THE DIARY OF A GEEK IN OXFORDSHIRE


Solving the World's problems with common sense and a flamethrower.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

And it's gone....

The little Advent lasted just 3 days since its visit to PC World - and is now gone.

I came downstairs on Friday morning to discover a shut-down box. Again.

This time, a bit of Googling garnered me some evidence that I wasn't alone in experiencing problems with this box. This link is just ONE of the mentions of the problem I found.

I called PC World, who (at first) asked me to bring it in for further tests. However, I explained the evidence, pointed their Tech Guys team leader at the relevant pages....and got a callback an hour later confirming that they would simply take a return for a full store credit.

So the Advent went back, and has been replaced by a Compaq C757EA, as the price for a dual-core with 2GB RAM was just too good to miss. I also treated myself to an Archos 504 80GB PMP, which will be useful for my trip to Romania this month.

(For those who are shocked at my choosing Archos - I looked at the iPod Touch, but for £20 more than the Archos it's a tenth of the storage and, according to the owner of the one I was fiddling with, won't play Divx - which would make it completely useless for my purposes.)

Overall, then, I have to say I'm not displeased with the service and response from PC World on this. And I feel like I've got a heck of a lot more for my money than I had originally!

So to those who asked for my opinions or advice on the Advent 8212 - my advice is just DON'T. It's not DSG's fault - but the components and the mainboard appear to have known issues and, quite frankly, it's not worth the money you'll pay for it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eeek ! I originally read you blog when purchasing my Advent 8212 just under 2 months ago after doing some research.

I read with some concern last week about your problems and hoped it was a isolated incident.

Today I had my first shut down so obviously came back to your site to find this post.

Fingers crossed it was just a coincidence and I have too many apps running ! :)

Anonymous said...

Regards, Darren.

Dungeekin said...

I hope yours works for you, Darren.

If it fails, though, it's worth checking out the info on the link below, and printing that out to take to PC World:

http://www.w00tw00t.co.uk/support/viewtopic.php?t=2984

Thanks for reading!

Neil

Anonymous said...

And I am about to do the same tomorrow Neil. 8212 back to PCW tomorrow for the second time, after the 12th crash. Enough is enough.

Are you happy with your new Compaq?

Regards, ndv