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There
are two kinds of purchasers:
Before
the massed PR battalions of the Retail empire call in their lawyers, let
me make a logical assessment. If you need to touch and feel
something before you buy it, and require the occasionally ill advised
approval of a salesman too, then a computer store is the place to
go. But, you will rarely find the best value or, without paying top
dollar, an adequate computer system. This is why no PC veteran would
dream of setting foot through a retailer's door except in dire
circumstances.
The
cognoscenti have, in the past, tended to stick to direct-sales giants such
as Dell, Dan, Panrix, Evesham, Carrera, Gateway, Tiny etc., who tailor
keenly priced computer systems to order, letting you configure the
specification (Spec) you fancy. This is still an excellent way of
buying a PC, but the value part of the equation has now moved onto the
net, where it is, naturally, in a state of some chaos.
If
you have the investigative skills of an MI6 operative, the patience of a
priest, the determination of a big-game hunter and a knack for haggling,
there is a scattering of extraordinary gems waiting to be bagged.
You can also, if you are careless, end up with some colossal duds.
It is, frankly, a jungle out there. You either eat or get
eaten. So, here is what no computer-store salesman will ever offer
you:
The
first curiosity to understand is the nature of the insane beast known as
the PC industry. Most consumer goods come to us in a familiar
fashion, formed by the industrial revolution. They are launched at a
price that will tempt customers through the door, then rise steadily in
cost until that last-minute frenzy, usually a couple of years down the
road, when they are sold off cheaply to make way for a replacement.
PCs
buck this trend in every respect. They are obsolete the moment they
are made. They are launched at the highest price they will ever
fetch, then steadily marked down until, less than a year after their
appearance as the latest bright, shiny techno-toy, they fade into the
twilight as castoffs in the bargain bin of a discounter's website.
Most bizarrely of all, they are, perhaps in weeks, superseded by models
that are more powerful and cost the same. That 650MHz premium model
you picked up a month ago is now distinctly midrange, with a 700MHz or
higher chip for the same price, and probably with a better monitor.
Do
not begin to attempt to understand this conundrum. Just make it
work to your advantage. PCs fit into three distinct
families:
-
cheapies
running at £500 or less,
-
midrange
models for power home-gamers, and the
-
cutting
edge, currently boxes sporting a 1GHz chip inside.
If
it's the latter you fancy, then you will, without doubt, pay a
premium. The one inflexible law of PC retailing stipulates that the
latest, fastest, most hyped product fetches the highest price possible
because that is what the geeks will pay. never mind that most of us
have no need of a machine running at more than 500MHz (the computing speed
of the computer's processing chip) (500MHz = half a gigahertz & =
500,000,000 instructions per second), half the speed of these silicon
Schwarzeneggers. If this type of muscle is essential, then you must
pay for it. The same goes for anyone chasing a Mac. The only
people who make these are Apple, so your chance of a nice round of
cut-throat competition between manufacturers is zero.
In
the happy middle ground beyond the gigahertz la-la land, there is,
however, much to play for. Take those cheapies. The standard
boxes frequently sport a hopeless 32Mb of Ram (the Random Access Memory
hardware that stores information), monitors designed to make you squint
and software designed in Albania. (Sorry Albania!). What you need
is one of yesterday's star players, at the tail end of its glamour career
but still with oodles of style and a touch of class. Greta
Scacchi, say, rather than Gail Porter.
The
best deals come and go like digital mayflies as big companies liquidate
excess stock or end-of-line items that are often perfectly good pieces of
hardware. The secret lies in knowing where to look. Two sites
are essential starting points: the clearance depots of Insight
(www.insight.com) and MicroWarehouse
(www.microwarehouse.com),
both mail-order giants who now ship very busily on the web. Here you
will find a fast-changing army of big-name machines falling out the door
at prices that range from the acceptable to the ridiculous. Do not
ignore Dixons (www.dixons.com)
or its PC World subsidiary ( www.pcworld.com).
You could see the all-in-one box, Advent e-Go, plummet in price soon in
the Dixons empire, as it reaches the end of the line.
Always
buy your monitor separately; you will get more for your money.
An extraordinary bargain - a lovely 15in Sony model with built-in speakers
- recently went through the auction site QXL for £140. The seller
was listed as Sony Centre, Kensington, who were telephoned and they agreed
to take the opening price on QXL over the phone, saving both time and
money.
Research
is essential. Download the free search tool at Copernic, a
Canadian technology company (www.copernic.com
), which scans hundreds of databases on the web. Even their
top-of-the-range version is not too expensive. With that, it was
possible to read UK and US reviews of Dixons's AST box and a glowing
account of a future monitor in an Asian magazine.
Decide
on the specifications that suit your needs: the basics for a typical
family who want net access without the expense of high speeds would be
-
64Mb
of Ram
-
500MHz
chip/processor
-
largest
hard drive you can afford (at least 4Gb (gigabyte)
-
56K
modem, and
-
17in
monitor.
-
If
the kids want to play complex games, up these to a 700MHz chip and a
6Gb hard drive, and add a high- quality 3-D graphics card.
-
And
be patient.
Set
the minimum specification you want and the price to pay, then wait for the
market to come up with the goods. It will, and probably more quickly
than you think. We are entering the happiest season for PC
bargain-hunting. At the end of the summer, PC-makers rotate their
lines to make way for Christmas stock. Over the next few months,
virtually everything in their current inventory will have to make way for
the models that are supposed to win our wallets come December. The
hunting season is upon us and, as ever, it is the cunning who will walk
away with the best prize.
The OnLine Bargains
All-rounder's
star buy
The
biggest bargains are always at the bottom of the market, where stunning
opportunities raise their heads from time to time - though it cannot be
guaranteed that stocks remain of the price-savers uncovered here.
This Century City PC was found on the Dixons website for £270 - it cost
close to £1,000 with monitor when launched last year.
The
spec was excellent: a 500MHz Celeron chip with 64Mb of Ram, 8Gb hard
drive, internal modem, mouse, keyboard and a decent selection of Microsoft
applications.
The
hardware is housed in a compact, upright "closed" box only 13in
high. All except the monitor plug into convenient USB ports that accept
everything from a mouse to an external sound module or rewritable-CD
drive. The monitor is an end-of-range upmarket Sony multimedia model
with superb built-in speakers and subwoofer. It appeared on the QXL
auction site for £140, half what it fetched a year ago.
Including
delivery, the amount now spent was £428, so the marvellous little
Hauppauge WinTV unit (£80 from Jungle), which adds sophisticated TV
functions, FM radio and the ability to record video to disc, was added to
the bundle. Result: a powerful home PC with net facilities, hi-fi
audio and TV for little more than £500 (including Vat). In the
shops, the same chip and memory in a desktop system, with no TV and a
lesser monitor, costs £699 from Tiny.
SAVING between £271 and £572.
On-the-move
notebook
The
best notebooks come from opposite ends of the spectrum - thin, light
models that can be tucked into a briefcase, or big, beefy desktop
replacements that mean you need no other PC. It was the latter that
was wanted, and the perfect machine was an end-of-line Hewlett-Packard Xe,
on offer for £1,600 at Insight with the mandatory 64Mb of Ram, a very
acceptable Pentium II 400MHz processor plus a whopping 14.1in TFT screen.
What
clinched the deal was a built-in DVD drive that meant movies could be
watched in-flight instead of playing solitaire. The closest
equivalent on HP's own site had a 500MHz chip and bigger hard drive for
£2,069. But the screen was only 13.1in and the CD drive was extra.
SAVING £469.
Game-player's
power machine
Any
PC costing more than £1,000 should deliver on many fronts, and Carrera's
Octan i650S web special, pictured, won the day with an Athlon 650MHz
processor, 128Mb of Ram, DVD and CD-rewritable drives, excellent sound, a
tasty 17in monitor, two years' on-site warranty and even five free DVD
rentals.
This
machine will scream at games, copy CDs and play back DVD movies. It cost
£1,173 online at www.carrera.com
which described in detail a wealth of quality components from well-known
manufacturers as opposed to obscure suppliers used in deals elsewhere. You
could pay more than £100 extra for this self-same box through one of
Carrera's retail outlets. At the Dixons site, the similar Packard Bell
Pulsar 6001 will set you back £1,399 - though it does have a bigger hard
drive.
SAVING £226.
How to beat the Trade at their Tricks
Cheap
does not necessarily mean nasty, but there are plenty of grim deals out
there. Here are a few common tricks the computer trade will use to
separate you from your money: -
1
The bundle, aka 'never mind the quality, count the boxes'
If an ink-jet printer or a digital camera is given away "free"
with a cheap PC, you can usually guarantee it will be obsolete and of such
poor quality you will be looking for a replacement before long.
Equally, vast quantities of software are normally an attempt to blind you
to the fact that the packages you most want - usually Microsoft titles are
absent from the deal. Discount the value of these "gifts"
completely and then ask yourself: is this a good deal?
2
Inadequate memory
PC-makers love to boast about processor speed, but rarely tell you that
random access memory (Ram) is equally important. A PC with a 400MHz
chip and 64Mb of Ram may well outperform one with a 500MHz processor and
32Mb. never buy a machine with less than 64 megs - performance will
be dire.
3
Flaky monitors
All screens are not made equal. Bargain-basement monitors can be had
in the trade for as little as £20 - and sold on to you for £90. If
you have the time and courage, buy your own monitor separately from the PC
box and keyboard, and do your eyes a favour by paying above rock bottom to
secure a better picture.
4
The negative bundle
This is where the dealer flashes a machine with interesting-looking specs,
but mentions only in the small print that it does not include any
application software or perhaps any operating system at all. These
PCs are aimed at people who pirate software, which is illegal and
ultimately self-defeating, since you will spend hours or days trying to
fix problems and get upgrades from your mates - illegal also.
5
'Refurbished' stock
Items recycled by their manufacturers are usually ex-demo or returned
products, often indistinguishable from new and with a full maker's
warranty. These can be great buys. Anything else is just plain
second-hand.
Rewarding OnLine Places to Shop
www.aria.co.uk
Cheap PCs. Visit Manchester base to look before you buy
www.carrera.co.uk
Well-regarded PC maker selling for less than shops
www.dixons.co.uk
Poorly designed site, but can mark products down greatly
www.insight.co.uk
Corporate supplier with vast stock and weekly specials
www.microwarehouse.com
Vast range and reasonable prices for brand names
www.morgancomputers.co.uk
Amazing bargains in obsolete and refurbished kit
www.qxl.co.uk
Mixed fortunes on this auction site, so check price elsewhere
www.simply.co.uk
Aggressively priced seller of PCs and peripherals
www.todayonly.co.uk
Daily specials page of PC maker Scan - be ready to move fast
www.ebookers.com
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