We are currently in the middle of a crappy computer epidemic!
This post is going to be a bit more of a rant than many of our previous posts, but it does serve a vital purpose. I am not going to use the name of any particular stores/brands but I will say there are many of them out there.
We have recently been seeing a large influx of computers that are less than one year old come in to the shop with complaints of running slow. These have been regular desktops, all-in-one computers, and laptops. Most of the time the customers have requested tune-ups to help speed up their computer. After we look at them though, many of these computers are not full of junk or malware, they are just extremely low spec’d computers, $200 desktop computers, or $3-$400 laptops/all-in-ones and many people have been conned in to buying them. They think they are getting a good deal because they are cheap. What they don’t realize is how slow a computer they are actually buying. Most of them have 4gb of ram and a 500gb hard drive so on the surface they do actually look like a good deal.
Here is a comparison of just how bad some of these computers are.
My main laptop I use every day at work was purchased new in November of 2007 for $609.83+tax. Even when it was new it was a middle of the road laptop, nothing high end at all. Now in 2015 its old, it’s slow, it needs to be retired and replaced. It drags and drags on its best days. Its processor benchmarks 1340 in PassMark’s CPU benchmark. So keep that 1340 number in your mind.
Over the last few weeks I have had several of these tune-ups come across my bench. Two in particular were less than a year old, and their processors benchmarked a 690, and 898. Brand new computers being easily out performed by my 2007 laptop that manages a benchmark of 1340. Another good comparison is what we carry as our budget chip. The SLOWEST new processor we even carry in our shop benchmarks 2909 and that’s only a $60 chip. Hopefully that gives you some idea of the “value” these “large budget department stores” are offering.
All I’m really trying to say is be careful what you buy, most of these ‘amazingly good deals’ are not good deals at all when it really comes to what you are actually going to get.
Patrick is the service shop manager at Computer PRO Unltd. Patrick has been working in IT for 17 years with experience in Azure, Servers, and Exchange.