Sep 5

The search for a laser printer.

Uncategorized asda, comet, laser, PC world, PCworld, printer, stock, woolworths

Today, I was asked to help organise a printer for someone. We headed out to get a cheap, basic laser printer for home use. Sure, no problem. We checked PCworld’s website and spotted a simple Samsung 1640. On visiting the local shop we found “they don’t stock it.” Ok, We’ll look at another, “How about the little Canon there?…” Erm, no, “We’ve only got display stock. Maybe try Comet.” I have to say that the shop looked pretty badly stocked in every department. I overheard a couple of staff chatting to potential customers, and they were general very negative about stock levels. So, Comet. We arrive and find only one brand of laser printer. It’s priced cheap but comes with a very low yeild toner cartridge. “How much is a replacement toner?” I ask, “£55 for a 1500 page cartridge.” WHAT? No bloody way.

What a disappointing day. Stock, just wasn’t and customer service, just didn’t.

After doing the usual shop crawl. I suggested, “Let’s just try Big W” (The Woolworths store) Nothing. Not a PC or anything in sight, except for a Wii. Lot’s of those. One thing that did catch my eye was the barricade over half of the shop and the place looking like a car boot sale.

“How about Asda?” Well, No laser printers and plenty of over-priced Inkjets.

While in Asda, I actually spotted a nice little laptop they’re selling for £249. Windows Vista laptop too. The problem? (there has to be one!) It comes with 512MB of RAM. Excuse me? Does Vista even boot with 512MB of RAM? Ok, I know it does, but seriously, do they expect this machine to be more than a paper-weight with 512MB of RAM? I didn’t really spend time looking over the specifications on the machine after seeing that. The machine looked fine, but Asda, please get some common sense. All you will do, by selling this machine, is piss off your customers who will immediately need to upgrade the RAM. RAM can be bought fairly cheaply, if you know where you are looking, but how many people will know where to look. Maybe PCWorld? Hell no, have you seen their prices and stock levels?