Lessons from an IT hell-week
Last week, a "perfect storm" of IT irritations/failures led me to have to buy a new PC and assorted accessories. I now see light at the end of the tunnel, and if all goes well, I should be able to get back to work.
Rather than review the gory details of everything that went wrong, here are some of the lessons learned:
- Google rocks. Maybe stating the obvious, but one can really learn a lot by tapping into the experience of others that is available online. If you've had a computer problem, chances are someone else has also had it and had it solved, and the whole conversation has been indexed by Google.
- Acer is bad. I bought an Acer PC in Spain and found it impossible to upgrade to an english version of XP; everything crashed nonstop, the documentation in the box and online was laughably bad, and online forums seemed full of people complaining about Acer problems. I spent 10 hours trying to get around these problems before simply giving up and returning the machine. Acer customer support was open only in restricted business hours, too. It was annoying, because the Acer value for money was pretty good and I liked the look and noise level of the box. Oh, well.
- Media Markt is great! Value for money was insanely good when buying a PC made under their own brand "microstar". The box won't win any design awards, but the components are first-rate and everything worked perfectly from the start (including my upgrade to XP in english and reinstallation of drivers). The reference instructions in the box were great, and even the way files were organized on the hard drive were super logical and easy to follow. Excellent service guarantees and money-back policies. Respect to Germany!
- PC City is ok. They get my respect for offering a very easy return policy, but the salemanship isn't very good, and the quality of the products fairly dubious. Lot's of crummy low-spec accessories and PCs on offer.
- Don't ever buy IT equipment from a Spanish, or worse- Catalan, owned business. I'm not sure why this is, but the state of retail marketing in Spain is about 20-30 years behind the US/UK, particularly in money-back guarantees and return policies. I've returned goods that were defective and had to argue about it, been made to feel like I was cheating the store, and literally scolded on my attitude for thinking I could dare to return items. I have in the past had almost hilarious converstations with local shop owners in Barcelona who simply don't believe me when I tell them the kind of return policies that are normal in the US/UK. Whatever...I don't even bother anymore- I simply buy from other places, which in Spain means buying from foreign-owned chains like PC City or Media Markt.
Link: Media Markt Europe.