Student lap top

[pammy]

I'll natter with her father then and see if we can sort one of those out. Must admit I'm pleased with that spec. Looks really good.

 

[timskemp]

Toshiba all the way. Whatever you get take out the manufacturers 3yr all risk insurance - souble check it covers the student residence first.

 

[Rory]

Both my kids had my ex-company (ie 2+yrs old when they started) mid business spec (ie not especially good graphics etc) laptops at Uni and I never had a moments trouble with the hardware. The biggest snag was remotely supporting the old operating systems - first one was W98 and the second was W2K -when I'd moved on to XP.

I bought my oldest daughter a pretty good spec Dell when she finished and to cover the horrors that are mentioned earlier I insured it with http://www.compucover.co.uk - it looks like it's gone up as I only paid £40/yr, and it may not cover 'walk-in' thefts at Uni (although both my kids used Kensington locks while in halls to tether their laptops to steel CH pipes). There may be better insurance cover available, perhaps as an add on to student content policies (we used Saxon Insurance http://www.saxoninsurance.com/ for contents and probably had our money's worth in claims - although they are hopeless at sending renewel invitations).

One thing on back-ups - Hotmail (and others) offer quite a bit of storage space now. Ensure that they email copies of work to their Hotmail accounts (and perhaps home to you too). They need to do every time they finish work on a document. Never mind losing a whole document, it's a disaster if they spend all day editing an essay and then lose that days edits - it's very difficult to pick up again all the changes that need to be made.

 

[Sp!ke]

HP laptops have a cheap studenty feel to them now. I no longer consider them to be tier 1. (Not sure if this is because they are now made by Hitachi)

Anyway, whatever you buy, make sure it comes with 3 years onsite warranty.

 

[Benzowner]

Just remembered, don't know if it is the same for all Uni's, but at Hartpury, they have an IT dept who will undertake small repairs, seems the college new what students were like

 

[pammy]

Lenovo ordered from Dabs - had a £20 voucher so got it for £386:bannana:

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Colin_b]

FWIW, I bought both my kids Dell Inspiron laptops when they departed for uni last autumn (so now I can get my SLK £320 each, and both have survived perfectly. Cheap enough not to have a fit if they get broken or stolen, and reasonable spec for the stull they do.
To get the data off the old hard disk, remove it from the dead PC, and install in another (either as a secondary or 2nd IDE channel). The use something like Acronis (go for V9), plonk it on a cd/dvd and away you go.

Acronis is brilliant - excellent for backups, cloning PCs, new disks, and cheap

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000CO1FAI/?tag=amazon0e9db-21

Colin.

 

[pammy]

anyone got a phone number for dabs?

Have an ongoing issue with Dabs and this lap top.

Was oredered before I went away and it duly arrived while I was away - or rather a base unit arrived, no battery, no power cable, no discs, no manual no nothing. Have been in constant email comm'n with Dabs and we now have a battery and the three pin plug bit of the power cable, but nothing else. I am losing my patience as they just don't seem able to out the information they have together and understand that I am rightly p'd off and am getting no sense out of them whatsoever. So I want to rant at someone now and I need to do this by phone as email is a waste of time. For example after a number of emails have exchanged I send this:

Dear sir/madam

Sorry but as you can probably imagine I am beginning to lose patience with this. We have had this lap-top for over two weeks and still do not have all the package. We cannot even find exactly what we were supposed to get so when we get questions like - "What are you missing?" - other than the obvious, how would we know?

In summary, we have:
Base lap top unit
Battery pack
Power cable that goes from the socket in the wall to a transformer but no transformer.
We do not have, any supporting documentation or disks,or a means to connect the power cable to the lap-top itself. In short we do not have a working laptop. Despite emails to yourselves, your people seem not to comprehend the frustration in dealing with this via email when nothing appears to move forward. I ask for someone to call me and nothing happens, it makes dealing with this very very difficult.

I find this whole experience tedious and very dissatisfying and would appreciate an informed urgent response that offers an immediate and acceptable solution to this situation.

Many thanks

Pam Gair

I get this:

Hi,

Thanks for your email.

As advised previously, we have contacted our suppliers to ensure that they send you the missing goods as soon as possible. Please let us know if you have not received the goods by the end of this week.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,

Customer Services
dabs.com Plc

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

So does anyone have a phone number for Dabs?

 

[R2e]

Might be a problem - "As an Internet company, dabs.com is essentially a 'value' retailer whose whole business is geared towards delivering great products at even better prices, as efficiently as possible. By investing in technology to streamline our internal procedures we've been able to keep our prices low, which, when combined with our ability to quickly process and deliver your orders thanks to our constantly developing logistics engine, is the main reason customers choose to shop online with dabs.com.

We do not offer a telephone service for pre or post sales enquiries. For more information about our approach, please visit our "customer promise". "

This is what they say on the website.

 

[pammy]

Yeah - I know, didn't at the time, but then didn't expect to have a problem of this nature . They must have phones even if it is not their normal way of doing business and I just wondered of anyone here had a number at all.

 

[Dieselman]

dabs.com
Direct House, Lancaster Rd, Wingates Ind Est, Westhoughton, Bolton, Lancashire BL5 3XD
Tel: 0870 4293220

 

[pammy]

dabs.com
Direct House, Lancaster Rd, Wingates Ind Est, Westhoughton, Bolton, Lancashire BL5 3XD
Tel: 0870 4293220

Ooooooooh getting more and more cross - thanks for the number DM. It's an automated message that simply says go online - end of

 

[Dieselman]

Try the 'Live Chat' service.

http://www.dabs.com/contentsearchre...4294966792&SearchTerms=live chat&SectionName=

 

[pammy]

Try the 'Live Chat' service.

http://www.dabs.com/contentsearchre...4294966792&SearchTerms=live chat&SectionName=

Yeah - been hanging on there for ages. But looks like that's the only way I'll get anywhere.

 

[Dieselman]

Try
01942 853222

That will get you through to reception..

 

[Dieselman]

You owe me 10p for the call...

 

[pammy]

Am finally "chatting" to "Scott (cs)" And he is helping - yay!!



I'll send you a cheque for the 10p

 

[Dieselman]

Can you order me a Deerstalker and a pipe..

 

[pammy]

lol - finished chatting to Scott and at least he was almost human! He understood why I was cross and said he would investigate exactly where things were and get back to me. I won't hold my breath just yet though

As ever, thanks for all the help guys. Much appreciated. Numbers duly stored should they be needed in future.

 

[Gollom]

MD is (still I think) David Atherton. Have met him a few times at various industry functions and found him an OK guy - but don't forget I'm in the industry so that may make a difference. Emails there used to be initials @dabs.com..........