On The Web - Eclipse (Eclipse Computers (Coventry))

Member Name: Banquo

Product:	Eclipse Computers (Coventry)
Date:	30/11/02 (598 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Low Prices

Disadvantages: No Service, Surly, Failure To Respond

Economy with the truth. We had several complaints about Eclipse Computers of Coventry. This, like Pino, advertises in Micro Computer Mart, but with rather more careful wording. Part of an Eclipse ad last month listed motherboards as 'WB/256K cache' followed by two prices: £49/£69.
Opposite, Eclipse advertised boards fitted with processors, and only from the prices could you deduce that some of these lacked cache. I suggested to Eclipse proprietor Changez Akhter that the ads, while not actually lying, were less than honest. He replied: "If you are a manufacturer of a four-speed car you are not going to say that it has four gears. You are going to leave that out... You are going to highlight the good points."
He said Eclipse had never claimed, like Pino (whom he named), that boards had 256Kb of cache when they had not. "We assume everyone knows what writeback cache is," he said. When I asked him what he thought it meant, he replied: "Writeback cache means dummy cache on the board."
Some of the boards, part of the Elite series, had dummy cache actually soldered in, which Akhter admitted meant they were virtually impossible to upgrade.
Some dummy cache boards could be brought up to scratch by using EDO RAM, but many people buy them to upgrade a PC and reckon on using their old standard RAM. We had calls from readers whose 'upgraded' system ran slower than their old one.
Trading standards in at least three counties are investigating complaints about false cache.
Thanks to all of you who contacted us about dummy cache. I tried to answer you all but I was on overload at times. Keep the letters coming to Clive Akass <mailto:clive_akass@pcw.ccmail.compuserve.com>.

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