my sister = dip **** stupid. £600 spent, come look what she got...

kdd · 23 Apr 2006 at 11:06

She probaly got a guarantee and free servicing/replacement though, and if you're the sort who doesn't care about pc stuff that is invaluable.

Journey · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:22

I understand the OP annoyance at not being asked for advice but what does his sister really use her PC for? Internet, E-Mail, Word Processing, Watching DVD's, Skype, MSN?

None of those will stress that system at all, and she will find it way fast enough. Yes you might have managed to make it for a bit less cash, bus as mentioned before the warranty would be on your head (Oh and she gets at least 1yr one very thing, it's the law) then add in all the pre-packaged software and Windows XP, packaging etc.. You get where this is going, £699 is not a bad price if she has no application specific requirments. Instead of slating her for doing this, why not offer to help if she has an issues, thats what a nice Brother would do

Please realise that 90%(Guess) of PC owners do nothing that can even remotley come close to bringing a PC to it's kness, and know about as much about the inards of a PC as they do about quantum physics or gene resequencing.

If you want to reccomend an off the shelf PC why no point them to OCUK systems page, decent prices and decent parts with no warranty issues

It's a win win situation!

locutus12 · 24 Apr 2006 at 02:11

kdd said:
She probaly got a guarantee and free servicing/replacement though, and if you're the sort who doesn't care about pc stuff that is invaluable.

see post number 55, she got squat.

Journey said:
I understand the OP annoyance at not being asked for advice but what does his sister really use her PC for? Internet, E-Mail, Word Processing, Watching DVD's, Skype, MSN?

Try Quake 4, F.E.A.R. and battlefield 2. thats what it was going to be used for till I had to explain to them why they couldnt. my sister and her husband barley know how to use a pc but my teenage nephew (whose been watching me on mine and playing on my pc for a while, hence why he likes these games) is another story, as is my teenage neice...

Journey said:
Yes you might have managed to make it for a bit less cash, bus as mentioned before the warranty would be on your headthen add in all the pre-packaged software and Windows XP, packaging etc.. You get where this is going, £699 is not a bad price if she has no application specific requirments. Instead of slating her for doing this, why not offer to help if she has an issues, thats what a nice Brother would do

abit less cash ? i could have built her a pc with a combination of new parts and parts + OS from MM and OCUK that not only would have rocked but would have had cover and cost a damn site less, or i could have gone for a completely new system, used my trade account with my local supplier (very big company), got 15% off my parts and 10% off the OS and still come in at under £450. also with me, she wouldnt be stuck with AGP system and an old Pentium 4 socket mobo thats no longer used. as for the 512 mb of ram and the 9200, with me that would have been a gig and an X800GTO.

as for offering her help, thats what ive already done and will continue to do, thats why im so annoyed, because now ive got to get her to spend money she doesnt have, on a pc she shouldnt have, to give the kids what they should have had. if i wasnt a good brother i wouldnt of gone round there and given them all of my games from 2003 and earlier (as thats about all it can run) plus secured the system for net use.

Journey said:
If you want to reccomend an off the shelf PC why no point them to OCUK systems page, decent prices and decent parts with no warranty issues It's a win win situation!

closing stable gate + missing horse = already bolted.

Journey · 24 Apr 2006 at 02:41

So take the PC back on the grounds she was mis-sold it, or it's not fit for it's purpose, something to that effect.

I'd also think that if she is going to want to play all those games with a £600 budget, even with your 15% off, and a second hand XP (£10 saving?) you'd be better off with all B-Grade or second hand items, and be willing to give your sister a 1 year waranty from yourself to cover any faults.

locutus12 · 24 Apr 2006 at 03:17

Journey said:
So take the PC back on the grounds she was mis-sold it, or it's not fit for it's purpose, something to that effect.

I'd also think that if she is going to want to play all those games with a £600 budget, even with your 15% off, and a second hand XP (£10 saving?) you'd be better off with all B-Grade or second hand items, and be willing to give your sister a 1 year waranty from yourself to cover any faults.

it was bought over 2 weeks ago... she kept it quiet from me for most of that. hell i only found out because my mother mentioned it to me :confused:

also its from currys, theres not a hope in hell of getting them to take it back on the grounds that it was miss sold, plus id have to actually tell them that they have paid £600 for a bad deal computer. at the moment they are under the impression that the pc just isnt powerful enough due to how much it cost (they actually believe it was a good deal)

daz · 24 Apr 2006 at 03:41

It's their PC not yours... try not to worry about it.

DizMatt · 24 Apr 2006 at 10:08

sounds like your sister went to a purple shirted shop maybe?
well the stuff in there isn't bad, more expensive than buying the bits sometimes of course, and the gfx are basic. problem is that in some places the staff think that dedicated 128mb graphics means lots of headroom for gaming...Mmmm
however, the worst thing is that it's a philips. I work in a similar place and refuse to sell them, the freelines were pants for reliability, the freevents are a fair bit better but...

danderson · 24 Apr 2006 at 10:35

Originally Posted by AtreuS

NEVER EVER EVER fix pc's for family and friends.... you will regret it.

All I can say is Amen to that statement.

lay-z-boy · 24 Apr 2006 at 11:57

its not your pc, so dont worry, i would have been in fits if i cared about someone i knew who bought a brand new powermac g5 quad core after me pointing out that css and the like dont run on g5's and to get something like a dell xps instead.

Meatball · 24 Apr 2006 at 18:19

My relatives don't even ask me for help! We first got a PC when I was 6 and I loved it and you couldn't get me off it. Well I got on fine with that but since I was on it so much I got a hand-me-down from my relatives for my room (133MHz pent, 64Mb Ram and 1gb hard drive, I thought it was great :eek:

). Well it was my first proper computer and I thought I would investigate.... soo.. I ran a diskcleanup utility and ended up getting an error code when it turned on. Ever since "Bugaring it up" my relatives never let me on their computers even now and I'm 16 and built/modded my own PC! Its annoying. I did help one relative though who had their browser hijacked by coolwebsearch. I gave them instructions on downloading and running spybot and various other things and next time I saw her "You are a starl! Thankyou so much, I was getting fed up of those pop-ups!" Made me feel great

and they haven't come back.... yet

Meatball · 24 Apr 2006 at 18:23

DizMatt said:
sounds like your sister went to a purple shirted shop maybe?
well the stuff in there isn't bad, more expensive than buying the bits sometimes of course, and the gfx are basic. problem is that in some places the staff think that dedicated 128mb graphics means lots of headroom for gaming...Mmmm
however, the worst thing is that it's a philips. I work in a similar place and refuse to sell them, the freelines were pants for reliability, the freevents are a fair bit better but...

Sorry about double post but that certain shop is terrible! When I asked a member of staff about a PC I asked what CPU it had (sign was missing?) And the lady replied "I think it has 512mb Pentium" she went off to ask and I started cracking up so I thought it would be more polite just to leave before she said it had 2.4Ghz of ram *Grins* :rolleyes:

marcus_667 · 24 Apr 2006 at 18:38

lay-z-boy said:
its not your pc, so dont worry.

u do worry when its family though u cant stop feeling that ure familys been ripped off or something

turbotoaster · 24 Apr 2006 at 19:20

this is the best thread of the day, its so true!!!

HangTime · 24 Apr 2006 at 20:49

A pretty dated system I must admit, especially with a 533FSB cpu.

I had a similar issue 6 years ago where my dad went out and bought a £500 pc from <an office supplies company, sometimes used to attach pieces of paper to each other> rather than taking my old rig off my hands. Quelle suprise this microform factor with 150W PSU gave up the ghost a couple of years back and then the monitor went last year as well. The thing was he could have had my old system for £400 which was custom built using far superior components and of a slightly better specification. Not only would he have saved money, he'd also have been doing me a favour.

My gf also bought a laptop only 14 months ago which has no WI-FI connection and only 256meg RAM. For a 2005 system that is pretty poor, however we didn't start going out until a couple of months later so unfortunately I wasn't around to point her in the right direction.

Combat squirrel · 26 Apr 2006 at 11:46

One more option for you to try again, show her this thread, id imagine they DO NOT want to listen to you, even if you do say it in a nice way, as its basic psychology that being told you bought something wrong without consulting a knowledgable person labels them as abit daft/stupid..........its not the fact they got ripped off, its the fact they didnt have the forethought to consult you and are now paying the price. Remember they see a computer as a computer, they all run windows XP, and look more or less the same, joe bloggs approaches a PC like its a xbox 360, all the same, when we all know there NOT, consider this, explain again, show this thread, its about gently showing the facts and allowing them to realise for themselves.