Laptops €299 tesco

rash0001

I bought the 599 Laptop but there was no manual etc... just a booklet on how to start, charge etc the laptop.
I have a question here which I hope some of you can answer.
There are 4 buttons at the top of the laptop. One is Power, One is Wireless, One is Internet and the last one is some button with a Fan kind of design on it! What is this button for!? When I press it the laptop just beeps can't see anything happening!?
Can anyone let me know what this is!?
Thanks

podgeandrodge

rash0001 wrote:

I bought the 599 Laptop but there was no manual etc... just a booklet on how to start, charge etc the laptop.
I have a question here which I hope some of you can answer.
There are 4 buttons at the top of the laptop. One is Power, One is Wireless, One is Internet and the last one is some button with a Fan kind of design on it! What is this button for!? When I press it the laptop just beeps can't see anything happening!?
Can anyone let me know what this is!?
Thanks

There is a manual, it's on the cd that came with your laptop. The buttons are explained in it. I won't give you the meaning of the button you are missing cos I would not be doing you a favour - RTFM as they say! The manual explains the purpose of this button as well as probably any other questions you may have.

byte

rash0001 wrote:

I bought the 599 Laptop but there was no manual etc... just a booklet on how to start, charge etc the laptop.
I have a question here which I hope some of you can answer.
There are 4 buttons at the top of the laptop. One is Power, One is Wireless, One is Internet and the last one is some button with a Fan kind of design on it! What is this button for!? When I press it the laptop just beeps can't see anything happening!?
Can anyone let me know what this is!?
Thanks

On the one I got it's an envelope design, which presumably opens your email application.

And, after somebody else mentioning lack of S Video output, I've checked mine, and lo and behold, I don't have one either. Just a D socket for connection to a monitor.

Otherwise it's grand.

rash0001

Thanks! I never bothered checking the CD!
Anyway I was just checking the thread on the Laptops forum and came across a post where one guy says that the vouchers can only be used against computer equipment!
That's exactly what I had been told! :eek: I did not pay much attention to this as the guy from Tesco who told me sounded like an Eastern European and I thought maybe he didn't understand what I asked him! But now I'm really thinking if this is true!? As another person has been told the same thing! I also read something about Tesco having a contract with iQon so can it be that tesco plans to sell all iQon rubbish with a slight discount with the vouchers! I really hope someone can confirm this! as everyone has accepted that the Laptops are good for €300 but these voucher stories aren't allowing me to make up my mind! :mad:

Aquos76

I can assure you that you will be getting vouchers equivalent to Cash. Tesco ran a similar promotion around Christmas last year and they were offering 25%back in vouchers. I know 3 people that got these vouchers and they were the same as cash.

They also had a 25% voucher refund on electrical item in January and I bought a DVD recorder and got my vouchers in the last statement €45 I think. This was on top of our normal vouchers.

I hope this puts your mind at ease.

MisterAnarchy

byte wrote:

And, after somebody else mentioning lack of S Video output, I've checked mine, and lo and behold, I don't have one either. Just a D socket for connection to a monitor.

There's one on mine,its on the right hand side near the back,yellow connector.

Aquos76 wrote:

I can assure you that you will be getting vouchers equivalent to Cash. Tesco ran a similar promotion around Christmas last year and they were offering 25%back in vouchers. I know 3 people that got these vouchers and they were the same as cash.

Great stuff,that makes me feel much better.
Any idea how long the vouchers are valid for,i.e do they have an expiration date?

Aquos76

MisterAnarchy wrote:

There's one on mine,its on the right hand side near the back,yellow connector.

One on my Mams Laptop also.

rash0001

Thanks Aquos76! Now my mind is at easy!
Yea my laptop also has the S Video on the right hand side same yellow connector.
I found the sound a but bad! so I used 3rd party Realtek drivers. It's better now kind off! Anyone else experimented with that!?
My hard disk is just 29GB! even less than anyone else! I doubt there is a recovery partition there! I wonder where this missing disk space goes! Suppose I format all that will it void the guarantee!?

magnumlady

qwertz wrote:

Recovery partitions are "usually" shown in Disk Manager (under Administrative Tools). Obviously they have no drive letter assigned.

When in windows and you press restore from the PC recovery folder (or ..Windows\SMINST\PersoBck.exe) another drive letter magically appears in 'my computer' but when you click on to see the folders contents this 'Protected by PC Angel' message comes up. and blocks viewing the contents in the folder.

magnumlady

magnumlady wrote:

cant find a way to reduce the 64mb graphics in to get more RAM back. Cannot even find an entry in the BIOS - I don't need 64mb graphics all the time.

Right got the solution. When in BIOS if you press CTRL + F1 button gives you some extra options to change in the BIOS and now I can change the shared AGP memory from 64MB to 16MB

magnumlady wrote:

Something appears to be up with the front panel audio sockets on the tower. If I plug headphones in I cannot hear anything through the headphones and when I plug a microphone into the front mic socket the PC goes ballistic and the screen picture goes liney and then the PC shuts down and turns off! - I have a feeling they are not wired up properly on mine so i will have to sort that malfunction out.

Right I opened up the case and found that the front speaker and mic cables/plug were wired up wrong on the mainboard so i got the mainboard connector details about the mainboard (its a GigaByte board) and put the cables around the right way! - you shouldn't have to be expected to do this on a new PC but I wasn't going to send it back for that fault just for that when I corrected it in 5minutes.

byte

MisterAnarchy wrote:

There's one on mine,its on the right hand side near the back,yellow connector.

Great stuff,that makes me feel much better.
Any idea how long the vouchers are valid for,i.e do they have an expiration date?

Is yours the €599 laptop?

The one I got was the €799 version, which despite what it says on the box, doesn't have the SVideo. It's not mentioned in the manual; and iQon still have not replied to my email.

rash0001

The 599 ones are old which were manufactured in late 2005 for tesco only where as the 799 ones have been manufactured this year. So the casing and everything is different. Seems the 799 may be missing S Video out and the likes but it's better built quality than the 599 ones! The 599 ones are only for Tesco but the 799 ones are sold in all stores selling iQons so the ones at Tesco have only the packaging changed hence the misprint on the box!
The 799 ones are a better buy but as they are not made for tesco hence they are fewer in stock than the 599!

Dermot2468

byte wrote:

It's not mentioned in the manual; and iQon still have not replied to my email.

if iqon reply to your email will you let me know, and do they have to do anything if you complain thanks

MisterAnarchy

byte wrote:

Is yours the €599 laptop?

Yip it is.

byte

rash0001 wrote:

The 599 ones are old which were manufactured in late 2005 for tesco only where as the 799 ones have been manufactured this year. So the casing and everything is different. Seems the 799 may be missing S Video out and the likes but it's better built quality than the 599 ones! The 599 ones are only for Tesco but the 799 ones are sold in all stores selling iQons so the ones at Tesco have only the packaging changed hence the misprint on the box!
The 799 ones are a better buy but as they are not made for tesco hence they are fewer in stock than the 599!

Maybe you're right rash001. Wrong box for the product. Hope the unit is better built as you say!

Still a shame as TV connection would be handy (well, I think it would anyway). I guess there is some sort of apparatus that would allow me to send video to the TV via USB or PCMCIA?

@Dermot: Still no reply. Don't think much of iQon's service.

magnumlady

byte wrote:

Maybe you're right rash001. Wrong box for the product. Hope the unit is better built as you say!

Still a shame as TV connection would be handy (well, I think it would anyway). I guess there is some sort of apparatus that would allow me to send video to the TV via USB or PCMCIA?

@Dermot: Still no reply. Don't think much of iQon's service.

I remember years ago (in the 486DX windows 95 era) having a device called a TV Coder External it was a handy little device and it fitted between the VGA cable and the monitor and had an SVHS & composite video out and you could also record the signal/picture down onto VHS tape - I don't know whether they still do that type of device these days but I looked in PCworld and found plenty of external devices for getting video into the laptop or desktop PC but not any devices for getting video signal out of it!

byte

I did come across a few items that were well over €100. Ah well, it's not the end of the world.

rash0001

yea I did have a look too and the cheapest was €98. Anyway I did have a look in at Tesco Stillorgan and there was a €599 Laptop and 2 Desktops still available but hardly a bargain now as the points are back to normal. I also asked if I can replace a laptop but they said you have to return it and purchase again so we can lose points that way!
Still it isn't much of a loss... I would gladly trade in mine As I said €799 ones were rare so I had to be content with the €599 one!
Can't have the Cake and eat it too!

byte

Ah. So ya have to re-purchase. That's no good!

In Tesco here, it was the other way around. There was loads of the 799 ones but only 1 €599 one!

whatsupdoc?

Whichever way you look at it it was great for the punters
Laptops at half price.
It was also great publicity for Tesco and Iqon got rid of loads of Laptops at the same time.
Just wish they would do another one sooooooon.

esquier

byte wrote:

Still a shame as TV connection would be handy (well, I think it would anyway). I guess there is some sort of apparatus that would allow me to send video to the TV via USB or PCMCIA?/QUOTE]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VGA-converter-adaptor-cable-RCA-S-video-to-TV-display_W0QQitemZ280011516856QQihZ018QQcategoryZ41999QQcmdZViewItem

magnumlady

esquier wrote:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VGA-converter-adaptor-cable-RCA-S-video-to-TV-display_W0QQitemZ280011516856QQihZ018QQcategoryZ41999QQcmdZViewItem

Something like that would require TV output on the VGA socket though which a lot of laptops and PCs wouldnt have. You need to combine the colours and luminance and syc the output to 50hz to view on a UK TV.

esquier

My mistake, you`re absolutely right, I should have read a bit further down the item page.

magnumlady

I never forget years ago I had old IBM laptop (P2 or P3) and some models had video out (a little like earphone socket) and some didn't and on mine where it should have been was blanked off so I hacked away the bit of plastic and guess what was behind it - low and behold a video out socket! - the buggers had blanked it off for some reason but the socket was there alright.

With a download of graphic drivers from the net I managed to get that video out socket working fine. I wonder why they blanked it in the first place?????

superfly

you see this a lot, they make a product with full features and then cripple it so they can sell it at a cheaper price
Graphics cards are a good example as they can be unblocked to full potential
also i have seen printers with built in duplexing but they are disabled so they can sell it at the cheaper price as it is cheaper to leave it in than have a seperate machine for making one without it

shoegirl

superfly wrote:

you see this a lot, they make a product with full features and then cripple it so they can sell it at a cheaper price
Graphics cards are a good example as they can be unblocked to full potential
also i have seen printers with built in duplexing but they are disabled so they can sell it at the cheaper price as it is cheaper to leave it in than have a seperate machine for making one without it

Its not just that, its cheaper to get a standard motherboard that will do 3 or 4 different models (and easier to source replacements) and then modify the (cheaper) plastics for the different models rather than source 2 different boards.

Dell used to do the same when I worked there. One motherboard fitted both models, but they had different plastics and a different bios (and different specs - but the same board).

Dermot2468

so did anyone open it up and see if they could find a s-video output?

byte

Don't think there is any point in opening it up. It's unlikely that one exists on the dearer one.

magnumlady

byte wrote:

Don't think there is any point in opening it up. It's unlikely that one exists on the dearer one.

Whereas it should be the other way round. Normally the more you pay for a laptop the more likely that it will have a video out socket and the cheaper ones dont.

eirebhoy

hothouse wrote: »

I got the 999 laptop

210 vat back
500 tesco vouchers

actual cost 290

I'm just dragging this topic up looking for the spec of this €999 laptop. My ma bought one at the time but it was taken when the house was robbed a few weeks ago. All I need to know is the spec.

Cheers.

neacy69

mcaul wrote: »

advert was in todays Irish Independent

Starts tomorrow

Systems are basic enough - what do you expect for 599 / 799

599 laptop - 299.50 clubcard vouchers back
256mb
40gb hd
15.4 screen
dvdrw combo
modem
wireless card
4usb ports


starts tomorrow

Thats taken from this thread dont know any more sorry

eirebhoy

I think I'm just gonna have to take a wild guess on the specs. I know she definitely didn't get a bag, printer or mouse.

Labrajd

anyone know the processor spec. of the notebooks?

Ruu_Old

This thread is a year old, do not bump old threads.