Immitation Makita's

[Michael McNeil]

Just thought you might want to know that a firm has set itself up making look-alike Makitas. I bought a 24v drill with two batteries and two salient points hit me once I got over the price (£75.)

There was no guaranttee or instruction bumph and the batteries looked cheap (aka Blackspur.) Someone else pointed out that Makita's have the name embossed on the case. I should have hit on another: it was supplied with a set of driver bits that looked like they'd been made in a back-yard in India.

You can tell just by looking, that a set like that will last all of half a day if you never use them. Not the sort of thing Makita will supply at all. I must try them on a real job.

Quite a good looking tool (and possibly even by the original maunfacturer as a moonlighter.) The downside is there is no Makita warranty and they will break down sooner rather than later. On the other hand if they are quite close patterns then they aint toys.

[Howard Neil]

No Makita warranty? I see that as a plus. I will not touch anything made by Makita because of their lousy/non existent after sales service (I am referring to Makita themselves, not their resellers who can be superb).

Howard Neil

[ARWadsworth]

They are rebadged NuTools. I have been offered them in Doncaster, Sheffield, Manchester and Blackpool. The sellers live in a caravan and will drive an Audi or Merc (I think you know who I mean)

Adam

[IMM]

[Howard Neil]

Yes, I know who you mean. That means that customer service will, at best, be on a par with Makita.

Howard Neil

[Michael McNeil]

A lad at work brought about half a dozen in along with a radial arm chop-saw that had a laser indicator for the blade. Loads of teeth in the blade too. He wanted £170 or so for that.

I could have my money back I suppose but I cooked 2 batteries on the cheapo 18v I already have. I find it is the charger that gives the trouble with these cheap tools. (I walked into the house I was charging the battery at and thought "Bloody hell what is that painter using?") (Meanwhile the painter was thinking: "What has that joiner been cutting?")

If I didn't have a pretty good chopsaw I seldom use, I'd snatch up the other at that price. Fiddling with the work-piece to get the pencil line at the cut, doubles the time spent on an ordinary chop-saw.

[Michael McNeil]

Don't these "big name" firms operate like car manufacturers? They have franchised dealerships and train the dealers -which accounts for some of the high price of the tools.

[Andrew McKay]

A major problem with extended URLs is that you get line wrap in many newsreaders, making the URL unclickable. The tinyurl.com web site is brilliant at solving this problem.

Sorry, didn't mean to criticise but if you haven't heard of tinyurl.com before then it's worth making a note of it.

Andrew

Do you need a handyman service? Check out our web site at

[Dave Plowman]

170 quid is a lot for a chop saw unless it's a quality make. See B&Q etc for cheaper ones also with lasers.

[David Hearn]

The only thing I don't like about Tiny URL is you have no idea what domain you're going to. There have been cases of people creating tiny URLs to things which would quite possibly start the warning bells on a corporate firewall - I just like to know where I'm clicking. Too often I've seen people say: Take a look at

with no description of what is meant to be there (let alone a domain name - though of course, with tinyurl you can put whatever description you want in the post and still point it elsewhere).

Personally, I would prefer to have to handle split line URLs than use tinyurl - putting both in would satisfy me...I think it is Make A Shorter Link which actually gives a bounce page which warns you where you're going - that would be okay for me too.

Just my thoughts on tinyurl

D

[Dave Plowman]

If you put the ULR in brackets most readers should cope with split lines.

[Andrew McKay]

That looks like a good suggestion - have you thought of suggesting it to the owner of tinyurl.com?

Andrew

Do you need a handyman service? Check out our web site at

[David W.E. Roberts]

See

has a request for information on fake tools.

[Mike Ring]

Dave Plowman wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Taht particular link worked for me, but I've got used to looking on the end to see whats missing if the link doesn't work, and adding thalast digits by hand or C & P.

Perhaps some folks don't realise that a long link may wrap; ISTR it took me some time - now I prefer the manual approach

Mike R

[chris French]

In message , Dave Plowman writes

They should indeed. and happily mine does :-)

But I believe a certain very common program doesn't like to follow such accepted standards so it's users have to suffer these problems......

[Dave Plowman]

Unwrapping Line Resolver?

All I can say to you is PAR.

[dmc]

I haven't, no.

I have a feeling that makeashorterlink has been around longer than tinyurl.com but I may be wrong. I can't believe that they are not aware of each other so I assume they have chosen to differ in this way for a reason.

Each to their own and all that.

Darren

[Gnube]

However they often are, and sometimes even overfilled (certainly in the early marketing days), as a cynical ploy to get early adopters to spread the good word to others - they only find out it's not so good after suggesting it as a purchase to others sadly. Such are the games that get played these days in the wonderful world of commerce! ;O)

Take Care, Gnube I don't want to win the lottery I just want to win a barn full of seasoned timber! ;O)

[Michael McNeil]

This is a test of that idea which if it works is a good un:

I read directly from Google. Normally they are good with such things but they have suffered a few glitches lately. Now I'm off to the B&Q site to examine their cheapos. Speaking of which there is a chop saw in the Argos site for £15. It has a more powerful motor than the one I'm using at work which is ace for anything up to 4x3 -I think. I wonder what those will cut.

[Owain]

"Michael McNeil" wrote | This is a test of that idea which if it works is a good un: |

But much easier all round if you put

item number whatever.

Most people have the intelligence to put the item number in the Search box on the Argos website. It also gets round all problems of session-IDs and allows people to find it easily in the printed catalogue too.

Owain