Posts by mike

Cloned US ATM cards: Can they fool Brit self-service checkouts?

cashback on self service

hmm.. and yet just last night i got cashback with my milkshake at a self service.. at asda

Dell parks itself in PC superstores across Europe

pcworld facts

Pcworld staff are trained in the very basics as part of the sales team. such as RAM & CPU requirement for different tasks.

like modern video editing software not being able to run on 64mb RAM and a pentium 1 processor. requiring upto 1024mb ram and pentium 4 processor.

and having the ability to do maths like adding the ram requirement for the OS along with the always in background antivirus softwares ram requirement and then adding whatever else the customer wants to do.

matching a computer to a customer is easy. because computers no longer come with lots of software they dont need to sort thought the aisles of computers to find one that has everything. just find one of the 5 pc's with enough ram CPU and HD to do the job.

the techguys do not have any instore training really. its all based on experience and knowledge. yes the best way to describe them is computer hobbiests and not experts.

if you want a true expert look in the yellow pages. techguys are pretty much there to book repair jobs for their external engineers. do the antivirus and msconfig checks which they call a healthcheck and then slot in ram and graphics cards.

i would say unless the staff are paid a day off to train on new technologies everyweek then it is impossible for a retailer to have experts.

their prices are not that bad tescos charge a £69.99 call out charge to setup a pc. so to many one man band shops.. pcworld charge £49.99. also to note others have a £70 for first hour then £35 for every 30 minutes their after.

pcworld just have set charges no matter the time limit, a home healthcheck forinstance. i myself got tescos guys to do one at my house.. with the Antivirus software sifting through my 400gb HD of movies, photos and music took about 3 and a half hours. they informed me that it would cost £59.99 for first hour and then £30 for every half hour after that.. £180. pcworld was a fixed £69,99.

tescos also have a wireless setup including wireless modem for £110. their modem is not the top of the range one but in comparison.

pcworld have a low end wireless modem for £35 and a setup fee for £69.99 which is £104.99