"I was leery of ordering from a company other than Dell or some other mainstream brand. I read some good, some not-so-good reviews about ABS, and decided to give it a try. In the last 9 months, I have been exceedingly pleased with this company. My system arrived as ordered, everything worked wonderfully, and I didn't have any problems that I needed to call tech support until recently.
My CD-R stopped burning mysteriously, and after trying seemingly everything myself, I called tech support. After listening to my description, he immediatly offered to send me a new drive. I waited about 7 days from the time I mailed my old one out, and got the latest & greatest model - not the slower one I had sent in.
People complaining about their return policy simply didn't read it before ordering. READ IT! Know what this, or any other company's return policies are before ordering anything. This way you won't have unpleasant surprises. I checked the web site before ordering. Everything is clearly spelled out.
I am very pleased with my ABS computer and would order again."

"I based my decision on buying based on magazine & your ratings.Since i'm not a computer geek these played an important role.This was a great experience- cannot believe how easy. purchased a Inspiration 1000-512mb/80gb,cd burner,dvd rom @790.00.Best price I found.ABS shipped on time,packaged crrectly,got what I ordered,set-up was easy because of chart& manual,started up-no problems-no war-stories--has to be a "10""

"I'm a home user looking for a system under $1000. A magazine review got me thinking about smaller companies like ABS and away from the Dell's etc. I poured over many, many companies and their systems and kept coming back to ABS. I went with the Sensation 1300. (The configuration prior to the one they offer now.)

Ordering online was no problem. A nice touch is how you can track your order through all phases, building, testing, etc. It took about eight days before it was shipped Fed-Ex.

The shipping charge was $110.00 which is excessive. When I placed my order I had to take about five minutes to think about proceeding. The high shipping charge was almost a deal breaker. I'm glad it wasn't.

The machine is wonderful. Easy set up, everything works, not one problem. The Labtec speaker packaging was missing the AC adapter. I e-mailed ABS and never recieved a reply. After two days I called customer service, they answered right away and sent the adapter.

I'm very happy with the product and the price. I don't know how the tech support is because I (thankfully) haven't had to call. But the product seems solid as does the company. Highly recomended. "

"The computer arrived with all hardware. They had not installed network drivers or monitor drivers. All software ordered with the computer had not been installed except for XP.

When asked about not installing the software and drivers they said that they couldn't open the hardware boxes or people would think that they were getting used software. How come this isn't an issue with any other computer seller. Most people make images with everything installed, or an installation CD that doesn't require them to open the OEM packages. But apparently ABS knows nothing about how to configure and install computers.

I buy 5 - 10 PC's a year and will not ever buy from them again."

"As with my system purchased from ABS my recent memory upgrade shipped promptly at the best price around. Top notch service. "

"I purchased what everyone could relate to as the "Dream Machine". The salesman, Eddie was very easy to work with and made the process very easy and pleasurable. I was really impressed with the communication during the system build. They consulted with me to make sure I got the best performance possible. They made recommendations and changes that increase the already awesome performance of the machine. I will use this company again and again, and refer everyone I know. If you want a great deal and a great system, call Eddie. You will be glad you did. ABS you rock!

Thanks,

D M"

"Ongoing Saga with ABS

Update 1: I ordered an Ultimate X4 system with these specs:

Cooler Master ATC-710-GX2 Grey Aluminum Case
Vented side panel (window)
Blue Cold Cathode Light Kit
450W Antec PSU
Intel P4 800 MHz FSB Mobo
Intel P4 3.0 GHz 800 FSB CPU
Zalman Pure Copper CPU Cooler
Galaxy Blue LED 80mm fan
1 GB Corsair PC3200 RAM
Dual 80 GB Seagate SATA Drives in RAID-0 config
Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB
Leadtek TV/FM Multimedia Card
Lite-on 16x DVD/48x CD-ROM Drive
Lite-on 52x24x52 CD-RW Drive
NEC 19" Flat CRT Monitor
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Microsoft Internet Keyboard
XP Professional
Microsoft Works
Half-Life/Age of Empires II Bundle (Free!!!)
Mouse Pad
1 yr. Tech Support

With those specs, I called ABS and was transferred to Carlos (ext. 152) within a minute. 5 mins. later, I happily discovered that on the X4, a RAID configuration is standard. Typing this brings to mind a comparison of all the companies I researched (almost exact same configs, after shipping costs):

Alienware: approx. $2900
Velocity Micro: approx. $2850
Voodoo: approx. $3600
Falcon Northwest: approx. $3100
Dell: (without RAID) approx. $2600

ABS: $2442.50

That made the difference with me, along side Carlos, who helped me through everything and is the nicest sales rep I've ever dealt with, and unlike Alienware sales, Carlos knew what he was talking about and selling (he even explained each type of RAID configuration, which was unneccessary, but showed his competence). If the rest of the order goes this smooth, I will continue to buy from ABS. I'll update later.

-------------------------------------------------
Update: 5-29-03

It shipped today, pushing the seven day max limit, but the online system has kept up to date every day, to my surprise. Hope to get it on Monday, and another update soon."

"Super fast shipping. Wonderful company. Highly recommended. "

"Sweet PC at a very sweet price. I shopped around quite a bit to get exactly what I wanted. I looked at Falcon-NW, Dell, Alienware, Ibuypower.com, etc. No one was able to beat ABS's price. There were no hassles ordering online and I received my system in about a week. So far, everything is running great and I would definitely purchase from ABS again."

"i have recieved the best pc i have ever owned and all to a salesman named eddie maldonado. i cosider him a friend after the way i was treated after all i was treated like a friend.and the pc i have had it since 05-08-2003 and it has taken all of my software without a hitch i have never had that happen thru 4 earlier pc's and when i bought my compaq the very first day i was on the phone with thier techs for 12 hours.so i highly recommend eddie at ext.246 for all your pc needs of any kind and abs.i have a feeling i wont ever need thier tech support.yours truly jimmy brown"

"I recieved a good price for a quality product. The computer I purchased came with everything I ordered, mostly with brand-name parts. I purchased a $1100 system, so I skipped on some quality parts, but I recieved a better deal than most anywhere else. The shipping was a tad slow, but reasonable. Packaging and documentation was excelent. I recieved every instructional booklet that came with every part (HD, video card, CD-RW, etc.), but only a restore disk (would like to get an official copy of Windows XP). Of the computer itself, some tweeking was done by me to get better performance (not overclocking, just settings), and the internal cables weren't the neatest, but nothing was loose or missing.

ABSPC is also the only place I could find offering a budget system with a high-end video card (GeForce 4 Ti 4400, with the 4600 being top-of-the-line at the time)."

" I recently purchased a new hard drive (not from ABS) to match the existing hard drive that came with my system and to start using the Promise RAID controller that is included on my Gigabyte motherboard. When reinstalling Windows XP, I received an inaccessable boot device error, which is typically an indicator that Windows doesn't have a default driver for the controller and a seperate driver needs to be used during the setup process.
Being a systems administrator myself (supporting/developing the baseline for our 10,000 clients), I knew all about this and had taken the appropriate steps to load the vendor provided drivers during the appropriate portion of the setup. It occurred to me that unless the new hard drive I purchased was defective, there was probably an updated driver or a simple tweak that needed to happen in order to allow the system to boot. So I called ABS Tech Support.
I initially spoke to an individual called Milton who felt that it was more important to take that stance that since I didn't buy the second hard drive from ABS, there was no reason to support me. My conversation with Milton lasted all of 5 minutes, with me asking to speak to a manager and being told that the manager was on the phone and would call me back.
I was furious with Milton's service and from my own professional experience, I knew that he could have spent a few minutes learning about the problem and then pointing me in the right direction. Thereby keeping a customer happy.
After trying a few more troubleshooting steps on my own to verify that the error is either caused by the driver or the actual controller, I decided to try Tech Support one more time.
This time I talked to Bryan. A complete 180 in customer support. He spend a couple of minutes going through BIOS settings with me and we found the culprit setting. Bryan fixed the problem in about 10 minutes and in doing so, maybe secured future businees from me. After all, ABS is one of the few vendors who have a Media Center system currently available and I'll be looking for one of those before the end of the year."

"I purchased a ABS computer system back in March of 02. The time the system took to ship, and it was neatly packaged. When I looked at the invoice, they had shipped my system with the wrong soundcard,this did not make me happy. Then when I first booted the system, guess what, my modem didn't work at all. Well naturally I called tech support, and they said I had to reformat my computer, well knowing that wouldn't help I did it anyways. I called them back and told me I could recieve a new modem at no cost because the standard modem had had many complaints. I get the new modem it works but is very slow I used it for up to a year because I was tired of fooling with their tech support. I bought a new modem not too long ago and is working good. I guess if you want something done right you do it yourself. now the second problem I had sneaked up on me with the soundcard(also not the one I ordered,but it worked so I kept it)I kept loosing drivers when I booted into windows almost every boot. I called tech support about this problem, they first said to format the drive, now most people know that this is the very last thing you should have to do in order to solve a driver issue. Well the second time I called about this problem I was told to install in safe mode, I did and didn't fix the problem. Finally I got tired of this BS and was probing around in the registry to find that in windows xp even an administrator does not have full control on the enum for devices, This causes the "data is invalid" error. Well now everything works again. I then emailed the tech support about how I resolved the issue so maybe if someone else called in with the same prob, then lol they wouldn't say format. All they replied with was thanks for the info have a nice day. Anyways as far as the overall system I love it, couldn't ask for a better system, it's just tech support is so lousy, and it really should be open 24/7. Buy from ABS if you intend to fix your own problem, if not go to someone who knows how to fix them."

"WOW! I hope my ABS system turns out to be as good as the spects suggest (top-of-the-line!). Anyway, after comparing several computer manufactuers and customizers(ex. Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Alienware, Voodoo, Falcon...), I found ABS to have the cheapest price on the system I wanted to order (3.0Ghz\800Mhz bus\Raid 0 Serial ATA Hard Drives...). My first impressions of ABS were not so good because they kept having parts out of stock, not allowing me to order the PC I wanted over the internet. After a few days of more comparison shopping, I finally decided to call ABS and order my computer over the phone. It turned out that a few of the componets that were "out-of-stock" according to the website were actually available, and one part that really was out of stock is going to be added to my computer when the part comes in. The customer service was ok, but I was transfered from one sales rep. to another for no apparent reason, which was sort of annoying. Finally, Eddie helped me, and we desinged my system. Once during the process, my power went out due to a thunderstorm, but I called back and got Eddie again who preceeded to help me from where we left off. Overall, I would strongly recommend ordering an ABS system by calling ABS. The ABS web ordering system seems like it could use some work (sorry ABS). I can't wait to recieve my new computer!"

"If the computer is half as good as my purchasing experience, I am in wonderful shape. My salesperson, Eddie, was very friendly and willing to establish a customer relationship on a personal level unlike any customer service I have ever dealt with. He helped me reconfigure my CPU multiple times during my order which he did not have to do. Two days after placing the original order, I needed to call to change one more component and Eddie was there once again to get the job done. (He actually called me back in less than five minutes after I had to leave a voicemail for him!!) I now cannot fathom purchasing a computer from anywhere else. Thanks Eddie!!


-Kevin Slocum
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