RE: [TCLUG:1585] STATE FAIR SUPER COMPUTER SALE

["Neal Tovsen" <ntovsen@piper.hamline.edu>]

>
> Be aware, at last year's computer fair, a friend of mine bought a new
> PII-350 system with a 14GB hard drive.  When he got home, it
> turned out
> the wrong hard drive was in the package and he had to pay $6 again to
> get into the fair and return the unit.

I've gone through this myself. If you bitch at the door, they will let you
in as long as it is just to return/exchange the item. You also have to
research what you're planning on buying. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! My friend
bought a video card that was labeled "Matrox Millenium II, 8Mb," because I
had told him it was a good card. When I saw it, it just didn't look quite
right, and $89 was just too good of a price at the time, so I got on the
Web. It turned out that it was the new Productiva G100. We went back to the
show to return it. The salesman was all set to argue until I whipped out
print-outs of the Matrox Web site of both the MII and the Productiva,
showing him the difference. He gave my friend his money back. Interestingly
enough, in the time before we returned, the guy had marked the same label up
to the proper price for the MII...and the Productiva was still attached to
it. <shiver> There's some poor suckers out there somewhere...

>
> If you do buy,  stick with vendors you've heard of or are in business
> around the metro here or something, otherwise you never know
> what you'll
> get.
>

I'm with you there. I try to trust my instincts about this stuff. You can
sorta tell who is legit and who is questionable. Ask lots of questions about
what their policy is about tech-support and returns/exchanges. Also, with
the way the computer industry is going, I've often found that BestBuy and
CompUSA often aren't all that much more expensive, especially when it comes
to video cards, sound cards, and hard drives. The technical ability of these
places may or may not be great, and you might not get that "personal touch"
but at least you can always return something. If I can come within $20 or so
of the show's price at BestBuy or CompUSA, I'll usually go there instead.

Neal