Novatech Business Ltd Portsmouth

[laserblazer]

Does anyone buy from these people? Are they any good?

[CyberNerd]

The kit they sold us (4 or 5yrs ago) was absolute rubbish, computers overheated PSU's died, mobos overheated and died.

 

They may be ok for buying branded kit, but I wouldn't trust their cheap homebuilds

[simpsonj]

My current PC is a bare bundle from Novatech, and its running Server 2008 just fine, the laptop I bought from them is still going strong 4 years down the line. But we've had issues with their iFlames (one dodgy memory stick) and they don't WoL which is a touch annoying. So I'm not 100% convinced by their own branded stuff, but their bare bones bundles are pretty good value.

[localzuk]

Convenient. I asked basically the same thing yesterday - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/82991-novatech.html

[aerospacemango]

In June this year, I completely rebuilt my home PC with Novatech stuff.

 

Quad-core, new MoBo, 8gb RAM, 1tb HDD..... All is well, and the system comfortably runs W7 64-bit

 

I have no complaints about them at all!

 

Went for standard delivery, which i think was 5-7 working days, and generally it all turned up 1-2 days later! Very very good delivery times!

[Jawloms]

I have been dealing with Novatech for a number of years and really cannot fault them at all! My account manager is incredibly helpful. He does what I want, when I want and I have never received a phone call from them trying to sell me something I didn't ask for. Exceptional company who I would recommend to anyone.

 

(No I don't work for them, have never worked for them, and am not on commision for referrals )

[GREED]

They have a mixed rep in the area. Schools do buy from them and they are decent enough. I have heard terrible stories about them, but at the same time they are a local supplier, they ain't Dell/HP or the likes. Cheaper too.

[Mako]

Yes I use them and yes, they're fantastic.

 

Thing to note - I use them for personal purchases, which may distort the opinion in which you might want to use them. This is because I've never purchased any of the complete hardware, that is their desktop or laptops, so I cannot rate the build quality or any such features like that.

 

What I have done, though, is spent perhaps a total of £2000 with them. My entire home setup is with parts bought from Novatech, and the level of service is next to none. It nearly always arrives the next day. If there's a problem, they do sort it. They're british, so no indian call centres. I have not had a single fault with any piece of kit I've bought from there, my PC runs like a dream.

 

I did once purchase a 3rd party VGA cooler from them. Upon fitting it, the card died within an hour. I explained the situation to them, and while they were of the opinion of "Oh, you've tampered with your card, we probably can't do anything about that", they accepted to take it back anyway. They explained the situation to ASUS on my behalf, and within a few weeks I had a brand new VGA (which was actually a slightly better model than the one I sent back).

 

But for schools who want to buy whole systems, this review will probably be useless to you unless you're planning on building your own computers.

 

Edit: Forgot to mention that their prices are very reasonable, and more-often-than-not cheaper than other suppliers.

Edited September 29, 2011 by Mako

[maark]

Bought a load of stations off them - had no problems - good price and very professional.

Sent us a test model and custom built/imaged machines within a short time scale.

[laserblazer]

Convenient. I asked basically the same thing yesterday - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/82991-novatech.html

 

Sorry about that, I wonder why I didn't get any similar posts message?

[joe90bass]

Started using them in July this year, no complaints so far. We have a few PCs from them and bought a dot-hill SAN via them.

[glennda]

Not purchased computers from them but got a whole load of other bits and they've been pretty good.

 

For desktops i use stone

[Pyroman]

Used them for the last 4 batches of machines we've purchased, not had a problem with them, one power supply died and a new part was sent out the next day. Simon Mews is my contact there and he's ace. Just send him a spec and what sort of case etc you want and a quote's there within a few hours.

[sonofsanta]

Check my reply in t'other thread for a fuller answer, but in short: about half our network is Novatech, really nice builds, superb price, issues are chiefly with HDD and PSU but they send replacements out free and they provided us with 4 extra units FOC to use as hot swaps under the terms of the warranty.

 

And, for the record, they WoL fine. May be because I specifically requested Asus mobo's though.

 

As with Pyroman, Simon Mewes is our account manager - bit of a busy chap so hard to get hold of some times, but he did buy us all steak once, so I'll let him off!

[mthomas08]

I have been dealing with Novatech for a number of years and really cannot fault them at all! My account manager is incredibly helpful. He does what I want, when I want and I have never received a phone call from them trying to sell me something I didn't ask for. Exceptional company who I would recommend to anyone.

 

(No I don't work for them, have never worked for them, and am not on commision for referrals )

 

We would have agreed with this about 2 years ago, but the last 18 months has been hard to contact our account manager. We look forward to being able to contact him in the new financial year though....

 

As for the Kit - you get what you pay for not dog cheap but not expensive. We are actually looking at Dell laptops because we have been impressed server wise. And just want to see if we can get better support and laptops/reliability etc.

 

Our 2-3 year old laptops seem to be struggling from Novatech, the 3 year old ones are becoming very unreliable - over heating causing random shutdowns, other motherboard issues causing shutdowns. Desktops though we have had a few PSU's blow lately.