I remember taking our son to buy hids first desktop computer. It was a large store (Named after the UKs favourite Indian takeaway food). He settled on a Philips Freevents with at that time the latest software IE Windows Vista 32 bit Home Premium .
While we were discussing its merits with the staff I happened to ask what happens if ity goes wrong is there a repair disc availible. Remember this was the machine they were selling to us. The guy said thats no problem you just burn a couple of repair DVDs from the built in software. I feigned ignorance of computing complexities and so off he went and returned with two blank DVDs.
He put on into the drive and went to burn the said recovery disks . He looked puzzled. Im sorry he said, you only are allowed to burn a single copy of the repair media and it looks like someone has already done so on this machine. He then proceede to take the blank disks to a different display model and burnt the discs from it.
I often wondered what would have happened had we left the shop with our "brand new" computer and not discovered this fact until it was too late. Would they have said we must have burned the copies ourselves. Plus what about whoever bought the 2nd display model.On a later date at the same store I was admiring a laptop when a staff member came oiver and baldly ststed "If you know the right people you can get this at a fraction of the marked price" It involved meetting him or ione of his colleagues around the rear of the store. Like a News of the World reporter I made my excuses and left. I kid you not!
The saga of the Freevents dosent end there as it did start to go wrong a long time later, It would boot up then just fail without warning and sometimes not boot up at all. I took it to our local small computer repair shop. He kept it a couple of days testing it - Thats what he said anyway - He claimed he tried new memory chips which he charged me for and diagnosed a motherboard failure, He offered to replace iut but I thought the cost wastoo high. So I settled his bill.
He would only take cash as he didnt have a card machine so I had to go to the hole in thew wall. I was passing Cex gaddget shop and spotted a desk top computer there at a good price so I bought it and taking it home found it had just two gigs memory. As luck would have it the 4 gigs in the old Freevents was the same kind of chip so I transferred
While we were discussing its merits with the staff I happened to ask what happens if ity goes wrong is there a repair disc availible. Remember this was the machine they were selling to us. The guy said thats no problem you just burn a couple of repair DVDs from the built in software. I feigned ignorance of computing complexities and so off he went and returned with two blank DVDs.
He put on into the drive and went to burn the said recovery disks . He looked puzzled. Im sorry he said, you only are allowed to burn a single copy of the repair media and it looks like someone has already done so on this machine. He then proceede to take the blank disks to a different display model and burnt the discs from it.
I often wondered what would have happened had we left the shop with our "brand new" computer and not discovered this fact until it was too late. Would they have said we must have burned the copies ourselves. Plus what about whoever bought the 2nd display model.On a later date at the same store I was admiring a laptop when a staff member came oiver and baldly ststed "If you know the right people you can get this at a fraction of the marked price" It involved meetting him or ione of his colleagues around the rear of the store. Like a News of the World reporter I made my excuses and left. I kid you not!
The saga of the Freevents dosent end there as it did start to go wrong a long time later, It would boot up then just fail without warning and sometimes not boot up at all. I took it to our local small computer repair shop. He kept it a couple of days testing it - Thats what he said anyway - He claimed he tried new memory chips which he charged me for and diagnosed a motherboard failure, He offered to replace iut but I thought the cost wastoo high. So I settled his bill.
He would only take cash as he didnt have a card machine so I had to go to the hole in thew wall. I was passing Cex gaddget shop and spotted a desk top computer there at a good price so I bought it and taking it home found it had just two gigs memory. As luck would have it the 4 gigs in the old Freevents was the same kind of chip so I transferred
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