Exploiting more good circulation news for PC World, the team made a successful request for a new office coffee machine. Consulting the latest Consumer, we duly selected a model (Sunbeam's Cafe Latte 5600, fact fans) and, as duly elected purchaser, I headed for Ferrit.

I did manage to find our desired model within seconds. But Ferrit was no help in finding the best deal, as only one retailer (Noel Leeming) was listed, and with its monopoly position was naturally charging full whack.

I was also disappointed that although Ferrit has now added shopping carts, there seemed to be no option to buy our coffee machine directly, so I clicked the button to trundle off to Noel Leeming's site. There, the online buying process was pretty quick and no fuss, though I did have to wait three days before I got a confirmation email revealing the delivery time (which turned out to be 10 days ... I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that this was a one-off egregious delay caused by the Sunbeam's appearance on a Consumer-sponsored section of TV3's Cambell Live).

Amusingly, at purchase time noelleeming.co.nz threw up three other items I might be interested in. These seemed completely random, and included a black inkjet refill cartridge. Amazon.com this aint.

The above would have been more pointedly absurd if I included the screen shot I took at the time, but alas my notebook - or possibly its hard drive - died last night, and my friendly vendor tells me it will take some time to repair.

Me: "Nine or ten days!!?? But all my work's on there."
Service centre guy: "Most people who come in here use their notebooks for work, so everything's on rush ... "
Me: "I don't want to sound like a dick, but I am the Editor of PC World magazine and ... "

Scott the Reviews Ed had a good chuckle after I crawled back to the office, and started fussocking around, trying to establish how people used to work in the pre-PC age. Anyhow, Scott relayed, helpfully, how Acer apparently has a same-day turnaround policy for notebook repairs, and that it applies to all punters, no premium service contract required (no, my laptop is not an Acer).

I just surfed to acer.co.nz to try and verify said claim and got this when I clicked on the tech support link:

Server Error
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Either the Macromedia application server is unreachable or it does not have a mapping to process this request.

Some days I just love technology.