Hi Harold,
Usually any comments around Maxim devices have nothing to do with and technical aspects of their product, but the supply of it. While I have not had any experience of this myself, many of their customers seem to have. If you were to place this enquiry into the usenet group comp.arch.embedded for instance, you would fire up many of the residents there with tales of woe about Maxim's supply issues. Just search the postings for Maxim.
Never heard of any quality/reliability issues though.
