RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Power Spec computer from Microcenter in Fairfax,VA in 2001 resulted in failed, modem, mother board, AND power supply in the first 3 months, all fixed under warranty, AFTER threatening me with charges if I had a "virus". Stable until 2006 when if failed permanently. Bought new Power Spec in Jan. 2007. Began failing on attempted start about 6 months into use just intermittently enough to prevent demonstration to repair while under warranty. Now at 18 mon. out of warranty, almost impossible to start with button flashing intermittently. A PIECE OF JUNK!!!!!!! NEVER AGAIN BUY MICROCENTER JUNK !!!!!!!
C. L. Rogers

I am surprised to read all the negative reviews! I have had my current PowerSpec 8923 for four years with no problems at all. It is running at least 12 hours a day on most days. I had another one before this and it was running strong for the three years I had it until I foolishly decided to go with Compaq simply because I liked the looks better- big mistake. I plan on buying a new PowerSpec soon. The reason I got PowerSpec to begin with is because a friend in another state who builds computers said it was a decent brand. The Compaq I had died shortly after the warranty ran out.

These machines are made from name brand components (as opposed to Dell and HP with their proprietary nonsense) and offer great value for the money. This also allows for future upgrades without issues. I purchased an E360 on Jan 4th 2008. It has performed as expected. There has been one issue which PowerSpec resolved immediately via on-site warranty service. I was surprised to learn that the product warranty contained the on-site service considering that this was only a $950 machine. In summary, I am a happy camper.

Hi! I bought the power spec v200 for my brother at Christmas. It's now five months later and it no longer wants to boot up. I took it back to Micro Center in Denver for a warranty repair and they immediately warned me that the computer would sit on their shelves for 10 days before any kind of work could begin. I contacted the Power Spec website where they say you can receive support over the phone, for a fee. The FAQ section of their site is empty. I like Mirco Center for the small things, like single hard drives and accessories. But I don't recommend buying any Power Spec computers. Save yourself the money and headache and get a name brand pc. And buy it from a name brand store.

I bought two Power Specs right off the shelf for our office. Two V101 with the same exact specs, and the two boxes were right next to each other on the sales floor. First off both machines had bad Vista installations and the plug and play features were not working. I had to manually find drivers and point the devices to those drivers instead of the OS doing it for me. They recommended (Micro Center) that I let them take both computers and reinstall Vista after I had already spent 6 hours loading all our office's software and setting them up on our network. The next thing I discover is that one of the computers was a lot louder that the other. The system fan was humming very loud and running at full capacity at all times. Upon further inspection I found that the fan installed was a different fan that was on the other machine I bought at the same time. I believe this fan caused the processor to go bad on the board, because the machine with the loud fan was always freezing up and crashing. Upon even further inspection both hard drives were from two different manufactures too. With that said the Ram was different too on both identical machines.

Anyway I wasn't going to mess with Micro Center taking the easy way out and restarting these machines from scratch. I ended up replacing the fan and processor out of pocket, and figured that would be the easiest way to deal with the problem and not have to reinstall Windows and all my other programs. Everything works fine now, but I will NEVER and I mean NEVER buy another Power Spec again. After seeing how they put them together. I could teach a 6th grader to do a better job at building a system than these jokers.

Oh Did I mention, Microcenter is the manufacturer of Powerspec. Just an FYI. I still ahte the $85 ka-ching

I have been waiting two weeks exactly as of today for their customer service department to correct the purchase date of the computer my company bought. Power Specs records show the computer (purchased 6 months ago!!!) is past the one year warranty mark. I have faxed a copy of the reciept over 3 times! and call every other day only to get the run-around. To make matters worse, this wasted time is only for them to agree it's under warrenty, I then must wait who knows how long for them to make arrangements for someone to come on-site to repair it. SOME WARRANTY!!!! Will NEVER, EVER, EVER, shop at Micro Center again, and WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER, purchase a Power Spec piece of garbage with a garbage warranty!!!

We have purchased lots of stuff in-store from MC in the last 5 years - dinky parts to complete systems - but no more. I don't know why; I just know that almost everything we’ve gotten there failed in 9-18 months, and their attitude was "Talk to our Service Dept; that'll be $85.00, min." Power supply in $$$$ super-PC failed after 12 months - $125.00, ka-ching; on-board graphics card in bare-bones box failed in 6 months, "Sorry, that's a 90 day warranty, but this $50.00 beauty will plug&play, no problem . . . Oh, it didn't plug&play? Gee, that's strange; talk to our Service Dept, $85.00 min." Ka-ching, Ka-ching. And so on. I just traced a failure to recognize a flash memory card to a bad USB hub. How the hell hard can it be to get a USB hub right? And, for the last twig: Had to take above-mentioned super-PC in to see why it wouldn't recognize the re-boot discs that came with it (after I refused to pay $25.00 for a new one since that was the first time I'd tried to use it). Reason? They had to update the BIOS, then it worked fine. That's right: They sold me a computer that off-the-shelf didn't match the config of the utility disc. And: They called me on my cell phone a few days after a major purchase to try and sell me something else. Grrrr. No more.

I bought one of these models at Microcenter here in Boston. Let me tell you how big of a mistake it has been. The first desktop I had to return 2 weeks later because the fan kept running and either fried the motherboard or the power supply or well..both. This was just after 2 weeks of owning it. Well after the swap for a 'new' one, it ran okay for 3 months. The fan would still run after powering down at times but I learned to cut all power to the desktop to avoid having my so called wonderful new computer blow up again. Then the inevitable struck. In late December I thought I had turned the machine off and the fan just kept running. It then stopped 20 minutes later and now I have a nothing more than a big paper weight. The warranty company for Power Spec, Servicenet, is just as horrible as the machines the cover. I am to this day, almost a month later, still waiting for one lousy part - the power supply. And seeing what puddns50 above went through is the exact same thing I am now going through but at a much earlier timeframe...I didn't even make it a year with this piece of crap. My advice, don't every buy anything labeled PowerSpec or anything from Microcenter for that matter. I have been screwed out of a thousand dollars and since its past 30 days cannot return it for my money back. a HUGE disappointment.

I use one of these at the office, and it works like a charm. The first computer I owned to have Windows XP

Worked good at first. But as we came close to end of the 1 year warenty on it everything started going out on it. It was sent in for repair 3 times in a 3 day period. It has now, this time ,been in the shop for repair for two weeks. We just called to see if it is ready yet and were told that the part is on back order. They dont know when it will be in or repaired. Here is just a small lists of the things that have gone out on this wonderful Power SPec computer that I wasted money on. Now remember all these things just went out on it tword the end of the 1 year warrenty.... Fan stoped working, problem with the power suply, mother board replaced TWICE... Dont waste your money on this.. IT is GARBAGE...

For an Off-name Brand, Power Spec delivers a lot of bang for the buck. It's reliabilty and performance are wonderful, too