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This week I have some interesting news about a PC shop I recently discovered. It's called Advice™ (076-213-345; moc.liamtoh ta mocdaalat = liame; www.talaadcom.co.th) and they have comprehensive price lists online which is great.

It's in Phuket town and easy to find when driving eastbound on Phangna Rd. (That's the road with the old bus station, X-Net™ PC store, and the place you pay your electric bill.) Pass the Shell Gas station on the near left corner at the end of Phangna Road. Make a left turn. It will be about 100m up on the left hand side, immediately after the Shell Gas station.

What's even better is that they are cheaper than any other shop I've found on Phuket and their selection carries some unusual parts too.

When you look at their accessories and similar small stuff, you will find that it's largely the same what EarthCyber in BigC sells. As a matter of fact many of the items for sale there used to have the Advice sticker on them

The difference is that EarthCyber doubles the price. Literally. See for yourself at Advice™ PC store's website

Here are some interesting pickings from the price lists of Advice™ PC Store.

Advice™ has a lot of new stuff for older generation PCs that are hard or impossible to find. For example, it stocks Socket 462 Motherboards and SD-RAM.

In the range of the latest hardware, you can see that the new H61 Chipset MoBos cost only a fraction more than the old Socket 775 Mobos. Although the CPUs are still about Bt 2300 more expensive than the cheapest Socket 775 E3400 Celeron, you get far superior performance.

As a conclusion one can say that it makes little sense to build a new PC based on anything else except the new SandyBridge generation, including the Socket 1366 Core i7's.

Now, a follow up: a few words about my ongoing warranty saga with Synnex™.

I brought in 2 motherboards on Jan 18th for warranty repair/replacement. After initial denial of warranty, both have been returned to me once in a non-functioning state. I took them, tested them, then brought them back to Synnex immediately and demonstrated to the staff on-site that the returned motherboards actually do not work. Nothing has happened since and it's been over 3 months now.

Synnex™ is a large multinational company so I find it difficult to believe they would provide such appalling service. The next challenge is to find someone at Synnex™ in Bangkok who not only speaks English but actually cares about the customer. I do not expect that to be easy.

As to DCOM™, which has so far turned down any warranty claims by end users, I spoke with the manager and he promised there would be no more customers sent away from their shop on Phangna road.

The problem is that most shops charge a "service fee" for warranty repairs with DCOM™ and there has been no way for the end user to claim warranty for free, as it's supposed to be.

I've been told this is a policy implemented exclusively by DCOM™ in Phuket. Apparently they see dealing with customers as a nuisance.

That's all for this week. Cheers!

- Jack