As I sat in my vehicle waiting for the roads to return to normality it did get me thinking about all the parents who had to find an extra days child care or who had to take a day off work and those waiting for an operation. If the public sector want our sympathy maybe they should reflect what their actions mean to everyday folk.

 I wondered if it would be the usual tat these kind of sales usually have for sale, the kind of stuff more suitable for a car boot sale, maybe a few cables, blank CDs cable ties and the kind of stuff you could find in any old pound shop. Curiosity grabbed me and just before 10.30am I made my way to the eBuyer home page; that was the last time I saw it until around 21.00hrs. Despite several attempts to see what this wonderful £1 sale had to offer I never even managed to get the front page to load, not alone see what I bargain I might have grabbed.

In a second browser window I had the eBuyer facebook page open which was filling up at a rate of a new page a second with angry and disgruntled customers. At one stage I caught a post by eBuyer themselves saying we are sorry some of you are having problems it is due to the unprecedented demand?? Hang on a second, firstly ‘some of you’ more like 99% of us and secondly eBuyer is a technology store, they sell computer parts and they never realised that their servers were not up to 48k people visiting all at once instead eBuyer launched their very own DDoS attack on themselves.

Today the eBuyer facebook page is still filling with angry customers, not just those that never managed to see what fantastic £1 deals there were but customers who completed checkout only to be told today that the item they thought they had grabbed for a pound was out of stock. So what now for eBuyer? They still have 48,000 facebook likes, google will love all those likes and that is 48,000 people eBuyer can advertise to with a single post. They have a few thousand disgruntled customers to contend with but that should be easy to sort. I would expect to see a more realistic sale announced before Christmas, probably a 25% - 30% sale.

We are all very forgiving when it comes to bargains and we all have short memories so I dare say those complaining will be straight back looking for a bargain if or when the next sale is announced. Scam, Disaster or Great Marketing Ploy?

I made an offer of £60 delivered which he accepted, it arrived exactly as he had described, brand new in original packaging not even opened to inspect, a £110 case for £60 so I was off to a good start. I did do a little research before making my offer, the lights glowing are a gimmick agreed but this case does have a lot of appealing features, the main one for me being the fan controller. Watch the youtube video above for the full list of features, personally I am glad he liked the white one as I think the black is much better.

I was hoping to always shop at John Lewis after that experience and with their “never knowingly under sold” price promise I thought it would be a good idea to put it to the test. For those unsure what this is it is a price match promise, there are terms and conditions that apply but basically it is a promise to match anyone else’s price as long as it is in stock and that it isn’t an Internet only deal. I was after an LG belt drive washing machine, I had found one at £599 that I liked with an online company that also had a store 50 miles away. The same machine was in John Lewis priced at £750 so I filled in their online form and waited for an answer.

I received an email back with a code to use stating that they were willing to match the price, great I would give them a call and make arrangements. On making the call to place my order I discovered that first you have to pay the full John Lewis asking price of £750.00 and then when the item arrives you call them back and the money is refunded to your account within 7 days. On top of that they could not give me a delivery date, just that it would be at least 7 days but within 14. I asked the usual questions like you would but it was like banging your head against a wall. I called the original company who had it listed for £599 and a sale was made and the machine delivered less than 48 hours later.

I guess John Lewis don’t want to make the price match too easy to obtain but they might wish to look at it being called a “Never Knowingly under-sold” promise. Surely now that I have pointed out to them a competitor with a cheaper price John Lewis should reduce their price accordingly or it makes a mockery of the never knowingly statement?

I have a feeling I am going to remember the next James Bond girl, well I shall remember her face but probably not the name, Bérénice Marlohe. French actress Bérénice is set to play the part of Severin in Skyfall for which filming commenced yesterday in London with a release date set for November 2012.

One thing that really bugs me though is the status of some people, posts that others make and I ask myself why? Looking through today, one of my contacts has commented “I am so p*ss*d off” it goes without saying that several people have then posted “are you okay“, “hope you are okay” and “why what’s up?” – Then the same person who states that they are p*ss*d off comments “I can’t say on here” - Well I have to ask why mention it in the first place?

Another classic from a few days back, it was posted at 2.00 in the morning “I am so annoyed I can’t get to sleep“… Well try turning your phone or PC off and stop checking your facebook page and writing to it, lay down and close your eyes that might just help.

You have to also remember that when purchasing new the price is actually £133.29 + VAT at  £26.66 one could argue that as the VAT has already been paid by the original purchaser the item only really has a value of £133.29. Surely the minimum discount given to anything second hand has to be a figure that exceeds the current rate of VAT? When the seller was made an offer by another 3rd party he politely refused saying he purchased it just 3 months ago for £180.00, maybe he did but the fact remains you can purchase new today for a smidge under £160 – come on people, when listing classifieds for sale please get a grip.

Real Hi Fi enthusiasts like to upgrade their equipment on a regular basis, they look after their equipment and when it comes to selling it you would have a pretty hard job telling it apart from brand new. The original storage boxes and packaging are included most of the time and even extended warranties.  Because of this the original plan was to build my own PC using all second hand parts. The downside is expectations when it comes to second hand PC parts, some of these sellers might look after their equipment like a new born baby but the price they are wishing to achieve is sometimes less than 20% below retail value.

I have read a lot of forum posts where people rush out and buy new PC’s and parts without deciding what they want out of their new PC. I have seen people paying extra for an Intel i7 CPU over the i5 and spending £100 on a graphics card when they say they want the machine for gaming. For those unsure why this is a bad decision; the i7 offers no improvement over an i5 when it comes to gaming. It would be a much wiser decision to purchase the cheaper i5 and get an improved graphics card with the money you save. So what are my requirements – VERY occasional game playing, running my home accounts, surfing the Internet and creating the odd web site. I don’t need mass storage as I have a NAS and I don’t watch movies on my PC as they also get stored on the NAS and streamed to a WDTV unit.

My time scale to complete this build is Christmas 2011 and I have set out my shopping list of what I shall be purchasing second hand and what I shall purchase new off the shelf. I have decided that the Case, PSU, DVD Rom, RAM, Graphics Card, Fans and Cooler can be second hand. The Motherboard, CPU and Hard Drive are all going to be new. Allow me to explain my reasoning in a little more detail:

Case – I want a medium to full size case, I really do not care what it looks like as in design, what can go wrong on a case, it is just cosmetic right? As long as I get one without too many scratches and dinks it is just going to be the home for the bits and bobs inside.

PSU – Before my research I would have gone for a cheap one, I now realise how important a good quality power supply must be. My reason for considering a 2^nd hand one is the amount of people I have seen upgrading to full spec gaming machines who realise that their PSU requires an upgrade. Ideally I will be looking for a 750w PSU under a year old, I would consider a slightly less powerful one as I will only be running one DVD drive, 2 HDD and one graphics card.

DVD Rom – New or 2^nd hand, it isn’t going to be used to play movies, just load software when I purchase it.

RAM – I feel comfortable that RAM given with long warranty periods and even lifetime guarantees will be fine if purchased used, again I will watch out for reasonable priced 2^nd hand units if not I will purchase new. Because of my CPU and Mobo combination I will be looking at DDR3 probably Ripjaws.

Graphics Card – I don’t want to spend more than £100 on this, there are so many people selling GPU’s as they are hardcore gamers who must have the latest and they are forever upgrading.

Fans and Cooler – I am going for an after market CPU cooler, I have found a guy who reviews them for a magazine, they get sent to him for a review and he then sells them. I don’t think I am going to ever overclock, I would like the option that I can but we are talking very minor IF I do.

Hard Drive – Well I have toyed with the idea of an SSD boot drive, I have been a little alarmed that reliability seems to be a bit of an issue. Not sure what route to go still yet, I have a spare 1TB Western Digital Black so I might use that.

CPU – Intel i5 2500k too many reasons to list why I want this chip, reviews are excellent, it offers the most bang per buck and it is the heart of your computer so I am going for the best I can afford. I might have got a second hand one but closed classifieds and used asking prices are ridiculous. People wanting just 20% less than I can get one new for and you don’t know for sure if it has been over clocked and pushed beyond it’s limits.

Mobo – Wow so much research has gone into this and I am not 100% sure which one to go for. I have a sneaky feeling it will be an ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3. Probably overkill for my immediate needs but it has excellent reviews and only £30 more than my second choice board which has a lot less features.

I will file this under the category of Building Your First PC so stay tuned if you would like to follow my progress