Has anyone ever bought anything from these two companies? Currently pricing up a laptop.

Yeah, bought my top end of the range pc (4 years ago) from PCSpecialist.

I actually made a vendor thread for it on the pcpro forum. Not sure if it's still there though?

...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/forum/viewtopic. ... e87f2757b1

Lol! It's the first thread in the vendors forum!

I had really good service from the and the price was good too.

Other than purchasing, have you had to deal with them in any way?

I'm toying with the idea of going with one of these guys over Dell/Alienware because of price, but the advantage the former have is there's next-day onsite warranty.

I had a few calls to them after the purchase but before the delivery and they sorted it all with no problems.

I've never had any problems with the hardware so never had any reason to call them.

It's still running perfectly now with ubuntu.

I've bought 2 desktops and 1 laptop from PCSpecialist. On one of the desktops, one of the disks failed (within 30 days) and they sent a replacement and an pre-paid padded envelope for the old one (after checking that I was comfortable swapping the disk myself rather than sending it back) with no quibbles. Other than that, I've had no issues with any of the machines.

HTH

I've heard of PCSpecialist doing the swap thing.

Read some negative user reviews about Kobalt. Will need to look into PCSpecialist since most problems seem to be in delay receiving orders/communications.

So instead of being sensible, trying out 15 and 17" laptops and look at glossy/matte screens, I made an impulse buy. Actually, I tried at lunch time but the computer wouldn't let me. So I just bought it now.

Vortex II: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£89)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2720QM (2.20GHz) 6MB Cache
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
2.0GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M - DirectX® 11
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£89)
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (3,800 mAh)
1 x UK Power Lead & 220W AC Adaptor
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)

£1,916.58

That's a very powerful laptop. I imagine you won't be carrying it around on the train very often.

My worry with buying a desktop replacement is that the fans only last about 2 years if you use it a lot, and whatever goes wrong it's always a nightmare to fix. I can't see you needing to upgrade it for about 8 years though, so if it doesn't die before then I guess it's not so expensive.

Well my Acer laptop was midrange, played GTA Vice City and San Andreas, and Morrowind really well. Struggled a little with NFS: Most Wanted. Would render intensive 3ds max scenes if left for a few hours. Has taken its fair share of knocks and bumps yet has managed to last 7 years before it succumbed to water. The fans on that were working overtime for maybe a third of its lifespan in total.

I expect this laptop to last just as long, with some decent TLC.

I went for the three year warranty. TBH having ripped apart my current laptop and successfully reassembled it, I'm much more confident in having a go at fixing it should it go wrong outside the warranty period.