Tech Support
I've had a terrible time of it lately with my computer.
For several months, it has been intermittently rebooting, with no apparent cause. To begin with, I thought it may have been the graphics card overheating - crashes were more common when I was watching a movie or playing a game. So I bought a new graphics card. Alas, it didn't work in my system - every time I tried to switch the computer on, it would power up for a few seconds and then power down. So I found another graphics card of the same spec as my previous one, and tried that.
It seemed fine for a few days, and then the crashes returned. The graphics card was clearly not overheating, and the crashes were becoming more frequent. I went through all my components and tried to isolate the causative component. Eventually I narrowed it down to the motherboard or the CPU... on the balance of probabilities, I thought it was more likely to be the motherboard.
So, I bought a new motherboard. Alas, my previous motherboard was old and arthritic, and had only PC-133 RAM... I couldn't find a new motherboard that took such old memory, so I also had to buy new memory.
A few hours with a screwdriver led to my newly installed motherboard and memory booting up quite happily, but it would only judge my processor (an Athlon 2200) as an Athlon 1500. Huh!
It was far more stable however, and so I hooked up my new graphics card. Instant power-down. Curse you, technology demons!
So, I bought a new power-pack (my second in about three months), and the new graphics card worked. Huzzah!
I had already replaced the powerpack a few months ago to fix an unrelated problem, so I hadn't considered that as a likely cause of the problem... so, problem solved, although I bought myself £200 of equipment in order to fix it.
Except, no... the front-side bus of the motherboard was set as 100... for my processor, it should be 133. Ramp it up to what it should be, and bam... instant crashes are back. So, begrudgingly I shell out for another CPU. It arrived yesterday, installed beautifully, and viola - for the first time in months, I seem to have a working computer!
Of course, these things come in spurts... and unsurprisingly, as soon as I had a working computer my monitor (a 19" IIyama) decides that the peer pressure is too much and it shuts down and refuses to start up again.
You can imagine the frustration! With the new CPU, I'd already spent £300 in order to get my computer fixed, and now it looked like another £1-200 just to replace a perfectly good monitor. But no!
I called up Iiyama's tech support, and they were phenomenal. A ten minute conversation arranged for them to pick up my broken monitor so they could swap in a replacement of 'equal or better spec'. A small ray of light in my darkened pit of painful expenses.
The sad thing is, I'm thoroughly delighted with their tech support. Why's that bad, I hear you ask? It's bad because, in an ideal world, that's the kind of tech support I would expect. But over the past three years, Iiyama is the only tech support that hasn't had me spitting blood and swearing after a conversation with one of their phone operators. Blueyonder are especially bad - every issue you raise is always your fault, even when it's demonstrably not. My mother was told that the reason that she couldn't connect to the internet was that she downloaded and installed a Java Runtime Environment and that they couldn't help. (The real reason was that the modem had broken).
So, anyway... Iiyama are great. They provide excellent monitors at reasonable prices, and their tech support is great. I am very pleased, and very glad that I've recommended them to so many of my friends and relatives over the years.
For several months, it has been intermittently rebooting, with no apparent cause. To begin with, I thought it may have been the graphics card overheating - crashes were more common when I was watching a movie or playing a game. So I bought a new graphics card. Alas, it didn't work in my system - every time I tried to switch the computer on, it would power up for a few seconds and then power down. So I found another graphics card of the same spec as my previous one, and tried that.
It seemed fine for a few days, and then the crashes returned. The graphics card was clearly not overheating, and the crashes were becoming more frequent. I went through all my components and tried to isolate the causative component. Eventually I narrowed it down to the motherboard or the CPU... on the balance of probabilities, I thought it was more likely to be the motherboard.
So, I bought a new motherboard. Alas, my previous motherboard was old and arthritic, and had only PC-133 RAM... I couldn't find a new motherboard that took such old memory, so I also had to buy new memory.
A few hours with a screwdriver led to my newly installed motherboard and memory booting up quite happily, but it would only judge my processor (an Athlon 2200) as an Athlon 1500. Huh!
It was far more stable however, and so I hooked up my new graphics card. Instant power-down. Curse you, technology demons!
So, I bought a new power-pack (my second in about three months), and the new graphics card worked. Huzzah!
I had already replaced the powerpack a few months ago to fix an unrelated problem, so I hadn't considered that as a likely cause of the problem... so, problem solved, although I bought myself £200 of equipment in order to fix it.
Except, no... the front-side bus of the motherboard was set as 100... for my processor, it should be 133. Ramp it up to what it should be, and bam... instant crashes are back. So, begrudgingly I shell out for another CPU. It arrived yesterday, installed beautifully, and viola - for the first time in months, I seem to have a working computer!
Of course, these things come in spurts... and unsurprisingly, as soon as I had a working computer my monitor (a 19" IIyama) decides that the peer pressure is too much and it shuts down and refuses to start up again.
You can imagine the frustration! With the new CPU, I'd already spent £300 in order to get my computer fixed, and now it looked like another £1-200 just to replace a perfectly good monitor. But no!
I called up Iiyama's tech support, and they were phenomenal. A ten minute conversation arranged for them to pick up my broken monitor so they could swap in a replacement of 'equal or better spec'. A small ray of light in my darkened pit of painful expenses.
The sad thing is, I'm thoroughly delighted with their tech support. Why's that bad, I hear you ask? It's bad because, in an ideal world, that's the kind of tech support I would expect. But over the past three years, Iiyama is the only tech support that hasn't had me spitting blood and swearing after a conversation with one of their phone operators. Blueyonder are especially bad - every issue you raise is always your fault, even when it's demonstrably not. My mother was told that the reason that she couldn't connect to the internet was that she downloaded and installed a Java Runtime Environment and that they couldn't help. (The real reason was that the modem had broken).
So, anyway... Iiyama are great. They provide excellent monitors at reasonable prices, and their tech support is great. I am very pleased, and very glad that I've recommended them to so many of my friends and relatives over the years.
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