Linux Format forums

Re: Owning at PC World

heiowge — Mon Feb 21, 2011 8:41 pm

Author: heiowge

Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 8:41 pm

...and I thought PC World were bad.

I passed the Apple store in the Trafford Centre today. I stopped for a quick look in the window. I'm not gonna buy, but I like shiny... When my ear was drawn to a conversation near the door between a customer and a staff member. It went like this:

Staff member wanders over to bloke looking at a macbook who seems interested.

Staff Member: Can I help you?

Customer: Yes. Can I run Linux on this computer?

Staff Member: Sure, but why would you want to?

Customer: Thanks anyway. (Walks out).

Re: Owning at PC World

bobthebob1234 — Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:05 pm

Author: bobthebob1234

Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:05 pm

i need a third screen. My two 19" dells aren't big enough...

thats right dell haters. I have dell screens. With the dell sound bar attachments.

Re: Owning at PC World

heiowge — Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:49 am

Author: heiowge

Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:49 am

I also use a 19" monitor (Hanns.g, apparently, whatever that means - I swapped it for a digital camera from my brother who'd just bought a bigger one).

I don't see the need for a bigger monitor. Not at a range of 1-2 feet! Plus it's the largest I could get and fit the computer desk.

Re: Owning at PC World

Rhakios — Mon Feb 21, 2011 10:50 am

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 10:50 am

Actually, it's a 19" LED monitor. Far too nice for test-box really, but the old monitor was having colour fluctuation issues which I found irritating.
It's a pretty good monitor, brighter, sharper and with better contrast than the pair I use on my main desktop. It was also pleasing that openSUSE11.3, after a little screen jiggling, adjusted to the new resolution automagically, all I needed to do was to extend the Kicker to cover the full screen width.

Re: Owning at PC World

heiowge — Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:54 pm

Author: heiowge

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:54 pm

Serves you right for buying their last ever 96" CRT monitor!

Re: Owning at PC World

Rhakios — Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:20 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:20 pm

guy wrote:

Rhakios wrote:

heiowge wrote:

He told me his tech guys wouldn't touch Linux and "they are fully trained".

Well, they are fully trained to deal with computers with Windows on ...

Really?

Presumably Heiowge's "friend's" techs. A good many people in PCWorld don't even seem to have been trained in customer service.
I bought a monitor from them yesterday, having reserved it on line. I could only find it �1.50 cheaper elsewhere, so I thought, why not.
It would almost have been quicker to have waited for it to be delivered. I assume their sales monkeys don't get any commission on their Collect@Store sales. There were plenty of them swinging about, but they all veered away from me when they noticed where I was waiting.

Just don't buy from PC World

Oh well! — Sun Feb 20, 2011 7:51 pm

Author: Oh well!

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 7:51 pm

Apologies if this is a bit of a rant . . . But I've always found PC World a loathsome institution: just try taking something back if it doesn't work properly. The last time I made the mistake of buying something from there was when I bought a Sansa Fuze: it became unbootable, within the guarantee period, and when I took it back, asking for a replacement or refund, they could not offer a replacement but would not offer a refund either! Just a PC World voucher to put towards another item. However, they didn't have any other items I wanted - least of all, an alternative, over-priced mp3 player. Only when I mentioned the Sale of Goods Act did the guy go off "to ask the manager" who - surprise, surprise - said I could have the refund. I wonder how many less stroppy people got fobbed off with the voucher rubbish.

On the other hand, Comet was nearly a model of good practice: When I was looking to buy a netbook, the sales guy told me that Linux was still the same old rubbish it had always been; whereupon I glared at him, told him I preferred Linux and had used it for years - and he had the good grace to bugger off and leave me alone after that!

Re: Owning at PC World

guy — Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:29 pm

Author: guy

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:29 pm

Rhakios wrote:

heiowge wrote:

He told me his tech guys wouldn't touch Linux and "they are fully trained".

Well, they are fully trained to deal with computers with Windows on ...

Really? On several occasions my son and various of his friends have come back with stories that they had to part with fifty quid (or whatever) upfront only to be told, "The trained-up guy isn't here today/left last week/etc. We can hold on to your PC and charge even more for his time or you can just take home this box of bits that we spent your cash turning it into or we can reassemble the bits into a broken PC again - and we won't even charge for that." A variant is "We don't have/stock the kit to faultfind your PC but we're not going to refund your money. Do you want us to ...."

Re: Owning at PC World

PCNetSpec — Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:13 pm

Author: PCNetSpec

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:13 pm

I'm not sure that Linpus Lite can be considered a good choice of distro for beginners and "silver surfers".

Its use of Firefox 2 leaves users unable to browse some web pages, and installing any other browser isn't exactly what you would call a straight forward process.

Not to mention the fact that updates regularly kill the wireless, causing the network manager to "disappear"... easy enough to fix if you know how, but you only have to Google:
linpus network manager missing
and
linpus firefox 3
to see that these are major issues for a lot of AA1/Linpus Lite users.

Re: Owning at PC World

LeeNukes — Sun Feb 20, 2011 12:29 pm

Author: LeeNukes

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 12:29 pm

Stolen

Re: Owning at PC World

heiowge — Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:38 pm

Author: heiowge

Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:38 pm

Just found this joke and thought it was quite apt to this thread...

I'm useless with computers! I'm such a techno-numpty! I only have to touch the things and they break!

Well, not really. But you've got to lie on your CV a bit to have a chance of getting in at PC World.

Re: Owning at PC World

CJLL — Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:49 pm

Author: CJLL

Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:49 pm

Bazza wrote:

It is for the absolute beginner NOT experts like you and worked
well for Silver Surfers who had never touched any computing
platform in their lives. To me it was very limited but to an out and
out newbie it was superb.

The problem was that the buyers were not silver surfers, but mainly young'uns who expected the netbooks to run everything their desktops could.

Re: Owning at PC World

LeeNukes — Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:15 pm

Author: LeeNukes

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:15 pm

I never do well with PC World staff. Really annoyed one the last time I was in there as he was trying to upsell the support, antivirus, office blah blah. I told him I didn't want any of that. He was even surprised when I said no to the first month free on the insurance.

Eventually he got the picture and shut up.

Re: Owning at PC World

Bazza — Mon Feb 14, 2011 1:16 pm

Author: Bazza

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 1:16 pm

Hi CJLL...

> Yup, that half @rsed Linpus Lite rubbish.
> If Acer had done a better job like installing Ubuntu fully loaded
> then they'd still be selling them.

Although I have to agree with you, think laterally before you pass
a comment like that.

IMO Linpus Linux is shite BUT it was installed on this netbook and
I used it for a short while until I installed PCLinuxOS 2009.

It is for the absolute beginner NOT experts like you and worked
well for Silver Surfers who had never touched any computing
platform in their lives. To me it was very limited but to an out and
out newbie it was superb.

Sadly the ACER Aspire One netbook is not as reliable as the
Linpus Linux installed on it.

That is from experience.

Re: Owning at PC World

M-Saunders — Mon Feb 14, 2011 10:19 am

Author: M-Saunders

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 10:19 am

CJLL wrote:

And the unwashed public will willing accept very broken platforms - flash games on the iPad anyone?

Huh? The iPad is broken for NOT having Flash? I'd say the exact opposite. Installing Flash breaks any platform, being such a buggy and slow piece of crap. And it's not like iOS is short of games...

M