Good Place To Buy A Cheap Laptop/netbook In Phuket?

[modafinil]

One of my Thai friends wants to buy a small, cheap netbook for using to "play on the internet".

Her budget is no more than 10,000 Baht. Something like an Acer Aspire One would be ideal.

Can anybody recommend a shop in Phuket that can sell her what she wants and has it in stock? She was looking at one in Banana IT Kamala but they've sold out now.

I've had success with InvadeIT before (online mail order), but my friend really needs to be able to visit the shop in the event of a hardware problem.

Thanks.

[LivinginKata]

I've seen the Acer Aspire one at a couple of shops in BigC basement about 9,000 baht.

[Guest]

I would skip BananaIT if possible.

JIB is good one. http://www.jib.co.th/ Closest to Kamala might be at Tesco Lotus @Thalang.

[hkt83100]

I would skip BananaIT if possible.

I strongly support this one. They seem to know more about the first part of their name than about the second part. Edited December 14, 2012 by hkt83100

[Guest]

I have said this before - Thailand is not a easy place for engineer mind.

First I thought good about BananaIT. The shops are pretty well organised, all items have visible prices etc.. but the personnel in general do not really know anything about the products. Even if the 'store guru' comes in to the picture. He knows a bit more, but no details which would be essential for a person who do not wish to buy 'red laptop'.

Good shop is where the personnel will ask you what you are going to do with the product. They will ask your budget as well among other questions. After this they can give their recommendations which might be good for you (or for your friend in this case).

[Gregory Morozov]

If they buy Acer they can go directly to the Acer service center in town if they have a problem...

[Guest]

If they buy Acer they can go directly to the Acer service center in town if they have a problem...

Lenovo also have service centers. One for ideapads and another for thinkpads. I had experience with the latter and I was not impressed. They kept my pretty new thinkpad edge for more than a week just to tell me (when I visited the store as I did not hear anything from them), that the poor quality of the product is not part of the warranty.

Now I have i5 core thinkpad edge as home server. That was the last of the thinkpads I'm likely to buy. I never used anything else before.

[Traxster]

No 1 golden rule........

If you buy cheap

you get cheap.....

[fiddlehead]

Yeah, I bought 2 cheap laptops in the past few years.

One, the keyboard is messed up with 3 keys not working (after a little over a year)

The other one, the screen died after about one and a half years.

My old laptop was a thousand dollar Toshiba and it lasted 6 years.

But, I understand that Thai people, on their wages, cannot afford the better quality ones.

Good luck, tell them to do their best to take care of it. No food, no touching the screen, keep it away from moisture, etc.

Perhaps they'll do better than I did.

[stevenl]

I would skip BananaIT if possible.

I strongly support this one. They seem to know more about the first part of their name than about the second part.

Banana IT in Chalong has the usual useless staff, but also 2 good guys that can also set up a computer for you. So I like Banana IT in Chalong.

[smolny1]

I got Acer Aspire a little more then one year now, it is not perfect but still working, some problems with display when battery very low, but for this price I have to say I am pretty happy with it.

[LivinginKata]

I got Acer Aspire a little more then one year now, it is not perfect but still working, some problems with display when battery very low, but for this price I have to say I am pretty happy with it.

Had my Acer Apire One for over 2 years now. Very happy with it. Only problem was that I damaged the screen, expected a big bill, but Acer service looked at my receipt and as under one year old then I just filled in an insurance claim and they repaired for free. All Acer products have a one year insurance plan included in purchase price.

[modafinil]

I'm not too worried about the Acer Aspire being low cost - it's very small compared to a traditional laptop, and doesn't have the same features (big screen, dvd drive, powerful CPU etc). She wants something cheap that she can carry around, that's what netbooks are for.

It doesn't really matter if the staff at the shop are technically minded or not, so long as she can take a broken laptop to them and ask them to return it to the manufacturer (in the event of a hardware failure). Being able to see it out of the box before purchase would also be good.

Also considering recommending an Asus Eee PC netbook, as it's supposed to have very good battery life, and it's even smaller than the Aspire One.