Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
range, price, convenience |
| Disadvantages: |
not many high street stores |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Many good opinions have been given about Evesham as an PC retailer, but I wanted to be first to offer an opinion specifically on their web presence.
My experiences with Evesham began when I bought my first PC back in 1994. My friend and next-door-neighbour already had a PC from Evesham and, at the time, they offered great value for money with their extensive range of PC's. If I remember correctly, I ordered my first PC over the telephone. Since I never once had a problem with the first PC I bought from Evesham I suppose it
counted in their favour when I was looking for a replacement early last year. I did briefly consider other PC retailers, looking at Mesh, Dell, Gateway, HP and Tiny to name but most of them! I finally chose Evesham and am thoroughly delighted with my second PC from them.
So, to the website. You will find the Evesham website quite easily, being that it's URL is http://www.evesham.com/. Always a good start when you don't have to go hunting around for a company's home page, or it's called something like www.obscurelongandunpronounceable.org.
The site is very slickly designed. No flashy flash animations which seriously annoy me - mainly because they take so damn long to download but also because they usually detract from my surfing experience far more than adding to it. The graphics are designed in a nice range of blues which are easy on the eye - another important factor for me. Oh, and there's no flashing banners or buttons trying to sell you anything either.
The main page offers the user a choice of PC categories - Business, Home/Office or Education. It even offers to remember your selection for you so that every time you return to the site you don't have to select this category again. A nice touch.
From here, navigation about the site is a breeze. Each category is broken down further into PC type (e.g. Desktops, Notebooks, Peripherals, All-in-ones and Workstations and Servers in the Business category). The user is also presented with links to recent independent reviews both of Evesham and of individual items which can be purchased. Of course, they will only present favourable reviews but we know that, don't we?
As you would expect, the site offers all the standard e-tailing functionality - login with username and password, a shopping basket, secure credit card handling, order history and status and they have recently started an auction site where you can apparently "bid for new, nearly new and refurbished
computer peripheral products at discounted prices."
Each product is given a full description with an associated image so you can see what you're getting. The specifications are very thorough, listing processor and motherboard, memory, hard disk, graphics, screen, CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive, modem, network card, soundcard and operating system amongst others.
One of the best parts of the site is that you can fully configure the machine you want with the exact specification you desire. So, you can take an off-the-shelf package and upgrade individual elements to suit your needs. This is exactly what I did by upgrading my with more memory, a larger hard drive, better graphics card and faster processor ('cos it didn't cost much more!). The total price (both with and without VAT) is updated the moment you change any of the specification so you can see exactly what the changes are making to the price.
The prices for all of the individual elements are constantly updated on the site. Which meant that when I revisited the site over several weeks when trying to decide on my exact purchase the cost of the package I had put together (which, incidentally you can save for future reference in your account) automatically changed to reflect the current price. I saved myself almost a hundred pounds within the few weeks I was evaluating the package! I also received a substantial number of ipoints for my purchase - you get something like 2 ipoints per pound spent.
What about the product itself then? My current PC is an Axis D850E with AMD Athlon 1GHz processor, 40Gb hard drive, Teac 12x10x32 IDE CD-Rewriter (burn proof), 16x DVD-ROM, 256MB SDRAM and nVidia GeForce2 MX-400 64MB AGP graphics card. Not a bad package for a little over a grand just under a year ago (although you can of course get much more for your money now). It all arrived first time within about 4 weeks of ordering, securely packaged and not a mark on it which is always a relief.
All the necessary software was pre-installed (including Windows ME) and on bootup the peripherals were all automatically located and the necessary drivers found. No problems at all. There was even a wizard which helped me set up my internet connection.
Since I purchased this PC about a year ago, I have had no problems at all. Evesham offer a freephone helpline (which not many PC retailers do) which I know from previous experience with my mother's PC is well manned with excellent staff. So, if you do get into trouble help is at hand. Also, they guarantee the PC for a year as standard (you can upgrade this at extra cost) and will take it away to look at for free during this time. Which is nice.
Evesham.com is an all-round well designed, useful and thorough site. It makes the purchasing of the exact PC configuration a real pleasure. I would have no reservations in recommending them to everyone.
ms
BTW the repeat offender in the title is me - having purchased a second time - not any reflection on Evesham!
very helpful
very helpful
very helpful
