[nffc]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

Caveat emptor to an extent, but those with knowledge/skill have a duty to those without that knowledge/skill. Least, that's what I believe

Well i do too. But, on the other hand, anyone who makes a substantial investment in a product should research the market and ask suitable questions about a product before buying. You wouldn't buy a car without checking first if it suited your needs. A PC is no different and car salesmen are far far worse than PCW salesmen.

I did recently get a PC from PCW - not for me mind - and the 10% discount did help, but the sales assistant was reasonably accurate when I tried to test him with questions! Considering these people are salesmen and not technical that isn't too bad. (The technical staff work in the clinic.) They're also decent people, normally speak to a few salesmen in a normal working day which is usually a good laugh!

Nothing wrong with after-sales either - partly it's the customers (caveat emptor again) and secondly the stores raise customers' expectations either by being slightly economical with the truth or by the customers' selective hearing. I suspect the latter. And anyway... with anything as complex as a PC it must be expected to find the fault, run diags, test components - after all, the burden of proof works both ways, in the first six months the onus is on the retailer to prove and remedy the fault, afterwards it's the customer's responsibility to prove it was there at purchase (and that covers the last 6 months of the mfr's warranty and any extension to that) so that involves testing the product, running recoveries, etc... the procedures are perfectly reasonable, yet the difficult customers highlight the occasional mistakes etc etc which are rare.

In terms of the actual advert in question it's what I'd say is a half truth. Nothing inherently wrong with it like with the Centrino ones. Yes a single core CPU can multi task but the way it manages it is just a simple juggling act. The CPU basically switches between one app and another constantly as only one process can use it at a given instant. In that sense it's the software that controls it not the CPU itself. With a dual core it is essentially running as 2 CPUs, both of which can be used instantaneously so the one process limit becomes a two process limit and some of the switching is therefore transferred to the hardware. If then you are running more than one CPU-intensive app at a time... there will be an immediate performance gain. Uploading email whilst downloading tunes is a poor example of it (encoding videos whilst gaming would be more suitable) but it's illustrating a point and so it's not that misleading. In any case, it's pitched at a level to be generally understood by the laymen rather than the professionals - it's an advert! It would be an instant turn off for Joe Noobie Public to have a PCW advert, or an advert from anyone else, ranting on about what dual core actually was going into the correct technology! It's pitched at common tasks, things people will do with their PCs, just a poorly thought out example nothing more, nothing less.

To suggest that

My view on PC World is that they're a utter disgrace. The BCS Code of Conduct for IT professionals states:

Quote:
You shall not misrepresent or withhold information on the performance of products, systems or services, or take advantage of the lack of relevant knowledge or inexperience of others

Which is exactly what PC World does. Should be shut down by Trading Standards.

Is misleading, an exaggeration, because the whole thing has been taken out of context, and to suggest that PCW should be shut down because of an advert... well at that point the post loses all credibility.
As for

And the things they do with your PC should be foolish enough to trust it to their care

... well I hope DSGi's lawyers don't read this forum.