Shopping spree - Tradespotting

The annual spending spree is now a well-established tradition at PCW. Every year, five of us get a wad of money in our mitts, not to run off to South America with, but for buying a PC, printer and business software.

In years gone by we have bought systems with #1,500 or even #2,000. This year we decided to see if we could tighten our belts and cut it down to just #1,000 (ex VAT) for a full system. What we choose to buy always generates a good deal of argument, with each of us swearing blue blind we have got the best value for money. This year was no different. But not all of us chose the traditional route and bought a pre-built PC.

Adele Dyer opted for a custom system from components bought from six different suppliers, while Gordon Laing abandoned the idea of a PC and decided on a portable and wireless approach. Adam Evans and Nik Rawlinson bought direct, one from the internet and one from the ads in the magazine, and we released Paul Trueman into the community to buy retail.

BUILD YOUR OWN: Adele Dyer

I had never seen myself as a DIYer: no traipsing round B&Q picking out timber for me. But after writing about the early days of home-brew computing for PCW's 20th anniversary issue (May 98), the call of the screwdriver finally got to me and this year I opted to build my own PC.

Buying all the bits and pieces

As I was building from scratch I had to buy everything, from the case right down to the keyboard and mouse. This means you end up buying all kinds of bits and pieces you normally take for granted, like a floppy drive. These are cheap, but they do push the overall price up. Even if you are rebuilding an existing machine, the chances are you will need a new motherboard and processor.

I decided to take the more expensive but future-proofed route of a PII processor and BX motherboard, avoiding Socket 7. Looking at the adverts in the magazine I was really tempted to go the whole hog and opt for a Micronics board and a PII300, but when everything was totted up, I didn't have enough money. So instead I opted for a PII 233 from Dabs Direct and a Chaintech motherboard, supplied by Choice Systems.

The BX chipset gives me a little built-in future proofing, as it supports a processor running at up to 450MHz. The 100MHz system bus on the BX board will only work with processors running at over 350MHz, and will clock down to 66MHz with my PII 233; but if I upgrade the processor at a later date, I will not have to replace the board too. Remember that if you are going to buy an ATX motherboard, you will also need to get hold of an ATX case, as otherwise your ports will all be in the wrong place.

If, like me, you go for a Slot 1 processor rather than a Socket 7 chip, you will likely need new RAM as well, probably swapping to DIMMs from SIMMs. RAM is cheap at the moment, with DIMMs costing around #1 per megabyte.

If you want to use your older SIMMs with new DIMMs, ensure they use the same voltage and run at the same speed, or the faster RAM will clock itself down to the speed of the slower RAM. I went for SDRAM DIMMs, although on the tight budget I was working to, I could only afford one 32Mb module.

But as RAM is easy to slot in, upgrading won't be a problem.

Graphic detail

PCI and AGP graphics cards are the same price for what is essentially the same card, so not surprisingly I went for an AGP card which will give me much faster performance. I picked out an ATi Xpert@Work - one of the best cards around. Most direct vendors sell both OEM and full high-street retail cards. These cards are the same, the differences being in the warranty and the software. ATi gives a five-year warranty on the retail version and only three years on the OEM.

The software bundle, including games, varies depending on where you buy the card, which explains the differences in price you find.

I bought mine from Dabs Direct and paid just #69 (ex VAT), minus any games.

When it comes to some other components, budget really comes into play again. For #99 from Tech Direct I got a 4.3Gb Quantum Fireball, which should provide enough space for the near future. The ATX-format case and power supply came from Dabs Direct again for just #51, although if you go for a non-ATX board you can get a cheaper deal.

The keyboard, mouse, CD-ROM drive and floppy drive all came from Watford Electronics, as well as the software bundle, Home Essentials. I chose the cheapest on each, but if I could stretch the budget a little I would have chosen a Microsoft Natural keyboard. Novatech had the best deal on my chosen printer, the excellent but low-cost Epson Stylus 400, and on the monitor, a 15in Microscan 4P from ADI.

Shock to the system The largest expense is the operating system. It comes as a shock to realise that a full version of Windows 95 will set you back a staggering #105, and that Technomatic was the only vendor that seemed to carry it. Nor can you transfer a copy of Windows without breaking the licensing agreement, so if you are building a new machine, the full version is the only legal option.

All I had to do then was put all the components together and I'd have the perfect PC. Well, almost. I could have done with a larger monitor, more RAM, a faster processor and a better keyboard. I also had to do without a modem, a sound card and a speaker. But once you have built your PC, delving into it again to add parts will seem remarkably easy.

CONTACTS:

Choice Systems 0181 993 9003; Dabs Direct 0800 558866 www.dabs.com; Novatech 0800 072 7771 www.novatech.co.uk; Tech Direct 0181 286 2222 www.techndirect.co.uk; Technomatic 0800 338000 www.technomatic.co.uk; Watford Electronics 01582 745555 www.watford.co.uk

INTERNET: Adam Evans

As I look around the bustling PCW office, it occurs to me that there must be an easier way to buy a PC. The other four participants in the challenge are either running around sweaty shops, making endless complicated phone calls, racking their brains over a "novel portable infra-red fun solution", or buried in the labs exploring the mysteries of BIOS configurations.

There has to be a way to check out the best deals without all those little stresses and strains ... and it's staring me right in the face: the internet.

To save time, I limited myself to a dozen or so companies which I knew from experience could build me a PC that I would probably be happy with.

Shop till you drop

The first site I went to was Dell , long heralded (by itself) as the cutting edge of online PC buying. And to be fair, the figures are very impressive: globally it is doing four million dollars of business on the internet every day, and aims to be doing 50 percent of all its business on the internet by the year 2000. The Online Store gives you basic systems which you can configure to your liking. The price updates as you go along, so you can keep track easily. The use of baseline systems was handy as a starting point but I was frustrated by the lack of options for configuring the system; for instance, I had to go to another screen to choose another processor.

The other major direct PC company based in Ireland is, of course, Gateway . Its site had many of the same features as the Dell, including online ordering and a price that updates automatically depending on the configuration you choose (though I could only see the top half of the characters on my browser). There were more options on this site, but it too suffered from too many restrictions, as I wanted to play around with all the bits and pieces to see what I could get.

Next, I took a look at some other multi-national companies: IBM , Compaq and HP . They all had a decent amount of information on their product ranges, but it was a little tricky to find the PC sections on the IBM and HP sites. None of these companies allow you to set your own specification, so there is no need for an online configurer. Out of the three, only IBM actually shows prices on its web site. Very disappointing.

Buying British

Finally, I cast my beady eye over a random selection of homegrown British companies, all established names with good reputations. Armari had lots of technical information and impressed me with its custom configurer which let me specify absolutely everything, although the individual parts did not have prices. Carrera's site was clear and easy to navigate, but there was no configurer and I couldn't find enough information on parts for my liking.

The Dan Technology pages used a similar method to the Dell and Gateway sites, with baseline systems that I could change to a certain degree. Elonex's configurer was nearly as good as Armari and Dell's. The Panrix site was confusing at first: you have to click on "Sales" to find the PCs. It may be "Sales" to Panrix but it's "Buy a computer" to us punters. It had lots of information about various systems but no custom configurer.

Viglen's site also lacked a "build your own" page, and although there was plenty of information about various systems, it was not presented all that well: disappointing for the largest British PC company. On the plus side, the wealth of technical and support information was impressive.

Sites, sources and specifications

Overall, the sites I visited were good sources of information for making a buying decision, but not one had everything I was hoping for in terms of customising, pricing, specifications and clarity of design. Only some went into the kind of detail on specifications of peripherals that some people require, but this is not as big an issue as it was two or three years ago.

I found that the online configurers were the most useful tools, given that I had a strictly defined budget, but the best examples of these, Armari and Dell, did not have systems in my price bracket. Using the internet as my sole source of information (but using the telephone to order) I finally went for a Viglen Contender 2 PC with 233 PII processor, 32Mb RAM and 3.5Gb hard disk, for a bargain #859. I added on #71 to upgrade to full multimedia with 32X CD-ROM drive and sound card. It comes with Microsoft Works and the one drawback is the 14in monitor which, if I had the cash, would be the first thing I would upgrade. All I needed then was a printer. A quick jog over to the Dabs Direct site got me a Hewlett-Packard 400L colour inkjet for #66. I managed to get it sorted without removing myself from my comfortable chair, and the lot comes in at #996 ex VAT.

SHOPPING LIST

PC Price #1,092.75 (#930 ex VAT)

Contact Viglen 0181 758 7070 www.viglen.co.uk

Printer Price #77.55 (#66 ex VAT)

Contact Dabs Direct 0800 558866 www.dabs.co.uk

MOBILE: Gordon Laing

Here's an experiment you may want to try at home: take one technical writer and a handheld PDA. Leave together in a room for a while, and hey presto! As long as you've chosen the right model, you've got yourself an evangelist.

I've seen it happen countless times. I'll be at a press conference reaching for my pen and paper when everyone else is tapping at PalmPilots and opening Psions, and looking over at yours truly with a mix of incredulity and disgust. I thought I'd better see what all the fuss was about, and opted to try the Psion 5.

I knew I'd get into it, but had no idea to what extent I'd be impressed.

One weekend I had to quickly bang out a few notes, and instead of waiting for my PC to start up I flipped open the Psion, tapped away, and flipped it shut again - absolutely no fuss. The only downside is the 5's screen, which can be a bit tricky in low light. On the other hand, under bright outdoor conditions it excels where a backlit TFT would struggle. After sitting for a while in a sunny park I had the best part of 1,000 words written. At that moment, I realised I was hooked.

Red or dead

So the Laing shopping list starts with an 8Mb Psion Series 5, which comes with the required office applications. The new PsiWin 2.1 connectivity software even converts Office 97 documents. I use Office 95 on my PC and even that can't open Office 97 documents; I suppose there's that Word filter on the web, but still no hope of opening Excel 97 files. Psion's serial cable happily chatted with my PC, but when I saw that bit of dark red plastic on the back, I knew there was an even better way.

Yep, you've guessed it: infra-red. Surely the most under-used but possibly the most useful of all IT connectivity interfaces was begging to be employed.

I decided to see if I could go completely mobile and wireless. The Shopping Spree spec demanded I get a printer, so I began the long search for an infra-red model.

Plea from the heart

What a nightmare. Can I just ask right now that all printer manufacturers get off their bottoms and start fitting infra-red as standard on all their models. It'll cost them pennies, save me tearing what little hair I have left out, and attract countless purchases from all those notebook and PDA owners who are wondering what they can point their infra-red ports at. Hewlett-Packard started doing this with its LaserJet 5 range, but seems to have abandoned the idea of fitting infra-red as standard.

HP does however do a widget that sticks into the parallel port of its portable DeskJet 340 printer, so that will have to do. The Psion already includes a driver, so you can point and print to your heart's content.

The combination is known as the DeskJet 340CBI and I bought one from Technomatic for #186.33. While on the phone, I also ordered my Series 5 for #398.33.

Exportech sold me an additional 32Mb of flash memory for a very reasonable #203.87.

The next job was communications. I believe a handheld comes into its own when you can fax and email from it while on the move. You can buy expensive mobile data cards, but it is possible to emulate the hardware using software running on a sufficiently cunning 32-bit OS. Nokia has already done so with a package for Windows 95 which works with several of its latest phones. Psion demonstrated the same thing on the Series 5 at its launch.

Cheating on the phone Psion's mobile phone software will not be available until nearer the end of 1998, so I'm going to cheat a bit. I've opted to buy the gorgeous Nokia 6110 with its new Lithium Ion battery (four hours talktime and up to a week in standby) which I'm pretty certain will have a software data solution from Psion within a few months. Best of all though, the 6110 features infra-red so I won't even need a cable! The phone with a new connection to Cellnet or Vodafone GSM costs a penny under #130, with each network offering international roaming agreements with 74 and 81 countries respectively.

You could wait for Ericsson's SH-888 dual-band mobile phone.

It features infra-red and built-in data hardware, letting it work with notebooks and PDAs without waiting for someone to write platform-specific software drivers. There were no prices or launch dates at the time of writing.

Psion games are great, but I fancy some colour and stereo sound. With the remainder of my budget I've treated myself to a Nintendo 64 with the Goldeneye and Mario 64 games, along with a spare controller and decent-quality SCART cable. Nintendo aside, there's my entirely portable and wireless kit, and none of it is cream-coloured. Oh, and wouldn't you know it? Around a tenner left. So I've selected a bottle of Chateau Rollan de By, a rather satisfying Bordeau from the Medoc region, to relax with after my exertions.

SHOPPING LIST (all prices inc VAT) Psion Series 5, 8Mb #398.33 HP DeskJet 340CBI #186.33 Delivery on above items #16.45 32Mb flash memory #203.87 Nokia 6110 with Lithium Ion #129.99 Nintendo 64 with Goldeneye #144.95 Nintendo Mario 64 #44.95 Nintendo 64 controller #29.99 Nintendo SCART cable #9.95 Chateau Rollan de By #9.99 Total #1,174.80

CONTACTS:

Psion 0990 143050; Exportech 0181 682 3313; Technomatic 0800 338000; Nokia 0990 003110; Carphone Warehouse 0800 424800; Nintendo 01703 653377

DIRECT: Nik Rawlinson

Quite apart from the fact that it's a great read, there is a second reason to buy PCW: Direct Buyers World, where mail order PC manufacturers nationwide display their wares. This is in effect their shop window, so it's a great way of buying your new PC with the minimum of fuss.

Buying direct has numerous advantages over buying from retail. The most obvious is that you can specify exactly the PC you want, rather than just having to settle on one of the fixed configurations boxed and waiting in the back of the shop. As the machines are not made up until an order is placed direct, then you can also get the latest components rather than something that was available six months ago when the spec was decided by the manufacturer. Also, you get the price advantage of buying from a supplier who does not have to fork out for fancy high-street premises.

Page proof

So, sitting down with what PCW's vending machine laughingly calls coffee, and a copy of the June issue, it was time to start spending. Several systems caught my eye, but three, from Watford Electronics, Tiny and Dabs Direct, seemed to be particularly good packages.

For #999 (leaving me just about enough to invest in a mouse mat) Watford Electronics seemed to be offering a good deal. Based around a 266MHz Pentium II, its Aries Power Media Pro was bundled with a colour Olivetti printer, Lotus SmartSuite 97 and a selection of Comptons applications. Unfortunately the printer came with only a mono cartridge. With 32Mb RAM and a 4.3Gb hard drive it was not the best-specced PC on my list, but it was adequate for my current needs and should last for some years to come. With 4Mb on the graphics card and a 15in monitor, it was holding its own with the rest of my contenders. But the lack of a modem was the final deciding factor: in today's connected society, could I really afford to be left out in the cold?

Tiny's Home Study Plus System, once again retailing at the #999 price point, utilised a 266MHz PII. With only 32Mb memory and 2Mb on the graphics card, the overall performance of this machine would be slightly less impressive although still more than adequate for almost any home or office user.

A member of Tiny's sales team who did not identify himself picked up the phone within two rings and answered all of my questions without the need to refer to any further information or leave the line. The Epson Stylus 300 printer bundled with this system is no longer sold as a standalone unit.

Its performance was disappointing in PCW's January 98 inkjet group, test taking 45 minutes to produce five pages of high-quality text and holding only a single CMYK print head.

Success! A salesperson who's sussed

In the end I settled for the Atlantis Home Office from Dabs Direct. The phone was answered on the first ring in a professional and courteous way - and the assistant knew his stuff. All of my questions regarding screen resolutions, delivery times, customisation options and even a question about whether the photo in the company's advert was the right one, were answered swiftly and with confidence. About warranty options, he was even able to direct me to the correct page in the advert for the relevant details.

When I asked about information already made clear in the advert, the assistant took the time to explain the basic details once again in a lucid and patient way.

Good value for money

For the money, the spec was generous. The standard system, based around a 266MHz Pentium II processor, included a 4.3Gb hard drive and 32Mb of SDRAM. We were assured that the 15in monitor had a top resolution of 1280 x 1024 and was driven by a 4Mb Dabs-branded AGP graphics card. A 56K modem was bundled for external connectivity, and the package included the excellent Epson BJC-250 colour inkjet which, in our tests, produced standard-quality pages from Word at a rate of one every 36 seconds. The printer's current retail as a separate unit, stood at #99 ex VAT.

At a total package price of #949, I had #51 left and so opted to spend #45 of that on upgrading the memory to 64Mb. As 90% of Dabs PCs are built to order, this customisation would do nothing to delay the one to two weeks delivery time quoted. A five-year warranty was included, the first year OSM parts and labour, then four years return to base labour costs.

An earlier version of the Dabs system was featured in PCW's April 98 group test, coming first in our Quake test for screen redraw rates and fourth in its group when facing our BapCo business applications tests, although that model was based around a 233MHz processor and held only the standard 32Mb RAM allocation.

SHOPPING LIST Price #1167.95 (#994 ex VAT) Contact Dabs Direct 0800 558866 www.dabs.com

RETAIL: Paul Trueman

Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned notion of walking into a high-street shop and snapping up a PC? I was keen to discover whether the myth of inept staff, poor customer support, and large overheads being passed on to the customer is still a realistic one nowadays. One would have thought that the one obvious advantage of retail - namely, that one can use and try out a PC before buying, would be particularly popular in the touchy-feely nineties. So, keen to touch and feel as much as possible without incurring criminal proceedings, I set off to drop a grand plus tax on the perfect retail PC.

Service with a smile, a bit of know-how, or neither

There were no assistants in sight in Comet, and I wondered round jabbing keys and wiggling mice, thoroughly unassisted. As far as I could ascertain, Comet's best offer for my price range was a P233 MMX with 32Mb of EDORAM, a 3.2Gb hard drive and a 15in monitor. I managed to find someone over by the televisions, and dragged her kicking and screaming into the Multimedia section, only for her to promptly flee, claiming ignorance but that she would "send someone over". They never showed up.

Next stop was Tempo, where the service was an improvement on that from Comet (in that there was some). Although the salesman seemed a little too keen to simply hand me a catalogue and push me out of the door, he seemed knowledgeable and Tempo did have much better offers than Comet.

A CTX machine with a PII 233, a 4.2Gb hard drive and 32Mb of EDORAM meant it was a considerable improvement on Comet.

Heartened by this I checked out PC World, and while it had nothing that could compare with a PII processor and 4.3Gb hard drive, its in-store service was excellent. A helpful member of staff took me round all the PCs on offer at that price range and told me about their PC and printer bundles. I hadn't managed to try out any of the hardware though, in any of the shops, and had been told the display PCs weren't really "set up" to play around with.

The service was attentive and helpful in Dixons too, and I was allowed to browse after we had discussed specifications, although the basic specifications of all the machines was similar to that of PC World. First impressions were not favourable when I visited the John Lewis store on Oxford Street, with its single row of dusty PCs all looking rather forlorn and overpriced.

On a Carrera path

I found my dream system on Tottenham Court Road, from Carrera Technology.

The service was impressively swift, and soon after walking in I was sitting down with a sales executive who whisked me through the Power Pro II's impressive specifications: PII 266 processor, 32Mb SDRAM, ATi 3D Rage II AGP card and 56K modem. As well as the PC, speakers and large software bundle I would get the Epson Stylus 400 Color printer and Carrera's three-year RTB warranty for 999 (ex VAT). Although the 400 is not the final word in inkjets, I was willing to accommodate its slow print times for the hefty specification of the PC. Carrera stressed that I could always go for a lower PC specification and a quicker printer, but I was happy with the deal.

When we finally got to test the machine, the Final Reality scores were a little disappointing, although it scored more impressively in the 2D Sysmark tests. A large tower PC, the Power Pro had plenty of room for expansion inside and the software bundle was very impressive, including the excellent ClarisWorks Office, Hutchinson's 97 Encyclopedia and a few games. The LG Studioworks 55i 15in monitor struggled to produce a maximum resolution of 70Hz at 1024 x 768 resolution, and although it fared better at 800 x 600, there was some colour loss around the edges of the picture.

Sharing the experience

All in all, it was an interesting experience buying a retail PC but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. "Shopping around" the major retailers isn't really anything of the sort of course, as the Dixons group owns a frightening number of different stores - Dixons, PC World and Currys.

But if you are willing to put the legwork in, there is still plenty of choice.

The myth of being able to see what you are buying is one that needs a little debunking, as most of the time you'll be looking at demonstration screensavers and few shops will let you fiddle with the Windows OS. You can't exactly start running diagnostic programs or poking around inside for example, and you can't know how the machine will perform, but you can still test out the peripherals and the monitor - important parts of any PC system. My PC looked good on paper for example, but its 3D scores were disappointing, bearing in mind it had an AGP card.

It did fare much better running 2D apps, however.

On the plus side, it's good to know there are still ways to buy a PC that let you wander round an actual store rather than a virtual one, looking at the products and pestering the staff.

SHOPPING LIST Price #1,173.83 (#999 ex VAT) Contact Carrera 0171 830 0486 www.carrera.co.uk

All shopped out: deals, deliberations and debunking

In an exercise like this, personal choice is everything, and there can be no winners and losers. But it's worth going into a judgely huddle, as Lloyd Grossman would say, to deliberate, cogitate, and digest.

Paul Trueman's choice of Carrera was a bit of a cheat when buying from retail. Carrera is essentially a direct vendor, selling most of its PCs over the phone and building to order, so it's no wonder the company was able to offer a better deal than the Dixons and PC Worlds of this world.

It's not unusual to find direct vendors on the high street. Tiny has shops around the country, and Gateway has a showroom in London's Covent Garden and plans to open more in other cities. Other direct vendors, such as Dan and Panrix, also have showrooms at their premises. But what is clear is that if you do not feel confident buying without seeing the product, the high-street stores effectively penalise you for doing so, charging you more for a less up-to-date product. So if you must touch and feel, go to the showroom of a direct vendor.

Buying direct still seems to offer the best value for money, and both Nik Rawlinson and Adam Evans got good deals for their #1,000, with Nik coming out ahead in terms of spec. Despite all the hype, however, there still seems to be very little alternative to actually speaking to someone on the phone when ordering. The internet can help you make your decision and offer plenty of background advice, but consumers and most vendors, despite the rhetoric from some of the biggest direct vendors, do not seem comfortable with the idea of carrying out the whole transaction electronically.

If you build your own PC, you will never be able to get the same deals as if you were buying from a supplier who gets everything in bulk. But if you have limited means, it is probably the best way. You can of course cannibalise your existing PC to build a new one, which will bring the price right down, and you don't have to lay out the full amount all at once, but rather, start with a case and motherboard and build up from there. And, of course, you have the enjoyment and satisfaction of building it yourself. Gordon Laing's off-the-wall mobile system is an interesting concept from a theoretical point of view, but whether he could work full-time without a PC is doubtful.

Overall, the verdict is that #1,000 ex VAT can get you a pretty decent system, and another #500 on top could probably get you everything your heart could desire.

Note: All prices were taken from the June issue of PCW so the deals we have picked may not be advertised in this month's issue, or if they are, they will doubtless be cheaper.

How we've spent our money - and bought our wine - over the year