-Corona Virus #2
This week has been flat out with supplying laptops, micro towers and screens to people needing to work from home. We have also sold a heap of our ‘back to school’ laptops for parents that want their kids to study from home. In fact, Corona has so far made us busier than ever before. So what trends have I been seeing during the last week?
We have been getting an influx of new customers and many of them are furious with their previous purchases from the chain stores. If you are a regular reader then you would already know my opinion of some of the computer junk sitting around for sale in many of these shops. If you are new to these articles then I will put this as simply as possible.
All the laptops (we call them craptops) and desktops sitting for sale in chain stores are junk! All of them are consumer models that are built to a budget, they have 2nd rate components, often poor designs and mostly utterly useless warranties. If you are wondering what we sell and recommend, the answer is quite simple. We only sell commercial grade models from Hewlett Packard, Dell & Lenovo.
If your budget does not stretch to a new commercial device then we sell our Eco PC range of factory refurbished HP, Dell & Lenovo devices with brand new SSD’s, new ram, fresh Windows 10 installs and a minimum of 13 months fixed immediately in Rockhampton warranties. The above companies are large enough to have a consumer grade (junk) line of devices as well as a commercial grade (great) line.
The differences between the commercial and consumer line of PC devices from these companies is astounding. To start with the commercial grade offerings are made to a specification rather than a budget. This means that their components are top grade, they don’t have fancy gimmicks that play up and they do have useful onsite warranties.
In laptop form, a commercial grade device will have a non-reflective screen rather than a glossy screen, it will have a chassis made from an alloy rather than plastic, it will have drain holds from the keyboard to wick liquids away from the motherboard rather than killing the motherboard, they will have hinges that work rather than breaking out of the plastic chassis and they will have proper onsite warranty support from the manufacture for one, two or even for three years.
On the other hand, consumer grade devices require that you bundle your laptop or desktop up and return it to the manufacturer to be fixed. This normally takes 4 to 8 weeks and will result in your data and setup being wiped. For this reason, they tell you to make a backup copy of your data before you send it away for repair – however how do you do this if the device is not working properly?
Consumer grade devices will often come with the option of an ‘extended warranty’ through some 3rd party company. Again, this is of very dubious use to the end user when this 3rd party has not built the device and is geared to offer the least possible help to maximise their own profits. Alternatively, if you purchase a commercial grade device from Hewlett Packard (for instance) then it is the manufacturer that is affecting the warranty repairs (with genuine parts) and to help protect their own name.
When looking for a new computer device don’t put up with a pushing salesperson getting in your face and telling you absolute rubbish about how great the model is that they are making the most commission on for that month.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 07 49 222 400.
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