More Mess Than Mesh Computers Plc

[designguru]

now the interesting part, one configured to your spec im being told that its £2636.15, not quite the same as the £2218 you claimed, ok so the price of things fluctate slightly but over £400 i dont think so, wanna explain that aswell ?

See my previous post, try the link and configure it with my specs...

Here's the link again:

http://www.meshcomputers.com/updated/review_aug05_mattitandualx2pro.htm

I reckon it was a bit tricky to configure it from Mesh's website, I tried all the sections and configurations possible and the latter is the best I found.
I first tried the fx-57 one under the 'review pcs' as well, because I was told it was the best cpu ever, but after checking multiple comprehensive reviews, I decided I would go for a x2 cpu instead and found it under the very same section.

They wouldn't advertise for their best value system on their main feature-banner, would they?

 

[Me__2001]

hasbeen posted that a couple of days ago and i've configured it and it costs what you said it did

 

[designguru]

Cheap Mesh case...

what makes you think that your mesh system will come in a top of the range case ? all pre-built systems come in cheap cases, personally i'd like to have the system temp on the case i have it on my current system and will on my next system, what is wrong with knowing how hot your system is ?

Well, the Mesh case looks great and rock-solid rather than cheap, maybe it's plastic but as good as it gets.
Looks like an audi TT console or something like that...
And it's reassuringly heavy! Shame it hasn't got an engine and 4 wheels around...

 

[designguru]

Some confusion about VAT

try going here:
http://www.meshcomputers.com/updated/review_aug05_mattitandualx2pro_order.htm
upgrade video cards to 7800's and read it and weep!
All that designguru specified but for £1769, £200 less than guru paid!

Hi guys, there is some confusion here about the price... sorry it's my fault, I didn't specify that the £2218.45 I paid include VAT.

 

[chunky.saj]

Hi mate, you forgot the Audigy 2ZS Platinum + xp pro 64 edition upgrades...

Received the beast an hour ago, it's f*****g good looking! Let's put it at work now, I'll tell you more about my experience later once everything's installed, like tomorrow.

The stuff that needs installing... is that like the drivers and stuff? ... does the OS need installing?

 

[designguru]

Crap parts

thankyou for the link, designguru why couldn't you just have posted the link ?

i have gone through and configured the system and indeed it does come out at £2218.45 (hasbeen you forgot the soundcard ) ok so i agree that is cheaper than the competition but i still wouldn't buy it from them because of the crap parts that they use

What crap parts are you talking about?
I don't think an Asus s8n sli deluxe is a crap part
I don't think a Geforce 7800 gtx card is a crap part
I don't think an Audigy 2zs platinum is a crap part
I don't think an Athlon X2 4800+ is a crap part
And so on...

Are you talking about the screws which are not golden enough to your taste?

The case isn't crap either, well it looks crap on the photo on their website, but in real world it looks and tastes and smells and weighs really great, like a leather saddled TT - though it hasn't got the 4 wheels as I said before.

Well, I agree the blue carton box in which it has been shipped looks crap, but I'm not sure if I really need this part...

 

[designguru]

Crap parts, continued...

as for the gard drive i'd like to get one that i know is gonna last, mesh and companies like them buy up the hard drives that are cheap, they dont care if there only gonna last a couple of years and you lose all of your data they just want to make more of a profit

The other crap parts you are talking about are:
Maxtor for the HD, which I believe is not the worst make...
Corsair for the DDRAM, no worry...
I dont' have a clue for the PSU but it's a 550W + FDD one, I'm sure you know how worth it is
Might not be that Greenpeace-friendly but at least it's silent and doesn't overheat

I still believe the crap parts you are talking about are the card-boxes in which the system has been delivered, the staples look dodgy and the tape ain't easy to untape...

 

[designguru]

The beast? you mean the Monster!

Designguru had the beast arrived and fired up??

Yes it has! a couple of hours ago but they called me on Friday they'd have a delay because of testing etc.
I am staring at the box right now and it just looks gorgeous!
Haven't set it up yet because I had few drinks with mates today, I don't want to mess it up but tomorrow it's going up and (hopefully) running...
It's quite bigger than I expected, and quite heavier as well.
I'm only wondering where I am going to put all these 7 speakers, my room has only 5 corners!

 

[designguru]

hasbeen posted that a couple of days ago and i've configured it and it costs what you said it did

Sorry, I've been away for a while and didn't notice hasbeen's post.
So, what do you think of the value?

 

[designguru]

The stuff that needs installing... is that like the drivers and stuff? ... does the OS need installing?

Yeah but don't worry, it's just a cd to slip in and click next-next-next etc., but if you ordered the audigy all the drivers should have already been installed.

 

[chunky.saj]

Yeah but don't worry, it's just a cd to slip in and click next-next-next etc., but if you ordered the audigy all the drivers should have already been installed.

whats an audigy?

 

[designguru]

It's the sound card

 

[Me__2001]

if it works and theres no problems its a reasonable deal its not amazing deal, you should not have to install anything that you asked for with the system, unless your reffering to your own programs

the audigy is the soundcard, which is a waste of money when the onboard sound is perfectly acceptable

 

[chunky.saj]

if it works and theres no problems its a reasonable deal its not amazing deal, you should not have to install anything that you asked for with the system, unless your reffering to your own programs

the audigy is the soundcard, which is a waste of money when the onboard sound is perfectly acceptable

oh ok - so i don't need to install the drivers for the graphics card or the operating system. Thats great.

I didn't get a sound card because i read reviews on the motherboard that i am getting and they said the sound is pretty amazing anyways.

Thanks for your help.


Designguru - i'm guessing u haven't had any problems with costomer services from mesh. I haven't had any problems so far, although i haven't had to use them yet. I've read loads of reviews that they have terrible costomer services, but i guess only those who have had bad experiences will post on forums. Anyway i'll wait till my pc arrives before i comment further.

oh and btw, why are upgrades on these configuration menus so expensive?
On dell the upgrades are ridiculously expensive (more expensive than any other site i have seen.) just to put in a floppy drive on a dell pc it costs £23.50. To upgrade the processor on a dell pc from an Intel® Pentium 4 processor with HT technology 531 (3.00GHz, 800FSB, 1MB cache) to an Intel® Pentium 4 processor with HT technology 630 (3.00GHz, 800FSB, 2MB cache) it costs an extra £117.50. Now that is extortion. I don't know why ppl say dell are cheap. I speced up a pc on dell to the same spec as i just bought from mesh and it came to ~ £1350 and i am paying less than £750. OK the dell spec wasn't exactly the same but it was as close as i could get it.

 

[Me__2001]

dell are good for cheap systems if you want a basic PC then you'll struggle to beat them, the high end systems and their gaming systems are overpriced

 

[chunky.saj]

Designguru - i'm guessing u haven't had any problems with costomer services from mesh. I haven't had any problems so far, although i haven't had to use them yet. I've read loads of reviews that they have terrible costomer services, but i guess only those who have had bad experiences will post on forums. Anyway i'll wait till my pc arrives before i comment further.

I emailed Mesh services last night to see if my PC has been despatched and first thing this morning they rang me and said that it had and it will be here later today. Now that is top quality costomer service. they must have improved.

 

[chunky.saj]

MY pc arrived yesterday morning at 11am. I hooked it up and it works perfectly. They gave me a different monitor to the one pictured, they gave me a ViewSonic 8ms response time 17" LCD instead of the Sharp analogue one (which i thought was fantastic). I have had one minor problem so far, which is the case of the mini tower has only three rubber feet when it meant to have four so it doesn't sit upright. I contacted MESH through their helpdesk on their website explaining that one of its rubber feet was missing and they replyed within two hours apologisng and telling me to confirm my address and they will send a rubber foot to me straight away.

All in all, it is a fantastic PC at a great price, (the cheapest I could find for that spec by a long way) and the costomer service from MESH has been superb. Well done MESH!

 

[designguru]

No regrets whatsoever - though a few headbangings during setup...

the audigy is the soundcard, which is a waste of money when the onboard sound is perfectly acceptable

Onboard soundcard is certainly great but doesn't have all the THX, EAX and creative mediasource tweakings etc. And it offers rather more OUTs than INs...
I chosed to upgrade to the audigy platinum drive because it gives me more input options that I needed, i.e. get the sound from my sky digibox because the sound on my old Sony TV - though a Dolby Prologic - is now crap and had an annoying permanent whistle/buzz not related to the PSU, but the image is still perfect.
All in all, the Audigy Platinum cost me less than a proper A/V amplifier and kilometers of cables running through the living room...
Now the 7.1 sound is great especially with Sky Movies, even coming from the analog AUX in - from now on, my TV's sound is permanently muted. DVD and Music playback is, as expected, just fantastic!

I would say I'm 90% satisfied with this machine now that it's up and running, but it took me a couple of days and a few sessions of banging my head on the desk to be honest, to get it setup properly...

3 problems mainly:

1. My usb adsl modem woudln't work with Windows xp x64 edition, I had to buy an adsl router from netgear which works great and has an integrated firewall. But that wasn't Mesh's fault, it was rather my old modem's manufacturer's who don't bother rewriting their drivers for x64. SORTED

2. The viewsonic 19" monitor is great, but Mesh didn't bother to install the proper driver and used Microsoft's default one. Result: too bright, too blue, too saturated and too much noise on DVD playback.
That was an easy one to sort out, I just got the proper drivers downloaded from Viewsonic, tuned the settings and now the image is perfect. SORTED

3. THIS IS WHERE IA AM NOT HAPPY AT ALL WITH MESH, I'm sure you'll like this one...
The Audigy 2 ZS Platinum: no problem with the hardware, it's great.
The problem is that they (Mesh) didn't bother to install the proper drivers and applications at all!
Well, at least not for the Platinum Drive, the soundcard is OK and has all proper drivers installed.
BUT, the platinum drive has no firmware, driver nor application installed whatsoever...
Remote Control wasn't working, OSD neither. And, guess what: no Audigy 2 ZS installation CD in the 'bundle', and of course, no Creative MediaSource software installed at all, just the different modules hanging around but not all of them... It's like having some Photoshop's plugins installed without Photoshop installed...
It took me the weekend to sort this out. Find the installation CD, the proper applications etc.
Creative support's website doesn't help at all in that case, it only offers updates to download, but not the full install CD. So how do you update from a messy installation (thanks to Mesh)?
I eventually found a link to the iso file of the installation CD with all drivers and applications for the Audigy 2zs Platinum and downloaded it at the fantastic average speed of 3.4kb/s...
Burnt it straight away on a CD, the CD works, thanks God!
SORTED THANKS TO ME, NOT TO MESH

Moral of the story: if Mesh can't be bothered to install the proper drivers and applications for the hardware you ordered, they should at least send you the installation CD, which they didn't .
Especially for a more than 2 grands machine!

All in all I would recommend them for the best value and quality hardware I could ever find on the internet, rather good customer service keeping you updated if any delay etc.
But for installation and 'testing', sorry Mesh but I have to say you are rather crap on that one.

It was like they were 2 days late for the delivery and feared I would be upset if I had to wait more... I'd rather wait a couple of days more but have everything properly installed rather than wasting 2 days of my time to fix all they didn't bother to do.

 

[floppybootstomp]

dg:

All in all I'd say you done well, shame about those niggling problems, particularly no Creative CD, bit naughty, that. Did you not try phoning them and requesting a CD?

Whatever, that is one mean machine you now have in your possession - enjoy

 

[designguru]

dg:

All in all I'd say you done well, shame about those niggling problems, particularly no Creative CD, bit naughty, that. Did you not try phoning them and requesting a CD?

Whatever, that is one mean machine you now have in your possession - enjoy

Yeah it's a really mean one! I still would recommend them despite the poor technical support.
It would have taken me longer to ask them for a cd, they don't have a 24/7 customer service, they answer the phone only weekdays 9to6 and sat 10to5 or something like that.

But I'm really happy now it's all sorted, this machine is just awesome! Just make sure if you order one from them to call them and checklist with the guy what you want installed, what cds you want etc.
If you do they will do it for you, I called them to get windows pro x64 instead of x32 and they did it.
My mistake is that I didn't ask for the Creative install CD because I assumed it would have been delivered with the machine.

I would recommend anyone to call them after ordering just to check and insist on what CDs you want, I'm sure they'd do it. But apparently you have to ask them to make sure it will be shipped...

If anyone experience the same problem that I had, here's the link to the Audigy 2ZS installation CD:

ftp://file4.mydrivers.com/files/sound/A2zsDrvDisc.ISO

The dl speed is really crap, I suggest you install some download accelerator to get hold of it, I have a Bulldog 8Mb Broadband connection and the peak speed I had was around 5.9kb/s...

I cancelled, installed dl accelerator plus and got it at an average of around 30kb/s.

I should apply for a job at Mesh's technical support, I'm sure I'd make a fortune...