Buying notebooks was supposed to be a pretty clear-cut affair. Determine what you need, eyeball the available notebooks and choose the best one that suits your needs. Simple, no? Unfortunately, this was not to be as Ken and Adrian discovered. Check out Episode I : Aspiration For Better Service and find out what happened! Link : Notebook Purchase Fiasco!
Eh.. Are you sure? According to their company details ( http://global.benq.com/wm/Program/functional/aboutus/aboutus.htm ), they used to be Continental Systems. BenQ now consists of ten corporations - Airoha Technology, AU Optronics, BenQ, BenQ Guru Software, Cando Corporation, Copax Photonics, Darfon Electronics, Darly Venture, Daxon Technology and Philips-BenQ Digital Storage. How the heck did they come up with all those funny-sounding names??
Acer reminds me of ALI, which is the crappiest chipset manufacturer.. ACER..TAK NAK.. BENQ..TAK NAK. ALI..PUN TAK NAK..
Well, as most have already known, Adrian and I had gotten the Benq JB7K already anyway. But thankfully, the JB7000 is a pretty decent setup and has a pretty good build-quality. Mag alloy casing and all episode two is coming soon... do stay tune!
Man.. This is confusing! Anyway, back to topic.. The BenQ Joybook 7000 is a really well-built notebook, from what I can see. Mag alloy cover and underchassis. Even the M30 does not have that.
Hi Adam, First of all, thanks a million for taking time and reading the article! As for your disagreement, I welcome it. But then, things may be a little bit different over there in Australia then here in Malaysia. It may be agreeable that some notebook distributor/dealer earn a rather small margin from notebook sales. However, I'm pretty sure notebook manufacturers on the other hand earn a very healthy sum. The only manufacturer that I know of that does not earn that high of a margin is Dell. Also, advertised prices of notebooks that are set by manufacturers are usually already with a healthy earning margin. Thus, if they sell as per the advertised price, which Acer did on my case, then they are indeed earning a good deal out of it. I can also safely say this as I have a friend that resells Acer notebooks in a small time business. I've seen how Acer operates with dealers. Thus, I know that they do earn a lot. Of course, I can't say the same for the other manufacturers but I'm pretty sure they are just the same. As not many dealers/distributors sells the notebooks any lower than the advertised retail price. Again, this may all come back to the fact that Malaysia market for electronics are just not the same as other countries. Notebooks and PDAs are still somewhat considered 'luxury' devices to own still. Although prices have came down a lot here, it's still simply not that affordable yet as PCs. Last but not least, we here at Asia and have a very limited choice when it comes to the specifications of notebooks. In fact, take a look at the Joybook 7000 that Adrian and I got. In any other europe countries, it's fitted with both Bluetooth and a 802.11b/g wifi, 60GB hard disk. But us here in Malaysia? a pathetic 40GB hard disk and 802.11b only. ANy other choices? NO. I agree, Toshiba may have better screen quality, but there's not one with the specs that I'd like and it's also a lot more expensive. Sony Vaios are of course nice to own, but again, the price of it is just way way WAY off my teeny budget. Thanks for your commments again Adam... hope you hang around here in the forums too!
BTW, the dealers get a large bonus if they meet their sales targets. That's why some dealers prefer to give huge discounts. As long as they make those targets, their bonuses will be far more than the discounts they give to the consumer.
It was a good read, thanks for writing it. I would assume that they would be different. I always pictured Malaysia as a more ahead of the times than Australia when it came to computers in the same way Japan and China are. Well it is a hard thing to gauge. There is not just the cost of manufacture, there is also the R&D costs, support costs, advertising, distribution etc. While I believe they most likely do have healthy margins I believe a lot of the money would go into future product design. Dell laptops are not all that much cheaper than other brands, sure they have the occasional loss leader which is really cheap but most of the time if you factor in the store mark-ups they probably do not make much more than the other companies. I am not sure of the costs at each level though so I am not 100% about that. Good point, but the difference between wholesale prices and RRP on computers is very small compared to other electronics – it has to be to compete with all the independent computer builders! Mainly due to the small mark-up I believe, although when they want to clear old stock it normally gets priced pretty well. I picked up last years AU$1200 PDA for AU$500 last week. They can normally get these older products very cheap at end of life. The computer does not even have to be outdated! There are a few where they release a new model that has some tiny little change, like the new 1.8GHz Pentium M with 2Mb cache instead of the old 1.8GHz with 1Mb cache – and then a nice saving of a few hundred US dollars! While I believe Laptops and PDAs are also luxury items here in Australia one thing I know for sure: Go into any electronics store and you will see five desktop computers and 20 laptops. It is not like there is a huge range of difference in the laptops, you get the Celerons, the low end Pentium Ms the High end Pentium Ms and the Pentium 4s. The only difference between many models seems to be the price and the styling. I know what you mean. Here manufactures for some reason think that everyone only wants 256Mb ram (I have 1Gb in my desktop and wouldn’t think of using less than 512Mb in Windows XP). A rare few come with 512Mb and you would be hard pressed to find anything but a huge 17” widescreen desktop replacement with 1Gb! Good point. When I was thinking about what else was available at around that price point I forgot about the video adaptor. I know there is a Sony (VGNB88GP) which has the 1.5Ghz Processor, 256Mb ram, 40Gb HDD but is around US$380 cheaper than the Acer. All that spare change could be put towards more ram (and only 1 stick to buy back at their poor prices!) and a Hard Disk upgrade. Glad to give them! I may stick around also. The site name is familiar to me from a few years ago when I was heavily into modding, reading reviews and basically anything computer related on the internet.
Actually, it's not so much about their profit margin. The purpose of any business is to make money. That's alright with me. The main problem is with their attitude. Over here, they have the "take it or leave" attitude. Even though we are paying them for the product, they hardly care if we get it late or if we get something that's not exactly what we ordered. In the end, the customer has to CHASE the dealer to conclude the sale! This is a peculiar situation that I'm sure many people in more developed countries do not face. More on that later.. but back to Episode I and Acer, well, I must say that Acer has a really odd policy. They can neither provide the upgrade nor allow the end-user to upgrade himself. And as for the conduct of their representative, I think they need to be re-educated. Think "re-education camps" ala Cambodia. Seriously, those Acer representatives are just so arrogant. They spoke as if all their customers were morons who will believe anything they say. Not only did they try to cheat us into paying the full price of 1GB of RAM, instead of the upgrade price, they were not even a wee bit sorry. When we told them that, they just shrugged and told us to take it or leave. So, we left.
my dad was pissed off by a Tele Dynamic sales rep. before because of that "supervisor/manager" whoever he is who have a higher rank that his employee .. my dad left the sales office & ended up buying a compaq for my sister .. my uncle recommended toshiba to my dad .. coz he uses toshiba laptops .. 3/4th toshiba already
Here it is the opposite, and the way it should be. The salesperson works to make the sale happen. They realise that if you don't buy it from them then the competitor gets your money. Of course that is only if you shop in certain stores. Many have disinterested salespeople who don't really care about your needs and just want to make a sale. We get told to drive every sale we can home. Close every deal, even if it means lowering the price as that is one less customer on the street to go shop elsewhere. (And let’s face it, if you get all the info you need from one store, then goes to another to compare prices, who would really drive back to the first if it is no cheaper?) Sales is a fierce business.
I think there's a lot of confusion in Acer. They really need to remanage their operation in Malaysia. They need to lay down their policy in a better way that all the dealers know what they are talking about. They should be some training.
