New PC

[fuse04]

Well despite a valiant and prolonged fight I think the end is nigh for our PC, a loyal servant for 6-7 years.

Having undertaken research in the past and now I will be avoiding usual suspects supplied by shops as they tend to be expensive for what you get compared to the specialist web suppliers.

Am considering sourcing the new edition to the family from either Chillblast or Cyberpower and wondered if anyone had any experince of these companies?
Current PC was from MESH but will avoid them based on my recent poor customer support experience

Rob

 

[Goofyish]

Don't discount DELL from your shortlist.

Also Novatech do some very nice PCs and give you the option of sticking with XP is you don't want Vista:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/pcranges.html

 

[Claire L]

Do not touch Dell their after purchase support is abysmal The number of times either DH or I have nearly had arguements with their call centre in India about a problem is amazing, they just do not either listen to or understand what you are saying to them.

Claire

 

[fuse04]

Do not touch Dell their after purchase support is abysmal The number of times either DH or I have nearly had arguements with their call centre in India about a problem is amazing, they just do not either listen to or understand what you are saying to them.

Claire

Hi Claire, from my experience this weekend I think it is probably a common problem with off shore support centres. One (of the many) people I spoke with at the weekend just ignored every question I asked and moved onto what was probably his next autoqueue on the screen; at one point I had to stop him at one point to ask why he continued to ignor my questions.

Hope you got your problem sorted now

 

[Boss Hogg]

Buy a mac instead! Much nicer looking and easier to find space for, and you aren't saddled with Windows

 

[Claire L]

Hi Claire, from my experience this weekend I think it is probably a common problem with off shore support centres. One (of the many) people I spoke with at the weekend just ignored every question I asked and moved onto what was probably his next autoqueue on the screen; at one point I had to stop him at one point to ask why he continued to ignor my questions.

Hope you got your problem sorted now

Yes finally got our third problem sorted and once the warranty expires won't be renewing, as it was for a laptop. Our desk top went and died in Jan and DH built a new one so no worries with over seas call centres

Claire

 

[paulh]

Buy a mac instead! Much nicer looking and easier to find space for, and you aren't saddled with Windows

but the cost compaired to a windows machine.
Eldest Mac book for uni then again its worth every penny(of mine)for him.As studying computers and it makes life a lot easyer
Paulh

 

[PoppyAnna]

In my former life "BC" (before children) I was a technical IT manager, and it's DH's work too.
Amongst others we have a MESH PC which is about 6 years old, it was very high spec in it's day and as you can imagine it's been upgraded much in it's life and it has been and continues to be a loyal servant! I admire you for keeping away from the high street brands
We have Dell laptops and other PC's that DH has built.
If you aren't technically minded (I don't know how to put this without sounding patronising) I don't envy you having to make such a major purchase/decision as it's a (purposely) confusing industry. One positive thing is that prices have come down a lot in the last five years or so.
My previous employer held one of the countries largest contracts with Dell and we didn't even have a good customer relationship with them. My Mum has a high spec Dell desktop and has had quite a bit of grief, not only with the machine but also with their after sales "care". Their PC's tend to come loaded with lots of programs and applications in addition to what you pay for and what you think you're getting - these often slow down the machines and are difficult to remove properly.
We've recently changed the way that we use our IT at home. Our friends' PC "died" and even after sending the HD away for recovery they lost ALL their data (5 years of photos of their children ). We now have two small 1tb (low powered, quiet) NAS's (network attached storage) where we save ALL our data (inc. photos, music, movies etc) which replicates to the other one which sits in the garage. This means that if it fails technically we have a back-up, if somebody breaks in and pinches the PC's & lap-tops it's unlikely they'll find where the NAS' are statshed so hopefully the data is safe . Our web downloads also run from these devices meaning they can run and not impact PC performance and they can run all night we also have a xbox modified as a media server (cheap and cheerful) so we can watch our videos, movies, photos and listen to all our music from the NAS on our TV!
DH wants everybody in the house to have a cheap laptop each and just to connect to a home network and save their data in this way. No more fighting over the PC (teenagers etc).
It's easier for us but it's still been a lot of work (cabling etc) I just mention all this as home IT is changing in a big way with media PC's and servers enabling so much more flexibility of data use. There is equipment available for nearly everything you can think you might want to do, think about your usage and how you want to use your data before you buy and good luck

 

[arieliwish]

Hi,

Our first PC was a high spec Evesham which lasted us 6 years, (£1,500 in 2000!!) no probs at all except ultimately age! I changed 2 years ago and opted for cyberpower, based at team valley, gateshead. I read some great reviews of spec/cost in the usual pc review mags then spec'd it up online to what I needed, I found this process extremely easy and the costs were shown for every item. The delivery time was good, and all went well, apart from a few driver installation issues which were resolved quickly with a call to their very friendly and efficient help desk. They even called me back after a few weeks to check everything was fine. It cost around £600 including a monitor and delivery.

We also have a cheap toshiba laptop (off the shelf pc world) which is fine for the kids, however the memory is now becoming an issue after 2 years, not sure if its able to be upgraded, on my list of things to check!!

Lynn

 

[fuse04]

If you aren't technically minded (I don't know how to put this without sounding patronising) I don't envy you having to make such a major purchase/decision as it's a (purposely) confusing industry.

I am not really techinically minded, all I know is what I read, and the more I read the more I get confused ...Dual or Quad core, XP, Vista32 or Vista 64, SLi or single graphics, buy now or wait a month or so for new CPU's.....will my PC last another few weeks

the quest continues