Hardware: where to buy in Jhb/Pretoria area?

electrov

Hi

Having been out of the country for 8 years, I'm a bit in the dark as to where is the best place to buy computer equipment. Are there some good online shops, or are the best ones still "offline"?

In particular I'm actually looking for a replacement charger for my laptop, but I'd thought I'd ask the more generic question so it is potentially a bit more useful for other people too :)

Thanks!

Elyaradine

I've mainly been buying my parts from:
Takealot
ComputersOnly
Rebeltech

I've never had to buy a laptop charger though...

Fengol

I can highly recommend ComputersOnly

bischonator

I know this may be a little 'main stream' but Matrix in Edenvale is brilliant.
In the past we had a dealers license with a whole sale importer and I still default to Matrix.
The markup is 10-15% of the import price however, the 1 (sometimes 2) year refund swap policy is brilliant.
If you have a good relationship with them they will swap goods without an invoice, hold items, special orders etc.

bischonator

M.Edenvale also has good technical support. I've been fixing, building and breaking pc's since the late 80's and Matrix can still spot things I've missed.

Elyaradine

My experience with Matrix has been a mixed bag. There were guys in the one out near Eastgate that were super knowledgeable, and because they liked my case (it was a perspex one at the time, which was quite rare) they were happy to clean it and do a service for free. But at another branch at Cresta, when I took some faulty RAM modules in, they said they couldn't find any problems with it, despite only ever running benchmarking programs to stress-test it. (I had to bring along memtest86 and run it there to show the faulty address in one of the modules, and then they still charged me for their looking for problems with it.)

Gazza_N

Desktop-wise, I've just received an order of a bunch of components from Rebeltech after my graphics card keeled over and died, and I was very pleasantly surprised with their range, prices and service. They came highly recommended, and I'm happy to pass that on.

Gibbo

I always check NIVO for price comparison, otherwise often use Takealot

Nitrogen

I second RebelTech, they have consistently lower prices than most other places.
You can also try loot.co.za, Free courier delivery and I found my monitor there for R800 cheaper than even RebelTech.

vintar

Has anyone ever bought from evetech? Any thoughts about them?

Edit: Just to add that I can't find a cheaper price anywhere for the rig that I've ordered and I will pay for it soon unless I hear an overwhelming attitude of crapness towards them

electrov

Thanks for all the suggestions :) Unfortunately for me, despite the multitude of options presented, it seems that a replacement laptop charger is still insanely expensive!

creative630

Have you tried looking at Ebay? Its not local, but I bought and shipped a laptop charger from the UK for about R400 total (R300 for the charger and R50-100 for the shipping and tax). The ones from china are usually 1/2 the price but slightly more risky (could be worth the gamble at R150-200).

vintar

I received my new rig from evetech today. The service was good and turn around time was quick. Computer was assembled, windows installed and tested. It was basically plug and play. Gotta love SSD's and how quick they boot up!

electrov

I ended up buying the laptop charger from Matrix as they had the best price and when I went into their shop (in Northgate) I found their customer service to be very good :)