Rock computers (U.K)

I recently posted a thread in the recommend-me-a-notebook section of the forum and people came back with the suggestion of the Rock Xtreme 620 (their version of the Clevo M860TU it appears)

However, I've done a little research and there seem to be some worrying reports of very bad customer service since the takeover by Stone last year. Does anyone know what the situation is now and if everything has been solved?

They seem to have the best price for the M860TU in the U.K and are a larger brand (I had heard of them) but I don't want to throw my money away for constant problems and bad service.

 

They are considered generally very supportive reseller, who supplies their laptop with 3 year warranty as standard. Also they have a nice forum, register an account there, they are helpful there, as the influencial figures of Rock keeps eye on it; if you have any problem, Ben@Rock will help you.

Their forum address:

http://Rockforum.co.uk


However, they are helpful seemingly if you only contact them via forum, ( PM Ben, he's your man), I've recently heard pretty bad things about their telephone support.

When you consider Rock, though, you may wish to, bear in mind that they never were price competitive, they are considered premium brand even amongst the resellers, offering supposingly superior services in return.



Novatech is another UK reseller, very reliable; I'd recommend them over Rock, though their delivery is sometimes slow, but they can often cut few hundred pounds off Rock's price wih similar spec.

However, Novatech has as of now discontinued M860TU, due to the fact a new replacement model is coming very soon, will be listed by the end of this week (M865TU with 260m GTX? its very hushed up atm), so if you are seriously thinking of getting M860TU, then its probably worth it to wait until this weekend, cos M860 has been around for a year now...

Their M860 is renamed X70, about up coming replacement:

http://forum.novatech.co.uk/showthread.php?p=78476#post78476

Keep an eye here, this is where the replacement will pop up:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/ranges.html?t=nb&c=gaming

 

Its been around since september, 7 months.

 

It was announced in CeBit last year.

 

Salkin, you might also want to read this if you haven't yet:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264311

 

i can highly recommend the Nexus/m860tu from Kobalt Computers in the uk.
like you i done my homework first checking out all the competition.
i started off with an alienware m15x that lasted 19 days until it went back for a refund.
when your spending anything upto £2000 for a laptop this is a must.
i then searched on here for as much info as i could find on uk resellers. and everywhere i looked it pointed to Kobalt.
also its not often you ring a company and you get to speak to the managing director or technical director for advice (take note AW).
nuff said.

 

I bought my machine from Rock and had no problems at all, they handled a fairly late change in the spec without drama.

I also found the Rock forum useful as it let me ask a warranty related question before purchase in a definitive and public way. (changing out the memory and fitting an SSD did involve disturbing some warranty security stickers)

 

Does anyone have any idea what this replacement machine is based on?

 

i do neil but i cant tell you, sorry.

 

somebody's under NDA?

 

maybe a trip to the gadget show at birmingham nec in april might be an idea (if you know what i mean).

 

Thanks, already had a look. I'll probably wait for a week to see what the novatech announcment is but frankly atm the m860tu is more or less perfect for my budget so not sure if any new ones will be relevant to me

 

The "new" chassis is literally an 860TU with support for GTX 260M - will be available in the UK from us (Kobalt) and Novatech and should be shipping in 3-4 weeks

 

I heard that it will also have support for 2.0 Ghz Quad cores or is that not going to happen in the UK.

 

Well, then how much more expensive will it be than the old one? No need for specifics just 'More', 'some more', or 'a lot more' would be interesting. As well as how much more hot/noisy will it be (roughly)? If you cant answer, whatever but it's good to hear progress

edit: also kudos for keeping an eye out on threads about your competitors and putting your info out there. Good marketting

 

I'd be amazed if it was any more expensive and other things should be the same relative to different CPU and GFX card support.

 

Given the new NV graphics seem cheaper, I wouldn't be surprised if the base config with 260 is about 1000 quid.

 

Novatech have said (on their forum) that they will have the 860TU with GTS160 and GTX260 on the site by the end of the week. So I guess Rock and Kobalt will too. And Cizmo have it on the site already. So hopefully we can get a handle on the UK/Euro pricing soon.

The GTS160M looks to be just a re-badge of the 9800M GTS. So I guess that will be the same price as before. And the GTX260M will be more expensive. So I don't think the base 260 config will be £1000

 

Right now a M860TU with P8400 and 9600M GT costs just over £1k (on Kobalt), I seriously doubt that a newer GPU will cost less than that.

But in saying that, XoticPc is selling the M860TU with the 260M for $1,400USD. History has proven that in the UK the price is usually a good £200+ more than what you can get it in the US for but we can always be hopeful.

 

9600m and M860TU are two of rather oxymoron terms...

 

Sorry for being a little vague but the answer to your questions is "the same" to "some more" on all fronts!

I've actually been caught up with CeBIT and what we took to show for the last month or so, just happens that I logged on for the first time in ages and saw Kobalt mentioned

A quick point on the US prices vs UK ones there are several reasons for the price differences:

- exchange rate - this time last year you could get $1.98 to the £, now it's under $1.5 so as all components are ultimately purchsed in US dollars the UK prices have all gone up recently

- sales tax isn't included on most US prices so you always have to add UK VAT onto them

- component prices are always cheaper in the US, through both distribution and to end users