The Consumer Forums

As you might imagine, my computer equipment gets a lot of use and is essential to what I do in helping to run this site.
When my old router broke down I decided to go for something ultrafast and found the Dlink DIR-655 > Xtreme N Gigabit Router.

Not only does this router seem to have one of the highest performance ratings for multi-usernetworks but it also is a gigabit router which means that any computers which are linked to it ny Ethernet cable can send files to each other incredibly fast.

There aren't many gigabit routers around and no modem routers as far as I can tell so I was obliged to buy a router and separate modem.

The other feature of this router is that it it operates at the new N standard wireless speeds and ranges. This means that theoretically you can connect wirelessly at up to 300mps instead of the previous G standard of up to 54mps - a substantial jump in speed. The range if the signal is also signicantly enhanced although I haven't done any range tests.

I was very worried that setting up modem and router separately would be problematic but in fact it was a dream. Once the modem was configured and working, I simply connected the modem to the router and when it powered up it just started working. Perfect!
It took me a further 5 minutes or so to set the security parameters (I have a Yahoo office very close by and I don't want any playful technicians testing their hacking skills on my network!)

This router cost about £85 - very good value for a high spec router. I was only surprised that the wireless adapters to receive the N signal are not available in this country so I had to rely on Netgear instead.

I called Dlink technical support. Very friendly - but didin't have a clue as to why or when they might be available - and frankly I had the impression that they weren't too bothered.

Well, it can't all be perfect.

I had been looking for a new printer for ages, i have tried several which were either expensive to run or just rubbish.
I cam across a review for a Brother mcf-240c...copier, fax, printer and found one quite cheap in argos (old catalogue), i decided to take the plunge and wow. what a workhorse, never seems to run out of ink, the carts are big, the speed is excellent, very fast and the draft mode isnt too wishy washy, the price of inks is good, originals are only £9 each or compatables work out £10 a set, the photo quality is exellent.
i always shied away from Brother, but this is great.
the item fax's also and allows for an answer machine to kick in also, fast photo copying, also as a scanner its great.

i rate this product 10 out of 10

I have bought a base unit from Computer Finder, City road Cardiff and the bloke in there was excellent. He advised me the best at the best price and the after sales was excellent. I rang them, they took my number and rang me back. They were/are outstanding, i would buy again from them.

I bought an ACER 5100 laptop that was reasonably high spec with 2Gb Ram and 120 Gb HD After one year the IDE controller on the motherboard failed permanently, rendering the computer useless. I went back to the trader from whom I had bought the laptop who investigated and advised me the ONLY way I could get this repaired is for me to return it to ACER for THEM to fit a new motherboard at a cost to me of £320. I find it scandalous that a £550 computer is totally US after just 13 months and I have to pay to get it repaired almost 65% of what it cost to purchase.
Motherboards for this computer are NOT available other than from acer and cannot be bought seperately. the computer has to be returned to acer for repair.
I will NEVER ever buy another acer computer laptop or other because of this policy and warn everyone else of this. There are a number of acer 5100 laptops for sale on eBay as spares or repair that seem to have this same problem.
Can anyone help as to what my legal rights are with this and wether I have a claim against (a) the Trader (b) Acer.

Overclockers UK Forums - powered by vBulletin

This is not an advertisement, although i should point out the forums are run by an online retailer.

The reason I am posting this, is that there is a wealth of un-biased information regarding components and systems in these forums, and anyone wishing to reaserch a particular item, or looking to find whats hot and whats not should look here for sound advice from a massive community of computer enthusiasts.

Okay, I drive my PC pretty hard, I'm often to be found burning DVDs, printing, web authoring... often at the same time.

I decided to upgrade my desktop machine recently and remembered that a friend had bought a machine through PALICOMP on eBay. I confirmed that his experience was good and chanced my arm.

You can either buy the base PC through one of their frequent auctions on eBay, or go straight to their website, the prices are comparable and the performance pretty darn awesome.

Let's put it this way, for about £500 I bought a 9.6GHz Quad Core PC with 6GB of RAM, 500GB or Hard Drive and 1GB of Graphics memory. Oh, and twin 18x DVD Burners and Windows Vista installed.

Comparable Spec machines in your local business park are probably not available yet, and if they are, are probably £300 more than Palicomp are asking.

Once you've placed your order (or won your auction) you're offered a number of 'extras' which can bump up the price, so be careful, but the 'Queue Jump' option is worth doing, I ordered my PC on Sunday, Paid on Monday and it arrived on Wednesday!

I tested the performance on PC Pitstop, always worth looking at, and it came out in the fastesr 5% they'd ever tested!

Highly recommeded.

incredible machine. free game demos, wireless internet, blu-ray, state of the art graphics. and mine was free!!

doesnt get any better.

I purchased a ANTEC NEOPOWER 480 power supply in September 2004 for a PC I was building. I was around the £100+ price at that time. Since building the computer I have had nothing but trouble with it. It is not the first computer I have built but it is the first that I have had major problems with. I have had to replace most of the major components and some of them twice. When things started to go wrong I visited some of the online forums to see if I could get some help and several people said it could be a power issue and to check the voltages in the bios etc. I disregarded the comments at the time thinking that I had paid a lot of money for the power supply and I had read ( and believed ) all the claims of quality and performance of ANTEC’S unit.

First I had to replace the Asus graphics card after 9 months ( luckily under warranty), next the motherboard went – that was just outside the warranty period ( 1 year ) but after quite a struggle with the supplier I managed to get my money back and purchased a new board. Another 5 months passed and the replacement graphics card failed also- that I had to replace out of my own pocket.

Last week I turned on the PC and BANG! a flash of light jumped from the back of the computer and it was dead. I contacted ANTEC via their website and they said could I tell them what was the date of purchased - I replied saying September 2004. Later that day I got a reply to say that the warranty had expired. Yes it had by 3 months only conveniently for them.

I feel I have been ripped off by purchasing this poor quality and faulty unit. This unit should have lasted much longer that 3 years. Not happy and I won’t be purchasing anything else from ANTEC.

After seeing a rve review in PC Advisor I ordered a PC from Eclipse Computers using their website Eclipse Computers but on delivery screen (over 1 month after ordering) it had red tint due to faulty graphics card!
6 weeks later DVD tray jammed in out position! Despite reporting the initial DVD drive problem and asking for it to be fixed under the warranty eclipse refuse to collect the PC under the premier30 warranty insisting I post it, with its DVD tray stuck out, at my own expense!!!

I felt a fool when I saw just what bad feedback Eclipse Computers (of Coventry) has for product reliability and customer service.

"I wonder if some big anti-Eclipse banner could be made a sticky?
Complete with links to all our horror stories about them..."
Eclipse Computers - Are they bad??? - Page 2 - The Student Room

"Delivery date was given however date arrived and no computer ....
The computer has been nothing but problems since purchase and
it turned out that I did not get what was ordered"
custom built computer

"I paid for a computer in Nov 07, arrived 3 weeks later, not 10-14 days.
Faulty on arrival - notified them immediately.
Collected computer on 3rd Jan, tried to charge for repairs, which I refused.
Still waiting for money back 25 Mar 08.
They've had my money for more than 4 months and for most of that they've had my computer as well!!
Forums - Eclipse computers reviews - PC Advisor

"The Worst Computer Company EVER conceived in British Computing History (Eclipse Computers (Coventry))"
Eclipse Computers (Coventry) - Review - The Worst Computer Company EVER conceived in British Computing History

"Eclipse Computers - crap customer service
(I worked there many moons ago) but dirt cheap."
Neowin Forums > Online PC builder site

"Eclipse-computers has the worst customer support...my friend got a custom PC from them and they glued on the heatsink
and there was glue all in the inside of the PC
It took some time to get that sorted.
I personally am still waiting for them to send me a replacement DVDRW drive...been waiting since July, they always tell me they'll send it out 'now', but it's never done."
I know you guys must get this loads but I'm appealing to ur better nature :P... - The Student Room

PC Advisor posters:
"Oh "first mistake" ( buying from Eclipse computers)"
Forums - eclipse computers..Re bad service - PC Advisor

Paying by credit card, I purchased a Targa High End PC from Lidl for £699 in May 2006. It was supplied with a three year warranty. It soon developed various faults and I lost count of the number of times Targa sent an engineer to repair it. In October 2008 it failed to boot up and Targa indicated that it was beyond repair and gave me a choice. They would either a) take the PC away to Germany to repair which would take several weeks or b) take the PC away and refund 50% of the original purchase price. The person who made the 50% offer said that to make such an offer was "big good will" as I would "easily be able to purchase an equivalent PC for such a sum".
I bought an Acer Aspire (so far so good) for £369.99 and advised Targa, on October 14th of my decision to accept the 50% refund. I was advised by Tiina Mäkipää of Targa that a letter will be sent to me which I am to take to Lidl with the PC (for which packaging would also be sent) and I would be provided with a refund. Tiina Mäkipää said it usually takes about a week to 10 days before such a letter would arrive.
Two weeks later I emailed Targa as the letter had not arrived and Targa's response was to advise me, by email, of the telephone number to contact Lidl.
I telephoned Lidl on 30 October and the following day, 31 October, whereupon the Lidl rep told me to “give them a couple of days”. A week later on 7 November I telephoned Lidl again and spoke to Janine who advised me that she will put a note on my account to indicate that I phoned to request information on any progress in respect of my refund and that someone from Lidl will contact me either by post or phone.
Another week passed without any response from Lidl so, on 14 November I emailed Targa. Targa responded that they will forward my inquiry onto Lidl.
On 17 November Lidl phoned to advise me that a letter will be sent to me instructing me to return the PC to Lidl in exchange for a refund and that I will receive the letter by Friday 21 November. The refund amount is £315. I said that was not the sum agreed with Targa (surprise surprise it is less) and I was told “it was less due to depreciation”. Depreciation? What? Is that because the absolutely useless PC (which has not worked since £350 was agreed to) has depreciated further since the agreement due to Targa or Lidl dragging their feet?
It is Friday 21 November today and the letter has not arrived. As I have yet to receive the refund I have to wonder will the PC depreciate any further?
A week later - Friday 28 November - and Lidl and Targa have advised me that the refund of £350 will be paid to me in full. I will update here with news of whatever - whenever it happens.
Today, 2nd December 2008, Lidl made a full refund of the £350 without any liability to return the PC or even produce a purchase receipt.
On December 20 I contacted the manager who had issued the refund by text "Thanks for sorting the refund. I expect it I am OK to dispose of the PC as I see fit".
She replied that I should return it to a store or that she would call to collect it - she also apologised and added that she did not know that I still had the PC in my possession. I responded that I would return the PC to a store but was concerned about some confidential financial data and artwork stored on the hard drive and that, if I had not contacted her, I could have probably kept it. She did not reply to that.
I thought "I will not hurry to return the PC" and on December 26 was able to discuss the matter with another person who is employed by Lidl and he advised me that, once I had received the letter from Lidl's Head Office and the refund the matter was closed and that no one from Lidl is allowed to request return of the PC.

Softix · By Softix on 30th January 2008, 18:49

Can highly recommend these people. Built my computer online with top spec parts, could follow the entire build process online (with the option to change anything as it went along) and ended up in less than a month with an awesome, top of the range PC for £500.
Here's the specs for anyone who's interested.
Processor (CPU)
AMD ATHLON™ 64 X2 4000+ (2.1GHz) 2 x 512K L2 Cache (Socket AM2)
Memory (RAM)
2048 MB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)
Motherboard
ASUS® M2A-VM: DUAL DDR2, SATA II, x16 VGA, 2 x PCI
Operating System
WINDOWS® VISTA Home Premium (inc Genuine CD & License) (£59)
USB Options

The Consumer Forums

DLink DIR-655 > Xtreme N Gigabit Router

Brother mcf-240c...copier, fax, printer

Computer Finder

ACER Laptops Specifically 5100 model

Usefull Information about Overclocks

Palicomp

Sony Playstation 3

Antec Power Supply - A Purchase I Regret

Eclipse Computers - bad bad feedback

Targa PC - countless attempts to repair and I am now left waiting

PC Specialist.co.uk