My present machine is my second Mesh. And it will be my final one.

The first one was a solid unit, well and tidily built and arrived without a single glitch of any sort - this was several years ago.

Eventually I decided to get a new machine, 'cos the older one was getting a bit long in the tooth.

Thinking on how great the first one was, bought again from Mesh. Specified an Audigy 4 Sound Card upgrade.

Computer arrived, eventually... I didn't think the sound was up to much, took a looksee inside - No Sound Card! So it was running on the basic sound chips on the motherboard, no wonder it sounded crap.

Checked my yellow build-detail. No Sound Card. Checked my invoice - I did wonder if perhaps I'd not been charged for the sound card... but there it was, I'd paid all right.

Enter the Mesh Helpless Line. After extended and heated arguments they eventually sent me an unprotected SoundBlaster card stuffed into a jiffy bag with a similarly unprotected driver CD - the CD arrived splintered in bits, the sound card was bashed out of shape.

So I called Mesh again. Got a guy who spoke to me like I'm a bandit trying to con them out of a sound card. Bastards!

I gave up, in the end. Decided to try straightening out the metal plate on the SB, got it running, downloaded the drivers from Creative ( beware their upgrade drivers BTW, stick to the originals as supplied with the card) and the PC has more or less worked since.

The quality of case has dropped drastically, the build quality is poor and untidy. It's like it's been made on a completely different assembly line from my first machine - maybe it has????

Next machine, if I decide my new laptop needs a desktop running mate, will be a Dell. We use them at work and their service is seldom needed, but they do what they say they will.

Which counts for a great deal these days.

Agreed the Mesh website is a treat to look around and they're smooth until you've paid. After that the back room boys you have to deal with are the 100% worst.

Too bad this report system gives a minimum of one star. That's more than they deserve.