I have returned to teaching after a long break. I saw my younger colleagues using laptops and doing Power Point presentations in everyday classroom teaching. Gone were the days of blackboard and chalk. I decided to join the band wagon and get a laptop!
I searched the internet for days, weeks and running into months to find something which would meet my requirements. I visited local electrical stores. The more I looked, the more confused I got! For any brand, a model number with a different alphabet meant a totally different thing. I had to match every specification to compare ! My notes ran into pages. I even developed a 3 page comparison table. Enough is enough, I thought, I would go and buy one today! I went to our local Comet store (this was in first week of May) and purchased this product.
The sales person made me believe that Fujitsu have a good reputation, and the product was good value for money. I paid £899+ £349 for 5 years extended warranty. They agreed to do an interest free financing for a fixed period.
At first sight , I was impressed with my Laptop. My friend told me it looked like an expensive Laptop! What more could you ask for! It had a 3.04 GHz Pentium processor and a large 40GB HardDrive and 512RAM, 15 in TFT display. The keyboard and mouse was reasonably easy to use. There were 5 USB ports, I did not know what to plug in, in so many of them! It had a combined CD/DVD -RW drive. That was a lot of features, more than I could handle!
When I started using it I was disappointed with the bare minimum of software. The list appeared quite long in the store, but most of them had no use ! I wanted basic features as Microsoft Office to do presentations, this was not there. I phoned the Store and they advised me to buy an Office Package (about £100). I missed my floppy disc drive and had lot of problem using the CD drives. I could not find a solution as, there was no user-manual. I called the Fujitsu helpline few times, they did not offer software support and I was advised to go to the store!
I got a friend to help me out, but his knowledge was also limited. We tried connecting it to our computer, but networking was not successful! I used it for simple presentations in my lessons and twice the machine shut down during the lesson, much to my embarassment! A few times the CD writer failed to copy.
The Laptop was quite very noisy and got quite hot after 30 minutes of use. I contacted Comet store and Fujitsu. I also ran a diagnostic over the telephone. They could not detect the fault and asked me to bring it to the store. I hnded it over to Comet on 9 July. The machine was sent away and is with the Company for repair since! I am still waiting to have it back! (August 28th today)
In my last visit I expressed my frustration and got into a mild disagreement with Comet store . After speaking with the Manager, they have kindly agreed to give me a replacement for this Laptop. I did not want another Fujitsu, and I was looking at Ciao site to find one which would be reliable. I noticed today that two other users have been disappointed as well! I wish I had read their reviews before!
I am back to square one of my search for a Laptop. Anyone out there who could help ?
More details
Memory / capacity
Good
Ease of use
Awkward
Range of Extra Features
Poor
Instruction manual
Totally unhelpful
Manufacturer Support
Totally unhelpful
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