Hi-Grade Notino Mi3380D

Author's product rating:   

Speed
Look & Feel
Comfort & Portability
Robustness & Durability
Value For Money

Advantages:	when it chose to work it was good value for the money
Disadvantages:	poor customer service, disliked being treated  as if I was a liar, unreliable agreements made with company

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

From the moment I bought this laptop, my problems began. The biggest headache of the year so far! February 2000 changed my life as I bought my first laptop! The excitement of finding it at the bargain price of £800 at the shop was soon quenched by a proverbial fire engine. I am a student, and wanted to keep my purchase low budget, but I was travelling around a lot at the time, not able to check email, do work much etc. Thought its a nice idea, adds a touch of class, nicemodel. It started freezing in the first few weeks. I hoped this was maybe caused by installing new software and it clashing or something. But then 2 months later Windows heavily crashed, and I had to reformat the hard disk to eventually get it working again. Windows installed again, I hoped all problems would end. But a scandisk I performed found bad clusters on a damaged hard drive, while the freezing continued,. I sent it back to HiGrade who took an age to repair the hard disk and did nothing about the freezing,. I rang them about it, they took it, it came back. Nothing. just that it had been checked and the processor resetted. Rang them again just before I was going abroad and pleaded for a new model as I had lost all confidence in the model, they arranged to take it and never took it which I found when I got back. Quite irate now, I rang them again and they came and picked it up. They said now it was because of my low memory, so I agreed to pay £60 for an upgrade, taking it up to 64Mb. I turned it on, it worked for the 10 minutes it was functioning. It saved itself to disk when I went to the toilet, and I could not get it to open again. I rang them again, and they had upgraded their new system so when I didnt have my serial number AND my returns numbver from the previous return, they couldnt help. I got these and rang back, they arranged to get the computer.I asked them for a replacement, and they said theyd send my request on to one of the managers. I have heard nothing, not even about the laptops progress.Im sure as a computer company they could send me an email and tell me whats wrong with it.

So the customer service was not the best I had ever encountered, and the laptop itself was appalling. The sound card was not DirectX compatible, so I cannotplay computer games, not even Catz!!! The sound card driver cannot have been completely correct, as any recordings on the builtin mike sounded like white noise from the TV at loud volume. The fan sounded like a lawnmower, and that is NO word of a lie! I am most annoyed, especially as I am still paying for it! Each time noone seemed apologetic with all the problems I had had. I would advise caution in buying HiGrade laptops at reduced prices! I was told they make some of the best laptops. I would recommend caution, as you would with everything.
The things that got themost were:
1. That noone seemed willing to replace themachine even though they agreed they would
2. That I was treated as though they did not believe me. They would say that no problems could be found, and that it could not have been causing the problems I had described. I ask you, what point is there in ringing a computer company up all the time saying theres something wrong with a fully functional model? That would just not happen. There would be no gain from it for even the most dubious people.