Affordable Computers

Affordable Computers

3 clicks to start the buying process.

Notes

The Affordable Computers page was actually rather ugly: an unattractive blue, orange, and gray color scheme and rounded pop-up-style buttons.  Aesthetics aside, this visual gook and a banner add took up so much space that, on a 600X800 pixel resolution monitor like mine, not much room was left for content.  Pretty much, to just find out what is on a particular page a person with my resolution has to scroll down.  Every time.  Affordable repeated a text ad for their refurbished Dell notebooks and “Pentium Laptops For _Under $300 ! !” before the content section of every internal page.

If one goes to the Affordable Computers home page looking for a desktop, one has to know to click on systems (not too hard via process of elimination, plus the ugly embossed button for systems had a drawing of a desktop personal computer in it.  At that point one could click to buy their special and begin the buying process (as one could have on their home page to buy a laptop).  This is two clicks to start to buy the desktop they want to sell you.  If one wasn’t interested in just buying their single special, one could follow fairly noticeable links above the “special” to such categories as “Pentium III Systems.” Here, in this category, they had a couple of computers for sale.  Well, not quite literally.  The “Reconditioned Hewlett Packard Vectra VLi DeskTop” had a Stock Status of “1 Left” and the other computer listed, the “Dell Dimension XPS T700R MidTower,” was out of stock.  It takes four clicks to fet to one of these and be in the buying process.

Affordable Computers used to sell only what they had in stock.  New to them (and advertized as such on the web site) is “Custom Windows System.” The web interface (or possibly the entire product) appears to be handled by a different company for them: the URL changed to http://i145.varnet.org/ and the whole layout of the website changed (for the better).

no pricing information on the components themselves on the customization page, although the total price was instantly updated in a frame on the left. (At least 4 clicks needed to start this customization/buying process.)  It isn’t immediately apparent one should click in the left-hand frame (where the price is updated) on the continue button in order to move along to actually buying the PC.  A bigger problem is that when I clicked on that button (under an updated system price of more than a thousand dollars) it loaded a page which said my shopping cart was empty.  Apparently it requires cookies to be accepted.  The help buttons also required that the users computer allow JavaScript Pop-up windows.

Even if there was only one thing with information, you'd have to click in the pop-up window to bring up another window with the information you wanted. These links in the pop-up window also were blue-purple on a dark-blue-purple background: extremely difficult to read. When you clicked on one and the other pop-up window opened, you then have to resize the window to see the whole thing. The information on each component was complete and had a nice photo. However, none of it would be of any use to a novice. The base system was listed in the options with each configuration even though it was a dropdown list with only one option, itself.

Problems

• They seemed to repeat a graphic of a monitor on an old-style horizontal box (with the note “Monitor Not Included”) for more than one different system.  Their pictures in general lacked something in quality, too dark or not enough detail I guess.

Good Features

• The description was not bad at all.  Fairly informative, short, and straightforward and upbeat without too many adjectives.
• The customization ordering part is really quite good.  A series of drop-down menues offering a fair range of products Not priced, but the price updated on the side.

The Vectra line of desktop computers has been a prominent name in computing since Hewlett Packard first released them.  Great for both home and small business these systems come loaded with all the features you want and expect from Hewlett Packard.  A genuine Intel Pentium III 550MHz processor, 128MB of RAM and a large 8.4GB Hard Drive assure that this system will be valued for years to come.  So get your hands on one of these and you won’t be disappointed.