Fishy computer store?

Nylonathetep

My computer died last week and I went to a pretty decent size store to purchase a new computer. The guy that works there put together a system and said it'll be ready Thursday. I went there Thursday after work and he said it won't be available till Saturday afternoon. I went again today and asked another guy that was there. He said it will be ready tonight, and they are running memory test on it.

I might not be the most tech savy guy, but does a newly assembly computer actually requires running any test at all? All it requires is that you put the hardware together, set the bios, install an OS and that should be good to go. Is the sales people there feeding me BS? and what's really happening behind the scene, should I be worried if I'm getting a crappy product or getting ripped off by having parts swapped for cheaper parts?

L Ron Howard

The local stores by me will run standard tests, like on the memory and mobo and the like, when they assemble computers. So I'd say that it's not BS, and they're just doing what they would routinely do and make sure that all your HDDs and RAM operate correctly.

Esh

Nylonathetep wrote:

My computer died last week and I went to a pretty decent size store to purchase a new computer. The guy that works there put together a system and said it'll be ready Thursday. I went there Thursday after work and he said it won't be available till Saturday afternoon. I went again today and asked another guy that was there. He said it will be ready tonight, and they are running memory test on it.

I might not be the most tech savy guy, but does a newly assembly computer actually requires running any test at all? All it requires is that you put the hardware together, set the bios, install an OS and that should be good to go. Is the sales people there feeding me BS? and what's really happening behind the scene, should I be worried if I'm getting a crappy product or getting ripped off by having parts swapped for cheaper parts?

Yep, it's par for course. They're going to check it out thoroughly to reduce the chances of something going wrong and you having to return it.

BlindZenDriver

I totally agree with the others. In fact I'll go so far as to say it sounds like you found a good shop.

Being certain that a computer runs smoothly takes more than seeing it count the memory and boot. If there is a problem it may not be there until the thing is hot and with memory then computers have much more than is used by just the OS. You could have faulty memory and not know it for a while only it may some day turn out any file you save gets corrupted - memory testing takes a good while and it's time well spend.

Enjoy the new computer and if you have not tossed the old one consider if it can be fixed (it's always good to have an extra or maybe you can sell it).

Deusfaux

their customer service is really lacking though if they are telling you to return to the store at specific times only to provide you with another later time/date.

then again, why are you going there in person and not just phoning?

Mai-Kero

At the Geek Squad precinct I work at, when we get the rare build-a-computer order, I always run a full battery of memory tests and the like. It takes maybe four to six hours to run the full hardware test we use, I believe. Totes worth it like everyone else said in case a part is bad out of the box. Keep in mind their techs probably can't work on the thing non-stop, they likely have quite a few computers back there. As far as the length of time, they could also be waiting for a component to come in. The bad time estimates are just that - bad time estimates. It's one of the things I unfortunately have to get on my people all the time about. No one wants to disappoint someone with a super-long time quote, so people underestimate. The right way to do it is to quote the longest time possible and then call and surprise the person early. Under-promise, over-deliver. Few people in retail seem to grasp the concept, however. I wouldn't be super upset at the place though. You'll probably get a rather decent quality computer. For every small-time computer retailer that steals your RAM during a repair, there are ten that do good work.

JebusUD

memtest is pretty standard.

MichaelLC

Mai-Kero wrote:

The right way to do it is to quote the longest time possible and then call and surprise the person early. Under-promise, over-deliver.

Ah yes, Scotty Time.

Shop seems OK, maybe just disorganized. You'll certainly want to check the components, but should be fine.

Nylonathetep

I got my computer. Yah I finally got the common sense to call first even though it took like 30 minutes before someone picked up.

Maybe it's because my computer hasn't been updated for so long, I'm pretty impressed with my new computer. My old Asus P5 Duel Quad would just slows to a crawl when I tried to run more then one program, but I was updating drivers, installing multiple games and patching games, and no matter how hard I've tried the system hasn't even slowed down one bit. So I was pretty satisfied with the over all experience.

I still hate Windows 7 thou, It's like Windows for dummies because they just give you general info when you go into the menu and you really need to dig in hard to find more specified information that you need. i.e: I'm not connecting to my wireless network and took me minutes to find the option to change the encryption and put in my WEP password. Same with other setting such as Power management...

Please lock this thread now and thanks everyone for their input

Essee

@Nylonathetep:
Forgive me if I'm wrong and there are other things you're having issues with on Windows 7, but... Are you talking about the Control Panel's Category View? Because to make it like the older Control Panel style, you just have to click on "View by" in the upper-right and select Large/small icons. I hate Category View as well, but otherwise I've actually found it easier to find junk in Win7 than any other version of Windows. Again, I don't know, maybe that's just me, but nothing seems dumbed-down, just easier to navigate.

Whether or not that helps, glad your machine seems to be running smoothly now that you've got it!