than intended to users who were unfamiliar with the joke behind RTFM.

The original intent was for the joke to be played UNTIL April 1st since most jokes don’t have the same effect and it was a way to really “fool” forum readers. We are very sorry to those that were offended and hope that the MSI experience is in no way tarnished by this unfortunately misunderstood joke

In light of this, MSI has just started a promotion that is running on our Facebook page to win a Big Bang Trinergy motherboard. On April 1st, post your funniest RTFM (Read the Friggin’ Manual) moment and have a chance at winning this award-winning, feature rich motherboard. We hope we can all take a step back and laugh at some of the foolish things that happen in life and let’s have a laugh together.
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by snowballak »

way to funny!
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Re: RTFM-chip details reveiled! - MSI Goes Off The Deep End

Post by stev »

Sounds like MSI turned things around by offering a contest.
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