Advice in the UK

[andrewducker]

My Dad's getting a new PC.  I need to know the name of a reputable internet/mail-order place that will allow me to choose what spec I want (preferably with a nice menu system) and provide decent support if it stops working.  Somewhere that's not too expensive, but doesn't provide a terrible service.

Anyone recommend anywhere?

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

http://www.meshcomputers.com/

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

But don't believe their claimed delivery date, it might come before or after they say.

[andrewducker]

Strangely, that was the one my Dad had spotted - cheers for backing him up!

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Why not build him one yourself?

[aitkendrum.livejournal.com]

Well, Dell if cost isn't that much of an issue if can get past the Dell Recommends crap.

I have used www.aria.co.uk on two occasions as I no longer system build for people.

and yes MESH have had good reports from people I know.

[andrewducker]

Because it's hard enough doing software support from 400 miles away, doing hardware support is out of the question.

[andrewducker]

After Aria caused 3 separate problems for my brother I stopped using them. Their service was slow and tricky when there was an issue with his motherboard. Eventually sorted out, but the hassle was a pain.

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I'd be tempted by Dell if they sold AMD.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Why not have him get a Mac Mini?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

The Dell outlet sometimes makes Dell more tempting...

[andrewducker]

I would do - but he wants to play Rome: Total War.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Mac.Games.Count == 0 :-)

Hey, he could play that on the Mac as long as he's prepared to wait 5 years until they get around to porting it...

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I bought my PC before last from Mesh; things that were excellent were the choice of computers and configuration, the price, and the quality of the components used (particularly the tool-free case).

I had a hard disk failure after a few weeks and had a major problem trying to get Mesh to fix it under the warranty: I believe that this was primarily a problem with quality control in the RMA process, in that their shipper was letting them down and their customer service system was so overworked at the time that they couldn't work out what was going on. (They'd just gone through catastrophic growth). I understand that they've got much better since then. They still have a broad range of computers and lots of configuration choices.

My last PC was bought from The Glow Lounge, who are excellent in every respect but also specialist (only shuttles), and not particularly cheap. Service and support has been absolutely first class, and it's a small personal company.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

At work, we have bought a lot from Dell over the past 2 years, we must have purchased over 20 PC's in that time. Every single one has been delievered on time and has also worked perfectly. With their frankly amazing bottom end system prices, we have had no reason to go elsewhere. For the best prices, don't go into the home user section, go into small business user section of the website. I have never had a need to use their support line though so can't comment on how effective that is.

We have purchased a couple of machines from Mesh recently, but they took nearly 3 weeks to arrive and at no point were we given an actual delivery date. They also came bundled with a lot of extras we didn't want and a whole bunch of pre-installed software we had to remove.