| Product: |
PICO SYSTEMS |
| Date: |
11/09/01 (240 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Ummmm
Disadvantages: Poor reliability
I bought a Pico.
I spent ages looking around for the best value laptop computer and decided that a Pico fit the bill for me.
I am a private tutor and teach, examine and award qualifications in IT and other subjects, so I need a reliable system, a fast one and with storage enough to cope with my students work. I needed to carry it around five evenings a week and it has to be a workhorse.
I bought the Pico Consul two years ago and added to its spec. at Pico so as to increase the RAM, storage and so on.
Within a week the screen went down and Pico replaced it with a second machine.
About six weeks later, the screen began to flicker and glow pink. I sent it back to Pico and they checked and repaired it, something to do with an earth strap.
It worked well for the next ten month, but a week or so out of guarantee it had the flickering screen back.
I found if I moved the lid (screen) then for a while it would behave then, some ten minutes later, had to adjust again.
I have looked after the machine with great care, believe me, yet when it was fourteen month old it developed a slight crack in the lid caseing near the hinge area.
The crack has progressed slowly and is now some 12mm long. I fear that soon it will go and dissable the screen totally.
The screen still goes into glowing pink mode at random.
I will not buy Pico again and I am looking to replace the machine soon.
It seemed a good buy and yes! I think it was if it had worked as it should.
Spec?
333Mhz AMD K2
6G hard D
Sound card
128 RAM
14.1 TFT Screen
A real spec for two years ago
Cost?
£1400
Not too cheap either, then
Summary:
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Last comment:
 |
- 02/04/02 Same product, same problems, except perhaps I have far less to complain about since I bought the laptop second hand for only £400. I have a similar crack accross both hinges, and a similar screen flickering problem, except that mine flickers light blue and only seems to occur when using video overlay or a screen resolution lower than 1024x768. Another problem is that the built in audio amplifier is damaged and conseqently pops and crackles continuously unless all sound is muted. Since this model was produced in 1998 it predates Windows 2000, which is what I use, and so finding drivers can be difficult. This means I cannot use the TV-Out functionality that is built in, and power management will happily place the computer on standby but there is no way to recover it. Other than that I'm very happy, 300 Mhz and 128Mb seems to be enough to run any application I need easily, Windows 2000 makes it very stable. I get around the audio problem when I need to by using a set of USB headphones. So really I'm glad I could get such a functional machine for relatively little money.
Oh, and it could do with being a bit lighter too!! |
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