None of your business
You might think that PC World's main business was ... selling PCs?
Oh no. That'd be too obvious.
My linux server at home is was a fairly elderly Pentium 3 box. When I built it originally, I'd put a Celeron 300 in it, which should give you an idea of the age. It was overclocked to 450 Mhz, and eventually upgraded to a full blown PIII 800. And gradually, it started dying. Intermittent lockups and reports of memory faults.
I acquired a replacement machine from work: a Duron 1100, whcih hardware support let me have for free, on the condition that I never, ever brought it back. More space on their storage shelves, and it'd be entirely my responsibility. And it's more stable than the old machine, but it does run very, very hot: I can open the door to my "office", and the heat comes rolling out.
So I was considering buying an entirely new machine to take over the job, on the grounds that it would have better airflow, or just generally be cooler, as noise and heat disappation have become consumer issues over the last few years.
So, Sunday lunchtime found me pottering into PC World, just on hte offchance they'd got something decently cheap.
I wandered in, had a look at the wireless keyboards, had a look at the webcams, and finally migrated to the PC displays.
They'd got a couple which looked plausible. An "EI systems" machine at 300 quid, and next to it, a Packard Bell at 250[1]. Gosh, that's quite likely, I thought.
The Packard came with a 80 Gig hard drive, and I wandered over to the "Customer Contact Point".
After a few minutes waiting there, I comment to the other couple who were also waiting that this, clearly, was the point to contact other customers. Not staff.
Finally the Floor Manager returned, having put his mobile phone away. He dealt with the other couple, and then I asked him whether the cheap machines had "normal" IDE drives, or new, sexy SATA drives. He didn't know, guessed at IDE, and offered to get a sales assistant for me to talk to. But that'd take 20 minutes, because they were a bit busy. I told him not to bother.
I thought for a minute or two, and then decided that SATA wasn't essential: I've got 300 Gig in spare parallel IDE drives anyway, and could recycle those. So I went looking for somebody to sell me the machine. And then realised that they were nicely boxed on the shelf underneath the display model. Since it was being sold without a monitor, that's the only box I needed. I slid it out and carried down to the tills at the front of the shop.
And then the bizarre inability of PC World to sell me a PC began.
As I approached the tills, one of the assistants was leaving. Had I already payed for the PC, he asked. No, I was hoping to do that at the till. At this point I was hoping that he'd sit back down, and ring the stuff through. But no!
You can't pay for PCs at the till: you have to do it at the back of the shop. I boggled and returned to the back of the shop (fortunately, collecting a shopping trolley on the way). A passing mejoff told me I needed to talk to the floor manager. So I did, and he offered to get me a sales assistant to sort things out for me. By now it wouldn't take 20 minutes. Only 15.
I told him not to bother, I'd just put the kit back and leave it. He may have been able to pick up on my exasparation at this point. I didn't need an assistant: I'd got the product in my grubby little paws, and just wanted to pay and leave. I could try the finance area at the front of the store. They might be able to help me.
Back to the front... and in the financing area were two assistants, one of whom was already dealing with some customers, and the other was on his mobile phone. that seemed to be a theme in PC World. When he got off the phone, I explained the situation, and that the floor manager had sent me down to him. Had he indeed? Oh, he shouldn't have done that. Hang on. And he proceeded to pull out his phone again, call the floor manager, and demand to know what he was doing, sending unaccompanied shoppers to the financing people. Meanwhile, the financing person was ignoring me, and presumably, the floor manager was ignoring the people who were trying to talk to him. By now I was actively trying to give up, turn the trolley around, and put all the kit back. The financing chap told me to hang on, he was almost done. I didn't care.
Finally, he got off the phone, and was obviously still displeased with me. I was still pointing out that I didn't care, and I'd just put it all back. Finally he surrendered, and said he could probably take my payment. Thank God.
Of course, even then, he had to explain the PC World maintainence plan to me. At only 4.99 a month, it covers hardware (because you can't just use industry standard components to repair the machine, apparently: that would hav emade me put it back, if I'd believed him), data recovery, and other such junk. While I was sitting there saying "not interested, don't want to know", he asked why. I pointed out that I was planning to immediately reformat the hard drive, and install linux. That obviously scared him somewhat, and he let me go with no further questions.
Gosh. That was exhausting. I'll bet that it'd be easier buying a PC at Tescos, or Asda, or whichever supermarkets are currently selling PCs. Specialist dealers? Just don't trust them.
On the plus side, I've now got an 80 gig SATA drive (the floor manager was wrong), with an unaccepted Windows installation on it. And a 120 gig IDE drive in the machine, with Kubuntu.
Kubuntu. It's nice.
[1]: Yes, I've noticed the one on the website is 130 quid more, but that includes a monitor. The ones in store were just the base unit.
Oh no. That'd be too obvious.
My linux server at home is was a fairly elderly Pentium 3 box. When I built it originally, I'd put a Celeron 300 in it, which should give you an idea of the age. It was overclocked to 450 Mhz, and eventually upgraded to a full blown PIII 800. And gradually, it started dying. Intermittent lockups and reports of memory faults.
I acquired a replacement machine from work: a Duron 1100, whcih hardware support let me have for free, on the condition that I never, ever brought it back. More space on their storage shelves, and it'd be entirely my responsibility. And it's more stable than the old machine, but it does run very, very hot: I can open the door to my "office", and the heat comes rolling out.
So I was considering buying an entirely new machine to take over the job, on the grounds that it would have better airflow, or just generally be cooler, as noise and heat disappation have become consumer issues over the last few years.
So, Sunday lunchtime found me pottering into PC World, just on hte offchance they'd got something decently cheap.
I wandered in, had a look at the wireless keyboards, had a look at the webcams, and finally migrated to the PC displays.
They'd got a couple which looked plausible. An "EI systems" machine at 300 quid, and next to it, a Packard Bell at 250[1]. Gosh, that's quite likely, I thought.
The Packard came with a 80 Gig hard drive, and I wandered over to the "Customer Contact Point".
After a few minutes waiting there, I comment to the other couple who were also waiting that this, clearly, was the point to contact other customers. Not staff.
Finally the Floor Manager returned, having put his mobile phone away. He dealt with the other couple, and then I asked him whether the cheap machines had "normal" IDE drives, or new, sexy SATA drives. He didn't know, guessed at IDE, and offered to get a sales assistant for me to talk to. But that'd take 20 minutes, because they were a bit busy. I told him not to bother.
I thought for a minute or two, and then decided that SATA wasn't essential: I've got 300 Gig in spare parallel IDE drives anyway, and could recycle those. So I went looking for somebody to sell me the machine. And then realised that they were nicely boxed on the shelf underneath the display model. Since it was being sold without a monitor, that's the only box I needed. I slid it out and carried down to the tills at the front of the shop.
And then the bizarre inability of PC World to sell me a PC began.
As I approached the tills, one of the assistants was leaving. Had I already payed for the PC, he asked. No, I was hoping to do that at the till. At this point I was hoping that he'd sit back down, and ring the stuff through. But no!
You can't pay for PCs at the till: you have to do it at the back of the shop. I boggled and returned to the back of the shop (fortunately, collecting a shopping trolley on the way). A passing mejoff told me I needed to talk to the floor manager. So I did, and he offered to get me a sales assistant to sort things out for me. By now it wouldn't take 20 minutes. Only 15.
I told him not to bother, I'd just put the kit back and leave it. He may have been able to pick up on my exasparation at this point. I didn't need an assistant: I'd got the product in my grubby little paws, and just wanted to pay and leave. I could try the finance area at the front of the store. They might be able to help me.
Back to the front... and in the financing area were two assistants, one of whom was already dealing with some customers, and the other was on his mobile phone. that seemed to be a theme in PC World. When he got off the phone, I explained the situation, and that the floor manager had sent me down to him. Had he indeed? Oh, he shouldn't have done that. Hang on. And he proceeded to pull out his phone again, call the floor manager, and demand to know what he was doing, sending unaccompanied shoppers to the financing people. Meanwhile, the financing person was ignoring me, and presumably, the floor manager was ignoring the people who were trying to talk to him. By now I was actively trying to give up, turn the trolley around, and put all the kit back. The financing chap told me to hang on, he was almost done. I didn't care.
Finally, he got off the phone, and was obviously still displeased with me. I was still pointing out that I didn't care, and I'd just put it all back. Finally he surrendered, and said he could probably take my payment. Thank God.
Of course, even then, he had to explain the PC World maintainence plan to me. At only 4.99 a month, it covers hardware (because you can't just use industry standard components to repair the machine, apparently: that would hav emade me put it back, if I'd believed him), data recovery, and other such junk. While I was sitting there saying "not interested, don't want to know", he asked why. I pointed out that I was planning to immediately reformat the hard drive, and install linux. That obviously scared him somewhat, and he let me go with no further questions.
Gosh. That was exhausting. I'll bet that it'd be easier buying a PC at Tescos, or Asda, or whichever supermarkets are currently selling PCs. Specialist dealers? Just don't trust them.
On the plus side, I've now got an 80 gig SATA drive (the floor manager was wrong), with an unaccepted Windows installation on it. And a 120 gig IDE drive in the machine, with Kubuntu.
Kubuntu. It's nice.
[1]: Yes, I've noticed the one on the website is 130 quid more, but that includes a monitor. The ones in store were just the base unit.