6 pack ABS in 2 weeks!
Sep 20 '01
The Bottom Line Great deal for the educated consumer.
The sad fact is that computers are getting more complicated and less user friendly. Because the software is more complicated and buggy, the peripherals more numerous, having problems seems almost par for the course.
The novice, buying a new computer, is in for a rough ride. The best thing they can do is to try to educate themselves by researching the purchase. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a test drive in the PC purchase world. Usually you have to buy it to try it out, and may be subject to fees/charges for returning it.
In the press, buying a PC seems focussed on the CPU. I don't know if it's really that important, but Athlons are a lot cheaper. Nonetheless, I was attracted by the Athlon's performance vs. the Pentium 4 and the problems with RDRAM.
Support always seemed to be so important to me. I admit, I was brainwashed. Since all I've ever experienced was Dell support, I figured that the other companies must be really horrible. After numerous bad experiences with Dell's "award winning customer support," I decided to go elsewhere.
For example, my brother has experienced problems with his new 1.8 mhz P4 Dell, with numerous blue screens (likely a driver/dell issue) and horrendous customer support.
Dell has also decided not to honor his rebate. He has already spent about 4 hours on the phone trying to get it back. I think Dell does this intentionally since the time involved to "fight back" is usually worth more than the rebate. Award winning customer service? Not worth it. Dell seems only interested in corporate customers. All those ads on TV are perplexing. Do they really want home customers?
PC World recommends both Dell and Micron as having the best support. Micron earlier this summer was going through some tough times, which I can only assume has gotten worse. Still Micron's reputation was "the computer geek's computer." Whereas Dell was known as the business PC.
I spent about 2-3 weeks looking at the Micron site, looking at all the specs, trying to figure out what I wanted. After deciding on a Athlon 1400, I configured a bare bones hotrod for about 1400 bucks. I then called to inquire about support and shipping. That's when I was unpleasantly surprised with the sales tax. Dell and Micron charge sales tax because of the on site support. Plus their shipping rates were high, about 100+ bucks, with no monitor. Shipping and tax made the entire cost $1600 delivered.
Micron was unwilling to budge on their price so I begrudgingly began to look elsewhere. Again PC World's PC ratings directed me. I took a look towards ABS.
ABS's website almost scared me away. Compared to the big/bigger companies, it was no where as slick. I poked around a bit and configured a better computer than the Micron one I had configured and it was much cheaper. The price was $1184 delivered.
I started spending more time on the site, researching the components a bit more. One of the reasons it was cheaper was because there was no tax, because there is no on site service. I don't need on site service. In a few days, I'd decided to buy the ABS. I configured an ABS Performance 2 with the following:
1.4 mhz Athlon
AD11 FIC motherboard
Leadtek GeForce2 MX (multi monitor support)
Western Digital 60 GB Hard Drive
Pioneer DVD-Rom
A-Open CD-R/RW
256 MB DDR Ram
SoundBlaster Live audio card
56k Modem
10/100 NIC
Microsoft internet keyboard and Intellimouse Explorer mouse
I'll admit, after making the purchase on the phone and hanging up, I thought to myself "Did I just make a mistake?"
In about 2 weeks the computer arrived, neatly packed. I pulled it out, set it up and it was immediately obvious they had bench tested it. I was prompted to reinstall the software and haven't had any problems since.
The PC came with a binder which is a nice way to keep everything together, but not really a big deal. The PC itself was very well put together. All the wires were tied into neat bundles. All the drivers were installed correctly and working. And there was no extraneous software installed, such as AOL, or other bloatware hogging up my hard drive and compromising my registry after I uninstall it all.
The only interaction I had with customer service was through email. I wrote requesting the specs on the ram I had. In 2 days I received a response with the answer.
I whole heartedly recommend ABS to any consumer. Although I have not had a problem to test the customer support waters, (I think that's a good thing) I feel confident from the interaction I had regarding the ram inquiry and the quality of the installation that they are interested in keeping their customers.
The bottom line is that the user needs to educate themselves. The days of the trouble free operating system are long gone.
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Epinions.com ID:
madlee
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Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 13 members
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