It doesn’t help very much when the monitor needs constant gamma correction to work. When the RAM just dies and I’m left with half of the full complement (another good reason to have two DIMMS) things just get ornery.
Then there’s the constant trouble with the network adapter, generally fixed with a reboot. Ditto for the newly fixed SATA HDD (connected via the chinese-made PCI card) suddenly vanishing trick.
By all indications, it looks like I need to upgrade my PC. The dust factor hasn’t helped either, so probably a good dusting is in order before that. But definitely, I need a new power supply, motherboard, processor, monitor and RAM.
Back in my school days, when I was a lot more techno savvy the method of finding out about the costs of putting a PC together meant trawling the shops at Unity Plaza and dealing with people who had no idea about the specs of what they were selling. The vendors in general were pretty clueless about anything that wasn’t in their shops; often they were clueless about what they were selling in the first place. Heaven forbid you even asked them about future-proofing.
But now that we’re pretty firmly in the 21st century and capable of putting world class websites online, I expected a plethora of hits when I searched for sri lankan computer retailers. Alas, I was mistaken.
It seems the same indifference that you can find meted out at so many of the general PC shops in Sri Lanka is now extended to the web. I’m pretty sure this has got to do with the fact that Sri Lankan domestic users don’t present themselves as much of a market. Even better, I’m sure the average retailer must be thinking “well, if they haven’t got a computer already, then they won’t be surfing the net looking for one” and follow that up with “now that they have a computer, they know where to find us”.
Well, it seems that the high-end consumer will always have someone willing to fawn over them for their rupees. But for the average guy like myself who’s rather annoyed at having to part with his money in this age of high inflation and what-not, it looks like the place to go is still Unity Plaza.
I tried out the websites of some of Sri Lanka’s better known retailers. Some of those links can be found at OnlineLanka, but I’ve no idea how updated those links are. As a matter of fact, the only site I found interesting (apart from the ones selling second-hand computers) was ABC Computers. That too, because I was solely interested in prices. My email enquiry from the people at ABC elicited the response that their site was not very up-to-date, but in the process of being updated. Not bad - certainly a step in the right direction
Some of the bigger names have sites with a lot of heavy wording and fancy flash graphics, but little substance. One of the better known companies has only a prototype site up which showcases PC equipment and the descriptions of jewellery.
Perhaps I’m missing something here, but it looks like I’ll have to slip back into my school-day approach of trawling Unity Plaza again… What a waste of time and energy…
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