Re: Techie advice please
- From: Howard Neil <hneil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2005 21:59:07 +0100
David P wrote:
I understand that since their alliance with Siemens thay are streets ahead of what they once were.
They do like their alliances, don't they? At the time I was speaking of they had an alliance with ICL. They could be streets ahead of where they were and still be crap. Bear in mind that I was not only commenting on the crap manufacture but on the crap service. I cannot see Siemens improving that (they will have their own culture which won't affect the alliance).
I would not touch them with a barge pole unless a customer with several thousand of the machines could convince me that they were now good machines (and that would be a hard job). After all, there are so many other computer manufactures that don't have such a tarnished history.
Interesting. I don't expect to have to change a hard drive but do wonder if it may impact on my intention of installing the old one from my present machine.
If one of them is an HP, probably. If that happens, just buy a daughter board (they used to be £20-£30). The daughter board fixes to the mother board and comes with its own BIOS. This takes the HP BIOS out of play and you can then connect any compatible hard disk.
Of course, if you just start with a motherboard and a case, you can build your own computer without any of these complications. :-)
Why go for these two manufacturers?
Price <g>
The price you pay up front must be balanced with the price you pay over a period of time. When the machine is out of guarantee, cheap parts which fail early can be rather expensive to replace. If you can replace things like hard disks and power supplies yourself, why not save yourself even more money by building it yourself (you then make sure of only using good quality parts). If you cannot replace such parts yourself, factor in the cost of paying a computer engineer to do the work for you. Buy a machine with good quality parts and it will prove cheaper in the end.
Have a look at http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/cl.asp?bn=10310 and
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/cl.asp?bn=10626
I know they are more expensive than the ones you were looking at but at least they will work. There is a reason the ones you were looking at are so cheap. If you really want to save money (this must appeal to someone from your region <g>) then buy the parts and build one yourself.
Its actually cheaper to buy one of the, possibly subsidised, one from chain store than to build from bits. OK the spec may be slightly less but for what I want its close enough.
It's not just the spec that is lower. It is the quality of the parts they use. If you build it yourself from parts it will only cost more if you wisely use parts of high quality. There are lots of things they do not tell you when buying this cheap crap. I have even seen such machines offered without keyboard or monitor to make them seem cheap.
There are manufacturers with good reputations (e.g. Evesham.com) who sell low spec machines at realistic prices. These are not as good as one you put together yourself and are not as cheap as the ones you have been tempted by but they should not contain parts that will fail when just out of guarantee (if the company still exists to honour it).
-- Howard Neil .
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