OT: Computer

[Andy Hall]

Ah that's OK, then.

It was beginning to sound like the person who goes to the doctor and says that he has a friend with a discharge....

[nightjar]

You can claim for breach of contract for up to six years, but to do that would require that the goods were not as described. Unless the manufacturer or retailer specified a minimum product life, which it failed to achieve, the question is not one of breach of contract but whether the goods were of satisfactory quality. Satisfactory quality is a more flexible criterion and there is no fixed period for how long that should apply; It depends very much upon what a Court decides would be a reasonable expectation for the product concerned. I would be surprised if a Court thought it unreasonable that a computer suffer a fault after three years.

Colin Bignell

[gort]

Not seen many emachine pc's then ?

Dave

[John Rumm]

An engineer in a lab where I once worked, acquired the nickname of Conan (as in the destroyer) doing something similar to the best PC in the lab at the time (A 12MHz Wyse 286 with EGA!). Reached round the back looking for the off switch (which was in fact a push buton on the front) flipped the voltage selector switch, and let the magic smoke out.

The old Tosh luggables were great for lab use - ran on practically anything from 90V AC 50/60 Hz to the 415V 400Hz of an avionics power station.

[w_tom]

Industry standards even 30 years required circuits that made damage not possible. But when selling hardware only on price, many standards are somehow forgotten.

Even Intel specs specifically required hardware so that a power supply failure could not harm motherboard, et al::

9 volts on 5 volt rails means motherboard damage is directly traceable to a human who bought on price; not on value.

[nimbusjunk]

Since PSUs used to cost twice as much in actual terms a few years back I think you are probably correct on that one.

A four old low end PC with no Hard drive is worth about =A340.00 on ebay I should think . I am not sure the person who asks what did it cost knows what has happened to the price of PCs.

Buy a Dell with 19 inch TFT mon for =A3380 and move on

HTH phil

[Grunff]

No, I haven't. I've seen a couple of PC World's Packard Bell machines - are they like that?

[Christian McArdle]

Indeed. I suspect the only angle is the fact that a known design fault has damaged "3rd party" peripherals. You might be able to claim damage for that, if there was anything expensive damaged.

Christian.

[tony sayer]

In article , Christian McArdle writes

Makes me wonder if its worth all that stress 'n bother going to court, litigation, arguments, etc about this seeing that you can put together a decent computer from online bought parts for less then 100 quid less monitor these days!...

[John Rumm]

No, those are much higher quality in comparison! ;-)

All the eMachines I have seen are typically in a small mini tower with sculpted front so that when you add drives in future they never look right since you don't have the spare bezel to fir to them, and they had a teeny weeny PSU (both physically - it is smaller than the standard device, and output wise 90-140W typical). The only saving grace is you can get a full size PSU in there with the expedient of snapping off a bit of metal bracketry on the top of the case.

[Pyriform]

I'd like to know where you buy your parts, or what you think constitutes a "decent" computer!

[gort]

John Rumm has said it all!!!

Dave

[nightjar]

It would be necessary to show that the supplier was aware of the fault, that they were aware that the damage incurred was probable (rather than simply one of several low probability possibilities) and that they had been negligent in the way they handled that knowledge. Again, the time taken to failure would be a factor in deciding whether they ought to have taken any action (assuming that they have not).

Colin Bignell

[tony sayer]

Http//:

depends of course on what you mean by a decent PC, well we've put together quite a few for general office work, e-mail and word processing nothing too demanding, 'course if your gaming etc then you will want to spend more!..

[Jonathan Schneider]

I've had various PSUs open to quieten them and have been underwhelmed at the quality of the soldering. If looking in your reveals that it was down to manufacturing then it might help with your case.

My gut feel is that this brand is s**te.

Jon

[tony sayer]

You do , seeming contrary to my other post on the subject, do get what you pay for. Some PSU's are less then a tenner and for that they have to include the retailers profit and transport from China so that doesn't exactly leave that much for components and build quality!.

Not a bad component to spend a few bob on otherwise, bought one the other week for 30 quid and its really QUIET!, which is something rather desirable :)....

[Andy Hall]

The other dimension to this is that if the supplier has claimed that the system is expandable and has only put in a 150W PSU or less, he is being economic with the truth.

As soon as there are multiple disk drives, high performance graphics cards etc. the requirements go up to a lot more than that

[Pyriform]

But less than £100?

This is the best I can do from ebuyer:

Case + PSU - £15 Motherboard - £16 Processor - £26

256MB Memory - £17 80GB Hard drive - £29 keyboard/mouse - £5 Delivery - £5

Total - £113

OS + applications - I'll assume you must be using free stuff...

Ok, I admit that's less than I expected! But I'm still intrigued to know if it's actually possible to build a PC from new parts for less than £100...

[John Rumm]

You will have a pig of a job getting much on it with an optical drive of some sort!

[Clint Sharp]

In message , The3rd Earl Of Derby writes

How did you measure this? If it was with a multimeter you may find it was much higher.