Categories
chromebook End User H/W

Just picked up my Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Granite Gray

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Picked up my Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook. Granite Gray not Ash as foretold in this previous post but hey. Might never know what colour ash was 🙂 Also it’s a shame that international language seems to have dumbed down to the lowest common denominator of Americun English. Ah well.

Back at the office I thought I’d bang out some words of wisdom for you before user testing the product. I bought the Chromebook from PC World Business. One does this ostensibly when one requires a VAT receipt from PC World, dont ya know.

Whilst hanging around waiting for the PC World Business system to boot up I got into conversation and casually asked whether there were any discount codes available. The “sales advisor” (I imagine that’s how it’s speld) tapped his keyboard and hey presto a £20 discount appeared.

So my Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Granite Gray was not £199.99. It was £149.99 plus VAT which I’m sure your quick thinking minds will have totted up to £179.99 give or take a bit of rounding. Result eh? 🙂

I took a look at other Chromebooks on sale whilst hanging around. They were pretty much identical to the Acer. Small differences in build quality perhaps but these are all commodity items. It’s like buying bags of cement, or tins of baked beans.

Now what is interesting is I happen to know the discounts are not available from PC World’s Retail arm. This is because PC World Retail buys its stuff from Dixons Retail who in turn get it from a UK Distributor who buys his from the European Disti who gets it from the manufacturer. I also happen to know (it’s spring – a little bird told me) the manufacturer’s price is £90 so there is plenty of margin in there if you can buy direct from the manufacturer but sod all if you have to slice it 4 ways.

Apparently most of the Samsung products bring good margins – it’s only Apple who are greedy. What do I care? I got an Acer C720 Chromebook for £179.99.

More on this as it happens.

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Just bought an Acer Chromebook Ash – review to follow.
Samsung Chromebook crash fix and print drivers – who needs em?
Footnote to Samsung Chromebook Free Galaxy Phone offer
Samsung Chromebook offer not very customer friendly
or search chromebook for lots of useful articles

Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

Interactive network design the Newark way

Timico network engineer using new Acer Aspire R3700 interactive whiteboardI hope these guys really appreciate what we do for them at Timico.interactive white board in use at new Timico Network Operations Centre in Newark First we build them a brand new data centre. Then we put in a state of the art coffee machine closely followed by a kennel. And now they get an interactive white board to play with!!!

I’m beginning to feel like a second class citizen. I only have a kettle, a normal old fashioned whiteboard and no kennel. Wossthatallabout?

For those of you who are interested in these things, ok most of you, Acer Aspire R3700 in use at teh new Timico Network Operations Centre in NewarkBen is modelling the latest Acer Aspire R3700 interactive whiteboard. It comes with an overhead projector (ceiling) and a shiny black box (inset). I can hear those oo’s from where I am sat.

On a slightly serious note this is all about productivity. On a slightly less serious note, where do they get these part names from? The Aspire R3700!

What would a world without decimal numbers be like? The Acer Aspire RMMMDCC. There you go. Sorted. Have a good one.

PS I have sneaked in the first photo of the new videowall in action – click on the header pic to see more. It was either this or Sky Sports and the boys chose the former 🙂

Categories
Apps Cloud End User xaas

Computing As A Service – family bundle #CAAS #Tesco #Acer #Microsoft

I know I said I might well have bought my last laptop for the family but my wife’s 10 year old PC is spinning the last few thousand rotations of its hard drive and software is starting to malfunction.  So she is getting our daughter’s 7 year old perfectly good machine and we are buying the final year 6th form girl a laptop.

The Tesco website has an Acer 5742 for £399. It has an Intel Core i3, a 750gig hard drive and 4 gigs of RAM.  The crunch though is the copy of Microsoft Office 2010 home and business £204.22. She ain’t getting that.

It’s a graphic illustration that the money isn’t in the hardware but in the software. You do also have to wonder