Has anyone else had this offer through the post from wincanton ar anyone else you work for and can someone explain it to me?.
Is it beneficial to me or not?.
Whats the catch?.
If its the same scheme BT use for their home computing there is no catch.
You select a machine and accessories up to a set value.
Probably over 3 years.
You then pay back the amount from your salary before tax and national insurance.
At the end of the 3 years you can return the machine and start again or pay the market value for the machine at that time to keep it (about 5% of the original value)
For instance you buy a PC valued at £1200 in the shop thru your salary payment you will only pay about £800
Every month you will pay £32 for example but will only miss £21(ish) because it comes off before it is taxed etc.
Someone else can probably explain it better than me.
That is the general idea of it. There are no catches unless you become unemployed but that will be in your T&Cs and contract you sign with the company.
It maybe a good idea, But if Comet have anything to do with it then I would steer well clear. Also, how much are the Pc’s and what spec are they? You can build a very high spec Pc for less then £500, which I suspect is allot less then they will be charging, just my own thoughts.
the pc i am still waiting for is along these lines. i selected the multi media all singing, all dancing £2000 model paying over 3 years. i have heard that this scheme is government funded to help get us all computer literate within X amount of years. who will pay for educating us then? i can use word and send emails but i am probably only using around 2% of the machines capabilities 
I work for wincanton and also recived the offer. Sounds ok to me but if you leave the outstanding sum taken from wage may put me off
who will pay for educating us then?
I think you can get free lessons from UK online centres. 
The catch is, is that whatever PC you get you will be paying well over the odds for the specification, even given the discount etc.
Any PC equipment bought from the likes of PC Shed, Comet etc. is poor value and should be avoided at all costs.
Its another (lets give them sweets) idea from Tony Blur and his cronies. Last year when I did my City and Guilds and CLAIT Plus, they were offering free computer training for everyone. I managed to get all the qualifications before the grant ended, but there are a lot of people who either didnt have the time or were a little slower at learning.
The local college has been closed down due to lack of government funding 
DHL offered free computer training and free computer use on the premises too
Coffeeholic:
The catch is, is that whatever PC you get you will be paying well over the odds for the specification, even given the discount etc.
i wouldnt be too sure about that one. the RRP on my pc is just over £2k but the actual price is something like £1,043 including installation and 3 year guarantee. the hold up on my pc has been supply of MS office pro which retails (at staples) at £600 which means i am getting a pc with digital tv, dvd RW etc etc etc for just over £400 which sounds good to me
Coffeeholic:
The catch is, is that whatever PC you get you will be paying well over the odds for the specification, even given the discount etc.Any PC equipment bought from the likes of PC Shed, Comet etc. is poor value and should be avoided at all costs.
Not true, ive seen these offers in the past, and they can be very good.
When you buy something from a retailer such as PC world etc, you are not only paying for the hardware, but in many cases the additional software.
Now to you and me (well me anyway) i can quite happily build my own PC, borrow 
a copy of windows XP, and set it up myself, installing all of my drivers, sorting out any conflicting issues with hardware, the list goes on.
Now like it or not, you may have had or know of someone that has had bad experience with there service, but i can assure you they aint all bad, i spent 8 years as a service engineer for Mastercare, which is the service company behind the Dixons Stores Group (currys, dixons, pc world etc).
What you are paying for in buying a machine there, is the hardware, software, the fact that the machine is ready built with all software installed, and the service support you will get from the company in the event of a problem.
Now take, buying the bits yourself and doing it, no problem for me or you, but to joe public this just isnt an option, so they dont mind paying a little extra for someone else to have done that, and a bit of peace of mind that they have some kind of back up, rather than buying it from a computer fair and when it goes wrong, the bloke doesnt trade there anymore!
And besides, if you want a good spec machine from the likes of PC world, without having to pay for the software, most of it that you dont use, apart from windows XP, then look at the spec on some of the advent machines, they aint to overpriced and are usually top end spec. 
Maybe MS Office is that much.
But Open.Office.org does all the thing that MS Office does. Will also read and write MS files. It isn’t quite as pretty as MS Office, but most importantly, its free 
.
If you want to try it, you can download it from Open.Office.org. The downloads are in a box on the bottom right of the first page.
scanny77:
Coffeeholic:
The catch is, is that whatever PC you get you will be paying well over the odds for the specification, even given the discount etc.i wouldnt be too sure about that one. the RRP on my pc is just over £2k but the actual price is something like £1,043 including installation and 3 year guarantee. the hold up on my pc has been supply of MS office pro which retails (at staples) at £600 which means i am getting a pc with digital tv, dvd RW etc etc etc for just over £400 which sounds good to me
You are spending over £1000 on a machine because it comes with MS Office Sorry, you’re mad.
You can pick MS Office Pro up for about a third of that price at various online retailers. Here for instance. And that is just one of many places, selling it at that sort of price, I chose at random.
Gurner:
What you are paying for in buying a machine there, is the hardware, software, the fact that the machine is ready built with all software installed, and the service support you will get from the company in the event of a problem.
I couldn’t begin to count the people I know who have bought over priced kit from the likes of PC Shed and then discovered that the words service and support mean nothing, and certainly they get nothing like the level of service they have supposedly paid for.
But then again, these tend to be people who buy a PC because it ‘looked nice’ or it had ‘free’ software with it so I guess they get what they deserve.
I also know two blokes who work for Mastercare and neither of them have a good word to say for the likes of PC Shed, Comet or Dixons.
Simon:
Maybe MS Office is that much.But Open.Office.org does all the thing that MS Office does. Will also read and write MS files. It isn’t quite as pretty as MS Office, but most importantly, its free
If you want to try it, you can download it from Open.Office.org. The downloads are in a box on the bottom right of the first page.
When a website like this which apparently has to make a load of money and apparently wont hold up a link to another site for British lorry drivers like the [zb] i think its ■■■■■■■ poor show if they allow links to to sites that provide software from people like open.office.
If open office is free then surely this site should be free too and not show any intolerance to other sites that promote the job we all do for a living or is that like not telling a foreign driver where he needs to be like i posted recently because i have own beliefs like the owners of this site?.
If you want to build your own pc for half the price of the retail outlets try here Scan Computers and for your software try B.T
simon
you misunderstood what i am paying for. i have been waiting weeks for delivery of the pc. the hold up has been the company receiving MS office. the pc itself has all sorts of other stuff eg digital tv, 19" tft screen etc etc etc. its a multi media pc with loads of stuff that i dont understand but learning it all will keep me busy. plus i can start creating my own cds instead of changing disc every 5 minutes in my car
incidentally, what purpose does a DVD-RW have other than pirating DVDs? personally, i wont touch pirate copies but i dont know what else they are used for. i certainly wouldnt bother backing up my DVD collection
scanny77:
incidentally, what purpose does a DVD-RW have other than pirating DVDs? personally, i wont touch pirate copies but i dont know what else they are used for. i certainly wouldnt bother backing up my DVD collection
Data storage for one, a DVD disc has about seven times the capacity of a CD and can be used for back ups of your important data, digital photos etc. You say it has a digital TV card so you will also be able to record programs and then if you wish burn them to a DVD, in much the same way as you would record something from your TV to video tape that you wanted to keep.
Just because it is called a DVD-RW doesn’t mean it can only be used for DVD movies. It doesn’t stand for Digital Versatile Disc for nothing.
that sounds handy. i had to upgrade my current machine to CD-RW which tells you how out of date it is. unfortunately, i cant do anything with it since it doesnt play CDs at normal rate. too fast and then the whole thing crashes and shuts down. i cant connect my mobile to is because although i found the drivers for the USB cable (the supplied disc is for windows 2000 and above and i have 98SE), the thing crashes when the cable is connected 
I looked at this scheme as well, through an offer my wife got through her work. The PCs were all Dells all fairly high spec., nothing from Comet etc. All backed by a Dell warranty either at home or RTB. The prices were cheaper than normal Dell prices…checked the specs on the website…but you don’t own the PC for 3yrs.
This put me off as I would have adding additional memory, DVD writer and all these would have to be removed if I didn’t want to keep the PC…oh and also invalidate the warranty cos I opened the PC.
There is another consideration that no ones mentioned yet. The Govt.s Home Computing Initiative, as rightly explained earlier, allows you to purchase a computer from money that the tax man hasn’t got his hands on - it does this by salary sacrifice.
The flip side to the benefits already mentioned is that your salary is lower than it might otherwise be, which can affect how much money you cold borrow for a mortgage, how much maternity pay you’d receive, your pension contributions may drop etc.
The amount that you sacrifice each month might not be that much, but for some it could just enough to impact other things enough to outweigh the apparent advantages.