hmm this of all topics is a sore one. i think il get heavy on it wen i get to work cause there is alot to be said on this topic
ok at work now
I dont know how much room you have for honesty in your article, if you have permission to be honest about business in Trinidad, then you have a big article here.
I will tackle both questions at the same time.
Firstly, i will mention that the sale of technology in Trinidad largely depends on the ignorance of the general populace, to appropriate pricing and much more importantly, on what is actually a good computer/component.
At some point in Trinidad, resellers and system builders decided to sell PC's not by price performance categories, but solely by a price category.
They obviously took notice of what how much money Trinidadians typically would spend on a pc and secondly on what was the maximum they would spend on a pc and then instead of doing the correct and honourable thing of bringing the best price performance to the Trinidadian market, they decided to sell PCs that brought them maximum revenue aka markup, with little to NO regard for the price/performance VALUE of these machines.
Case in point, the average spent on a machine is between 5 and 8 thousand dollars for a desktop, while laptops(universally a poor choice for price performance anyway) start at about 6500 and range to 15 k.
NONE of the machines offered in these price ranges are worth anywhere near there price tag.
Before the era of cheap core 2 duo, low budget celerons, semprons and the occasional athlon were sold to the masses as the "to have" brains of a machine. Again, praying on the ignorant of the masses. The resellers and system builders do NOTHING to attempt to enlighten the masses as to what constitutes a reaalllll value for your money machine. They are only concerned with mark up, attempting to add no value at all to their sale. A machine that cost them maybe 2000 tt tops, they would retail to the public for between 4 and 6 thousand dollars, not even throwing in great support and on going customer care and service, just rip and run.
These so called "value pcs" that many companies sell are anything BUT value.
Iam not only harping on the system builders, because the Resellers do the same thing, and because of brand recognition, the ignorant masses tend to consider a Dell or hp or whatever brand, a better buy than a built machine, simply because of brand recognition.
Often times not knowing and many times not caring that they are being ripped off simply because of a brand name, the average customer would pay upwards of 6 thousand dollars for a machine that the enthusiast knows should probably cost less than 3 thousand dollars.
As for good places to buy locally...
There are places that you can find reasonable prices on certain components like hard drives and ram and a few other small things
as for local purchases of Dells and the lot, i would have to admit that computer services, out of chaguanas has some of the absolute best pricing on dell machines, there prices are quite near to the actuall price of a dell, not to sure how they are affording to do that, but it is being done. Also diamond systems is also worthy of mention on the dell front.
BUT PLEASE NOTE i am merely saying that their prices are near to that of Dells actual prices, i am CERTAINLY not saying that what they are offering serves as a good price performance machine, as we all know, we can build far far far better machines for the same money they would spend on a dell.
What system builder could i recommend locally? None, and you all have yourselves to blame for that.
Both the customer, for not doing adequate research on a purchase. People spend time deciding on a fridge, bed, car,insurance policy
but would not do the same for a computer purchase and secondly the system builders who allowed greed to be their driving factor and not strive to compete with larger companies buy selling BETTER machines than them at a better price and to make added revenue via adding service value with extended customer care, like a sort of geek squad scenario.
So i cant call a specific name for a local system builder unless i say maybe trini tech squad and TechEase simply because they offer extended customer care, but as for the other system builders, they ARE going to sell you low end parts to keep prices "Low" *taken with grain of salt* but unless the system builder has a comprehensive customer care service, then you are far better off taking those sales online.
Oh wait silly me how could i forget
99% OF LAPTOP SALES IN TRINIDAD ARE A COMPLETEEEEEEEEEEEEEE RIP OFF!!!
the mark up on laptops is so atrocious! and worse yet it is obsceneeee mark up on INFERIOR LAPTOPS!!!!
they dont even tryyyyyyyyyy to offer you a good machine for anything under 13 thousand dollars!!
13 thousand dollars is the MINIMUM you can pay to get a half way decent laptop from these damn people!! sickening!!
LAPTOP CITY ARE CRIMINALS!!
