Newbie Guides Beginners Corner Buying PC Equipment

Buying Computer Equipment

One of the most persistent questions about purchasing computer equipment is whether to buy mail order or shop locally.
Overall, I think this question was answered well by a local trader who commented that the role of the local shop was to act as a go between, or broker, to shield you, the buyer, from the vicissitudes of mail order. There's no question whatsoever, you will get better prices shopping mail order to eliminate the local dealer/trader. What sort of qualifications do you need to do this? You need the ability to diagnose what's wrong when things go wrong. You need to be able to tell if a computer is malfunctioning due to an incorrect hardware setup, defective hardware, incompatibilities between the computer and its operating system, or incompatibilities with application software.

Here are some actual situations resulting from mail order purchases I've personally encountered in the past few weeks. If you shop mail order you're likely to be faced with something similar. Rate yourself:

How would you have fared in each situation? A very expensive computer arrived complete with two 8.4 gigabyte ULTRA-SCSI Fujitsu drives. The drives themselves cost £400. That hefty cost wasn't enough to include one single piece of documentation since none arrived with the drive. When setting up a SCSI device, you need to give it an ID code and terminate it if you choose to put it at the end of the daisy chain. This drive was festooned with jumpers and dip switches, but without the documentation there was no way to determine what the jumper or switch settings should be. In short, the drive couldn't be set up. It was a £800 pair of book ends as received from the mail order house. A quick call to the supplier revealed that they themselves received the drive without any documentation and, as they'd never got one through before, they couldn't offer any help setting it up. They suggested a call to Fujitsu which resulted in a robotic promise of a call-back which never happened. Now I was faced with hoping for a Fujitsu call-back, or returning the drives and buying another pair from another company. Neither tack sounded particularly attractive. Who knew when Fujitsu might call back and what they'd have to say when they did? If I returned the drive and bought another one from a different mail order source and that drive didn't work, surely the drive vendor would blame the computer and the computer vendor would blame the drive in a typical finger pointing session. Luckily for this particular situation I was able to make a few intelligent guesses (really just shots in the dark) and got the drive setup. This story ends on a happy note, but it did so only due to sheer blind confidence.

A buyer purchased a CD-ROM writer mail order.

A person bought a computer for his house so he could bring work home.

He set the computer up almost identically to the one he used at work. From time to time the computer locked up when running Microsoft Access. What was the problem? Was it Access's fault or a defective computer? Actually it was neither. The graphics card wasn't configured right on the computer and a simple change solved the locking problem. Are these problems isolated incidents? I'd like to say they are, but actually they're typical of what mail order purchasers face each day. Sure, you'll save 5% to 20% shopping mail order. For some highly competent or lucky people it's the right way. If you're one of the competent, you know it and can shop solely based on cost. If you're one of the lucky, you're likely better off visiting a casino than playing mail order roulette. If your luck runs out when gambling on mail order, it'll cost you dearly. If you're neither a computer engineer nor, a best friend of one, your best source for computer equipment is your local dealer.

Beginners Corner

Buying A New Computer