Computer

[harald finehair]

Ive seen a make of computer which is made in Thailand called  ...ATEC...., it look's to have good spec's and price range. does any one have experience or comments about this brand.....?

[Guest IT Manager]

there have been some good constructions from ATEC. They fall down badly on support, as most of it is done by children from Tech High Schools on work experience. My view...don't touch them.

Spec your own, take the spec to a good shop and ask them to buiild to your spec. If fall else fails, contact me by PM and I will spec for you.

[kwiz117]

IT is correct. Always get a Good Spec with Good Brand Names and tell them to Assemble.

Then the Main Ditributors of those Brand Names will support you for Warranty Claims even if the shop you buy run out from the business. [This can happen]

:cool:

[Guest IT Manager]

IT is correct. Always get a Good Spec with Good Brand Names and tell them to Assemble.

Kwiz you make a good point that I keep forgetting. Some of the brand macchines are quite good, or were. Compaq for example are beginning to leave something to be desired as they strive to compete on price with the clones.

At the end of the day, the problem for many non-it inclined computer users, is that they get annoyed when things aren't always just so, and as anyone who uses windows will tell you, every machine is different.

When I say spec, I actually don't mean go out to Compaq and say build this for me, I mean go to a PC shop and say build me a machine with these parts.

eg., don't build on an Intel Mainboard in Thailand, they are rubbish, or many of them are (IMHO), use Asus or Asustek as the core.

Tell them you want a 350 watt power supply,

TNT Riva Geforce VGA Card, (64 Mb)

External modem,

On-board sound is fine,

Separate LAN card, (get one even if you aren't using a LAN, initially. Makes life simple for IT people to pop in and assist).

Kingston DDR 512 RAM chip matching the bus speed of the main board,

Maxtor/Quantum Hard Drive (not Seagate, the extra 1000 baht is worth the expense),

Good fans on the body (I use 3 generally),

Front mounted sound and USB connections (front of the PC I mean).

Generic Floppy

CD Burner from day one, don't get it as an afterthought. I recommend using a generic cdrom and a burner.

Attach the CD's to IDE 1, and the Hard Disk/s to IDE 0.

Logitech Keyboards are very good, and they have wireless available for an extra thousand baht.

Logitech Optical Mouse (not a ball) is also a plus and the extra 300 baht will be well repaid with a long life.

Decent speakers so if you decide you need them later you have them.

[taxexile]

######,it sounds as if you know your stuff,and if i could pick your brains for a second i would be grateful.

what would your recommendation be for a windows based laptop,used mainly plugged in to the mains supply,i.e. battery life not important,but hard wearing enough to be moved around a lot.apart from simple word processing and internet use,it would be mainly used for photography storage and editing and a music and dvd player.

thanks

taxexile.

[Guest IT Manager]

Hi Tax

The new Compaq range are quite good. There is a range of badged machines ex Taiwan under Liberta name. These are made by a small company in the south of Taiwan, but I forget their name. Reasonable but either no battery or crap battery.

These are available in a lot of places like Big C, and pricewise competitive with Compaq Presario 25xx range. 39-69K per machine. Some of the new ones have wireless access built in which is smooth.

Talk to the chaps in Panshit Plaza. Also Lifebook from another big name company is quite good in the sub miniature range. At the end of the day the battery savings are made up for by the service value in LOS. He** even Chiang Mai has a Compaq Service Centre.

If you are in the city, Panshit Plaza has about 8 dealers, and CM has several as well. If you are in CM, which I think you aren't, see Media Magic in Chiangmai Land.

Hope this is of assistance.

######

[harald finehair]

###### many thanks for the spec info, as i am a total newbie to the wonderful world of computers  the thing i was planning to do , was go to my nearest IT .mall ( Chonburi ) and get a ready made branded machine to start with.( it was going to be an ATEC machine ,but not now )  The  other one that seem's to have a decent spec ( what do I know !!) is made by a company called ..ACER , the spec is ...

Intel P4 2.80 Ghz processor ( or Celeron 2.6Ghz )

256 MB DDR-RAM ( free up grade from 128 MB )

40GB HDD

1.44 MB FDD

CD-RW / DVD  48x( combo drive )

56k itu V90.fax / modem ( internal )

Gforce4 MX440-8x graphics card ( AGP8x) 64MB

LAN 10/100 Mbps ( built in ) & 4 USB ports

3D sound built in ( sound blaster compatibility )

A301T speakers with sub woofer

17 inch Flat monitor ( ACER )

UDB multimeader keyboard & scrolling mouse

Microsoft Windows XP home

Norton Anti Virus CD

Hp S200SPX printer

the cost is around 29,000 Bt + VAT

As a computer newbie ( with no computer minded friends ) finding some where to make up a computer from scratch seem's a bit daunting  and when the shop's made up the perfect machine ,with a good spec, how would i know that in fact the machine does have the spec i requested ...? and not a lower spec .

could you comment on the above ACER  machine,  Many Thanks ...

[kwiz117]

IT is correct. Always get a Good Spec with Good Brand Names and tell them to Assemble.

Kwiz you make a good point that I keep forgetting. Some of the brand macchines are quite good, or were. Compaq for example are beginning to leave something to be desired as they strive to compete on price with the clones.

IT, sorry. what I meant by Spec with Branded parts is not to go to a Branded PC shop like Compaq.

I was thinking in the line you have described. Brands like Segate, maxtor, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Geforce etc..

Your advices above are the best.  

To Others,

I also saw in some places they sell some unbranded Notebooks from Taiwan. It is bit risky to go for an Unbranded

Notebook. Many Compatibility issues with PCIMA cards etc. The prices of those Notebooks are lower than the Branded once that IT has described above.

[taxexile]

thanks, ######

my old w98 machine is up for imminent replacement, and i will look at your recommendations, yours is the third recommendation that i have heard for compaq.

[Guest IT Manager]

Tax one of the biggest issues with high speed processor = high temp processor, is service. Compaq have shops all over adn have service centres in all major regional hubs, even in Pitsanulok for goodness sake.

Notebooks essentially have no heat dispersal zone so they do have problems. The reason I suggest Compaq, as opposed to say Dell, which I use (I fix it myself), is service.

The three L's of real estate reflect the 3 S's of Notebook ownership viz; service, service, service.

BTW to all of you, thank you for your compliments. They make life a little more fun.

[Mackerel]

Reasonable but either no battery or crap battery

As the user of one of Liberta's laptops, ###### is spot on with that comment. Any idea where I can get a decent replacement battery?

Questions, questions, questions....

[Guest IT Manager]

256 MB DDR-RAM ( free up grade from 128 MB )

40GB HDD

1.44 MB FDD

CD-RW / DVD  48x( combo drive )

56k itu V90.fax / modem ( internal )

Gforce4 MX440-8x graphics card ( AGP8x) 64MB

LAN 10/100 Mbps ( built in ) & 4 USB ports

3D sound built in ( sound blaster compatibility )

The spec doesn't make mention of mainboard. at 29,000 Bt it's likely to be ECS, which you would regret. They are fine until something gets hot. Then are out of control.

I suspect the LAN card is onboard as well, which is why they can throw in a 3,000 baht printer for free.

Specify Kingston RAM, MAXTOR Drive, (not Seagate which is the quote I will bet), and separate lan card. They are only about 400 baht now. CDR/W DVD combo is sweet. Good graphics card, (make sure that one has it's own fan.

The machine I spec'ed should come in at around 33-34,000 baht, maybe a bit over. The extra few dollars will be worthwhile in the long run.

Also my suggestion for external modem was based on line quality in LOS. It sucks. US-Robotics 3 Com have a very good one for about 1800 baht (serial port) or a D-Link USB modem is also quite good. The US-Robotics is good if you use Loxinfo becasue most if not all their modems are US-Robotics, which should give better performance, certainly better than an internal, if you happen to be in a building with crappy lines.

Good luck

######

[Chiangmai]

for destop  PCs it's Ok to order all the branded components  because any  shop wil be able to replace the part (and support the installation with adequate updated driver)

For Notebook, it is opposite - no upgrade -

look for the best international brand name (HP-Compaq,  Sony, Fujitsu .... )  and buy the best configuration with a maximum of RAM  memory so that you will be able to use this machine for 3 to 4 years (dont expect more than that -  remember the top of the top of notebook 3 years ago - a HP omnibook 6000  Pentium4 600GHz 128Mo RAM 10Go HD  no CDRW !! company discount price equivalent to 3500 US$  !!)

1st) - ask yourself if you really need a laptop  intead of a destop  

2°)

The most important - look carefully  for the garantee -

normally  try to find 3 years full garantee - if necessary international guarantee -  (but unfortunately  only one year for battery for most of the well known brands

My own experience - i bought (as ###### of a big worldwide  company)  an HP omnibook 6000  3 years ago (very expensive - but with 3  years full international garantee)

I have already replaced -the hard disk twice (after 6 months and  just recently  after 2 and half years ) with no cost  

but I had to replace the battery last year (garantee already expired)  for a cost of 10 000 baths (original spare part from HP ! )

good luck

[Guest IT Manager]

Chiang Mai good point I hadn't even put the warranty issue in there.

Most brand name companies as listed by Chiangmai, run either 1 year or 3 year warranty. Those that run one, usually have an option to buy a 3 year warranty plan. It is in your best interest to buy one, but, here you can play footsies with the dealer. Compaq 3 year warranty (Carepaq), seels rertaila at whatever the dealer can get. The dealer buys at around 2,500 baht. I have seen them sell for 6,500. Ask for a discount on the machine, and the carepaq. There is no profit to a dealer in selling a laptop. About 2,500 baht in my experience.

The profit, like McDonalds, is in the Fries. The fries are the add-ons like carepaq. Buy the fries, but negotiate the price.

Keep the purchase documents safe, and as soon as you get your machinme on internet, go to the company website (true of Dell and Compaq, not sure about the others but would think so), and register yourself as the buyer and owner. Get a customer ID and keep it with the rest of the documents freom the sale. The warranty can be checked anywhere in the world on the Internet.

If/when you sell it, give the new owner the details, and suggest they register themselves as the new owner. I needed some drivers for my Dell recently for a new part I added. I typed in the machine Serial Number and they asked if I wanted to change my address, contact details etc. Very, very cool.

Laptops have their purposes, as I know from long experience, but like Chiangmai says, they can be a pain in the butt. Get a name brand, be careful with it, register the ownership of it, and enjoy, but at the end of 3 years, please don't ask me if it can be upgraded. Give it to your kids. If you can do without a laptop, do so in my opinion. If you need one, buy well. You won't regret the extra couple of hundred dollars.

Remember also I was saying in another thread about a lan card on a desktop. When you have a laptop as well it means back-ups are simple, you can use both machines on internet at once, so your kids/wife/mother-in-law can "play" internet, while you do the important stuff on http://forum.thaivisa.com/cgi-bin....;t=3045

The above is an attempt at humour. Sorry George.