Read bad reviews on reddit :(

[shyless]

I configured my laptop on pc specialist (my dream machine) in affordable price and all, I must say this hard earned money is not something I want to loose, so I decided to do a google bit just before ordering about pc specialist and damn found few posts on reddit that discourage buying from pc specialist. Mostly complaining about how they don't respond to mails when things don't work and wait for warranty period to get over, and later offer repair for price citing warrant period is over. Someone got broken graphics card.

I am personally be worried because I am going to install unix on this machine and so I have to be really sure that my expensive machine hardware works.

Does anyone have experience in following :
1. Bad hardware after ordering
2. Not as promised working after purchased
3. Bad after sale support
4. Installing linux on pc specialist hardware.

Please advise

 

[Stephen M]

I would ignore anything on Reddit. There are complaints, you will find some on these fora but they have all been resolved, the people who have been the most vocal often did not have genuine complaints - one guy accused them of bad wiring that could have killed him and made multiple posts yet when he posted the pictures it was of good wiring that had been properly done and clipped into place. The only thing i can think of is one wire was red so that may have frightened him. There have been other, equals as stupid but just as loud and I would guess these are the ones that posted on Reddit.
I am not saying they get everything right but they do handle problems well, emails answered within 48 hours and usually good on the phone. What many complainers failed to take on board was the problems associated with the new Skylake CPU, not PCS fault but they still got blamed, plus there was a major telephone malfunction which made contact difficult but again not PCS fault.
I have had two laptops from PCS and both have been fine and exactly as i ordered. Both also had no real problems with Linux distros and I have tried quite a few. The only thing, hardly and issue, is that Debian often needs WiFi firmware whereas the other work from the box.

 

[shyless]

I would ignore anything on Reddit. There are complaints, you will find some on these fora but they have all been resolved, the people who have been the most vocal often did not have genuine complaints - one guy accused them of bad wiring that could have killed him and made multiple posts yet when he posted the pictures it was of good wiring that had been properly done and clipped into place. The only thing i can think of is one wire was red so that may have frightened him. There have been other, equals as stupid but just as loud and I would guess these are the ones that posted on Reddit.
I am not saying they get everything right but they do handle problems well, emails answered within 48 hours and usually good on the phone. What many complainers failed to take on board was the problems associated with the new Skylake CPU, not PCS fault but they still got blamed, plus there was a major telephone malfunction which made contact difficult but again not PCS fault.
I have had two laptops from PCS and both have been fine and exactly as i ordered. Both also had no real problems with Linux distros and I have tried quite a few. The only thing, hardly and issue, is that Debian often needs WiFi firmware whereas the other work from the box.

Thanks again Stephen this give me some assurance, but no offences I would like to see some more replies .

 

[Stephen M]

None taken, I would also want to see more in your position. if you have time it is worth looking at some of the complaint threads, some are genuine but the way some people have reacted has been quite awful at times.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I configured my laptop on pc specialist (my dream machine) in affordable price and all, I must say this hard earned money is not something I want to loose, so I decided to do a google bit just before ordering about pc specialist and damn found few posts on reddit that discourage buying from pc specialist. Mostly complaining about how they don't respond to mails when things don't work and wait for warranty period to get over, and later offer repair for price citing warrant period is over. Someone got broken graphics card.

I am personally be worried because I am going to install unix on this machine and so I have to be really sure that my expensive machine hardware works.

Does anyone have experience in following :
1. Bad hardware after ordering
2. Not as promised working after purchased
3. Bad after sale support
4. Installing linux on pc specialist hardware.

Please advise

Ha, ha, I wonder if 2 of those reviews are by people I'm thinking of from my misty recent recollection.

I would wholeheartedly agree with what Stephen M says.

There are always going to be people who don't understand the service they're paying for. These are custom builds, not Dell machines or any other off the shelf.

There are always going to be a small percentage of hardware failures in early builds, unfortunately this happens, but I know that when you deal with PCS respectfully, they'll get it sorted pretty damn quickly. Even if you disrespect them they'll still get it fixed.

Not as promised working after purchase is 9 times out of 10 driver related, either by people installing their own OS and not knowing how to configure it, or by people not updating drivers. They then don't seek help from forums or in fact sometimes even PCS and just assume the PC is garbage.

Bad after sale support, this can sometimes happen, but in the time I've been a PCS customer, it has been a handful, and PCS have owned it and tried their best to resolve to a satisfactory standard.

Installing linux seems to go pretty smoothly on most chassis as I'm sure Stephen M will atest.

Rest assured, as always with any purchase, you do run the risk of unfortunate mishaps, but IF that should occur, PCS will do their very best to sort it out to your satisfaction. We on the forum will do the same, do ask here as well if you have any questions, because we all enjoy helping out fellow customers.

I hope you have a seamless experience as mine was and that you enjoy your purchase.

Edit: PCS have just gone through a difficult period where the new skylake platform had issues on release on Asus boards. This was not PCS's problem, but they worked closely with Asus to resolve it, yet there were still people who blamed PCS for the issue. In this time however, of course there was a backlog of orders as parts were recalled or held back until a resolution was found.

Stocks have been late of the new skylake platforms which PCS notified everyone of on the order pages. I wouldn't let this put you off, they're due in any day.

 

[shyless]

Ha, ha, I wonder if 2 of those reviews are by people I'm thinking of from my misty recent recollection.

I would wholeheartedly agree with what Stephen M says.

There are always going to be people who don't understand the service they're paying for. These are custom builds, not Dell machines or any other off the shelf.

There are always going to be a small percentage of hardware failures in early builds, unfortunately this happens, but I know that when you deal with PCS respectfully, they'll get it sorted pretty damn quickly. Even if you disrespect them they'll still get it fixed.

Not as promised working after purchase is 9 times out of 10 driver related, either by people installing their own OS and not knowing how to configure it, or by people not updating drivers. They then don't seek help from forums or in fact sometimes even PCS and just assume the PC is garbage.

Bad after sale support, this can sometimes happen, but in the time I've been a PCS customer, it has been a handful, and PCS have owned it and tried their best to resolve to a satisfactory standard.

Installing linux seems to go pretty smoothly on most chassis as I'm sure Stephen M will atest.

Rest assured, as always with any purchase, you do run the risk of unfortunate mishaps, but IF that should occur, PCS will do their very best to sort it out to your satisfaction. We on the forum will do the same, do ask here as well if you have any questions, because we all enjoy helping out fellow customers.

I hope you have a seamless experience as mine was and that you enjoy your purchase.

Thanks spyder for replying me. Indeed if this is driver (software issue) I know at times Linux drivers are hard to find and also not stable, I can deal with that, my worry is about posts like broken graphic drivers and such issues. PC specialist is not that cheap as compared to some good names like dell or MSI so I don't want to get in a situation where I saved few hundred euros and bought myself crap.
But good to see lots of positives indeed.

 

[Stephen M]

I expect you already know this site but in case not: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

 

[shyless]

I expect you already know this site but in case not: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Yep I know this one, I installed many flavors of linux so far including Fedora, Centos, ubuntu, debian etc . Thanks.

 

[Stephen M]

Three of my favourites, not really tried Centos. For a couple of friends I have installed Zorin on their old machines, they were happy with XP and did not want to buy a new Windows when XP finished and Zorin is a good OS for migrating Windows users.

 

[shyless]

Three of my favourites, not really tried Centos. For a couple of friends I have installed Zorin on their old machines, they were happy with XP and did not want to buy a new Windows when XP finished and Zorin is a good OS for migrating Windows users.

I have my startup website running on centos and I use it for my development of of heavy IBM stack, so centos is very much stable. on the other hand I found fedora to be buggy and unstable. Ubuntu the best of all and Debian comes third for me after centos . Although I don't like unity UI in Ubuntu and its made so friendly that it reminds me something like professional stuff given for free, cannot relate to this concept really.

 

[LFFPicard]

I have purchased a desktop worth £2500 and two laptops ranging from £500-750 and all have been faultless.
My desktop is 3years old now and the only thing I have had to ring PCS for was my own stupidity as I somehow snapped my hard drive cable while cleaning the machine. Gave the PCS guy a little chuckle on the phone when I finally found half a cable while we were going through stuff on the phone.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

Hello,

I would like to add too that i have two machines now from PCS

The First bought about 3 years ago was a high end gaming laptop (at the time ) im happy to say that it is still running and although i do not use it for gaming anymore it serves all my internet and word processing needs mobile around the house. Only problems i have had were that the GPU burned out in the first year, it was replaced under warranty by PCS and returned to me in about a week without any questions. Only thing it needs now is a new battery but its usually plugged in anyway.

My second machine i went for a desktop best and it works perfect, only issue i have had is with the motherboard and that was because i was messing about with the MOBO bios and basically broke it myself. PCS managed to talk me through a recovery over the phone, they were very friendly and patient and said that if we could not fix it over the phone they would take it back, luckily we managed over the phone.

 

[shyless]

Thanks guys for replies I really appreciate it. Cheers!

 

[shyless]

One update : I have found some deal with SSD for 1TB and I am wondering if I don't configure 2nd Hard disk will there be option for me to fit this new SSD I am planning to buy. This will save some more money for me. Any ideas ?

 

[Stephen M]

You can open up/work on any PCS machine without voiding the warranty, as long as nothing is damaged, so yes fitting your own drive is fine. Some of the laptops will only take one HDD and m.2 drives but the larger ones will take two HDD/SSDs.

 

[shyless]

You can open up/work on any PCS machine without voiding the warranty, as long as nothing is damaged, so yes fitting your own drive is fine. Some of the laptops will only take one HDD and m.2 drives but the larger ones will take two HDD/SSDs.

Thanks Stephen like always, cheers.
Edit : Btw with larger ones you mean Optimus VII as well ?

 

[Stephen M]

The Optimus is a bit tricky, it will take two HDDs but only if you lose the DVD player and replace it with a Hard drive bay. If you configure any of the laptops and click "Proceed" the pop up will tell you if anything will not work.

 

[shyless]

The Optimus is a bit tricky, it will take two HDDs but only if you lose the DVD player and replace it with a Hard drive bay. If you configure any of the laptops and click "Proceed" the pop up will tell you if anything will not work.

Ok I thought that too, but may be I can order some cheaper HDD as 2nd harddrive and then replace it with this new SSD. And what other "larger" models you were talking about?

 

[Stephen M]

My mistake, thought there were more than there are. It seems to be only the defiance and Octane now, I actually thought the Optimus was OK for two until I checked.

 

[SpyderTracks]

My mistake, thought there were more than there are. It seems to be only the defiance and Octane now, I actually thought the Optimus was OK for two until I checked.

Usually the 17" versions have an extra 2.5" bay, but best check on the particular model.