Notebook nightmares
My connection for PCs fell thru. Reason: I got a pricelist from the dude, really cool low prices. I then picked one and got my hopes up only for him to tell me that Rectron doesn’t have anymore stock of it and in fact that that specific model was discontinued.
Ok, so I asked him for an extended pricelist, and eventually picked another one that was +- R2k over my initial budget. Really cool PC, and no other place could match or beat the price. I got to terms with paying the extra R2k, and really got my hopes up. Then he told me that Rectron doesn’t have stock right now, but they said that a shipment was arriving in 2 days time. 2 days later I queried and he said that Rectron is now changing their story and said that they are not sure when they’ll be getting the stock.
On 2 occasions my hopes were shattered, so I got gatvol and went to Makro to get a good deal on a Fujitsu-Siemens laptop for R10k. Visit www.makro.co.za to check their pricelist. I phoned them. they said they had stock. I went in. I had a look at the models. Chose one. Paid cash for it. And walked out. 20mins flat. No hassles. That’s how business should be done. The other thing of course is after sales service. If I experience that with him when trying to purchase a PC, then what would I experience when I go back to him when the thing’s not working??
Another place to check would be Viva Internet Cafรฦรยฉ in Stadium on Main Claremont. They’re cheaper than Chaos Computers.
Some info:
1) I chose Intel Centrino chip. Do some research on AMD Turion 64 and Intel Centrino. Centrino will soon be replaced by Intel Core (which will be 64).
2) DDR vs DDR2 RAM. Interesting debate. Most laptops these days come out with DDR2 RAM. The one I chose has 1Gb normal DDR.
3) Screen types. There’s XGA, SXGA, WXGA, and so forth. Wikipedia has a cool article on the differences. I chose 15.4″ WXGA CSV.
4) HDD size. The average size is 60Gb. I found one decently priced that had 80Gb.
5) Then there’s also the quality of the type of laptop. I originally wanted Toshiba, but eventually settled for Fujitsu-Siemens.