Customer Reviews for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
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ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
19-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader Gigabit Ethernet LAN 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS
Average Customer Rating:
(40 Reviews) 40
(out of 40 reviews)
Rating Snapshot (40 reviews)
5 stars
26
4 stars
2
3 stars
4
2 stars
4
1 star
4
32 of 40(80%)customers would recommend this product to a friend.
Customer Reviews for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Review 1 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
JAdhvaryu
Location:san jose, CA
Date:March 10, 2010
Great Value
Pros: great configuration, amazing price
Cons: switches and connectors are bit flimsy
Model Number: Model ZT Affinity 7425Ti-41
"Great configuration at affordable price. Very satisfied. Very Happy.
connectors and switches are bit plasticy and delicate.
with this high end config, would have been great if usb3.0 was included."
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Review 2 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
chaseandcatch
Location:Boulder,CO
Date:March 5, 2010
excellent product, fast and trouble free
Pros: fast cheap for what you get quick restart from hib
Cons: middle of the road graphics
Model Number: ZT desktop core I7 920 12GB ram etc
"I have used the ZT desktop core i7 2.66 computer for 3 months with great results. It is very fast and has been trouble free although adding a second 1 terrabyte hard drive proved to be more difficul than I was expecting. I have read most of the reviews from this year and agree with almost all of the detail in them. I will not repeat here. However the comments about speed and noise are, in my view, B.S.
There is some concern that the power switch does not seem to work correctly. I think it is probably related to restart from deep hibrnation which requires you to press the start button to awake, which happens in 10 seconds.
I also bought the Hannespreee 28 inch monitor which worked out of the box. I am pleased with it also.
I use office and all the other usual PC programs and hae loaded a lot ofother programs with no problems. It is still just as fast. I did not replace the video card although its performance is middle of the road. It is still plenty fast for most business and home uses except for fast gaming."
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Review 3 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
agcostco
Location:Atlanta, GA
Date:March 4, 2010
Great Computer for the Price
"I've had the computer for about a week now.
12GB of RAM is awesome and the Core i7 920 is very fast. It's a quad-core, hyperthreaded CPU, so it appears as 8 CPUs to your operating system. I was running out of memory on my old 4GB system. The most I've managed to consume (so far) is a little over 7GB of active resident memory. The growing room is nice.
I added a second hard drive to mine. As other reviewers have mentioned, you need an extension cable to do that. (See more on the hard drive below)
Also, as others have mentioned, the BIOS is inexplicably set to attempt a network boot by default. You'll likely want to disable this in the BIOS to speed up boot time.
The graphics card is slow, but fast enough for just browsing. Anything more, though, and you'll want to replace it. I put in an ATI 5670 w/ 1GB.
The motherboard inside is a micro-ATX board, so it's a bit undersized for the case (which is a little wider than a normal PC and a fair bit longer). It's an MSI x58m motherboard.
The downside of the motherboard is that even though there are 4 slots (2 PCIe x16, 1 PCIe x4 and 1 PCI), you can't actually use all of them. The first graphics card's heat sink/fan will cover up the PCIe x4 slot. From there, if you put in a second PCIe x16 card, it will cover up the PCI slot. Or if you fill the PCI slot, you won't be able to add another x16 card.
I don't know if it's true of all of these models or not, but the the RAM that came with mine is capable of running at 1333mhz. The Core i7 920 supports running RAM at this speed, but defaults to a slightly slower 1066mhz. You can adjust the RAM speed multiplier in the BIOS to get 1333mhz speeds.
Speaking of the BIOS, it's extremely overclock-friendly. Although I don't plan on overclocking (except the RAM as I mentioned) and haven't tried it, the BIOS has a multitude of options for overclocking as well as an automatic overclocking mode where it will test your hardware's limits. I haven't investigated how overclocking meshes with the ZT warranty so I'd recommend checking on that before doing it.
Not being a Windows fan, I moved my Ubuntu drive over from my old computer and reformatted the Windows drive that came with the ZT computer. The drive that came with this computer is one of the new Western Digital drives with 4K sectors. You'll need to format it with 4K support under Linux (or XP for that matter) or the drive can be extremely slow. The model is WD10EARS-00Y.
Overall, I'm very pleased with this purchase. The price is fantastic for just the RAM, CPU and motherboard. All the rest is gravy."
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.
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Review 4 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
EB7000
Location:Northern Illinois
Date:March 2, 2010
Great Buy
Pros: super fastquietgreat value
"I've had this computer for about 3 weeks now and it runs flawlessly out of the box. I read a couple of bad reviews and I was a little apprehensive. I think the bad reviews were just a few lemons that slipped thru the cracks at quality control. This computer screams through all applications. Start ups and shut downs are blazing fast and it is whisper quiet. I do agree if you want this for high end gaming your going to have to operate on low graphic game settings or upgrade the video card. I priced a similar Dell with same configurations and came up over $1800. If your in the market for a blazing fast computer at a fantastic value look no further. Thanks ZT systems and Costco!"
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Review 5 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
rwk2095
Location:Portland, OR
Date:February 20, 2010
Pros: great value
"I am generally happy with this system. As another reviewer mentioned, adding a second hard drive requires an adapter cable, not a big deal. Getting it recognized by Win7 is nontrivial.
I would have preferred a fax/modem to the Media Card Reader which I doubt I will ever use. Adding a cheap fax/modem was not too hard.
I added an Acer 24" monitor and Creative speakers, both from Costco, and the video and audio are excellent."
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Review 6 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
RPCVIndia9
Location:Bellingham, Washington
Date:February 19, 2010
An excellent choice
"I've had this computer for two months, and am delighted with it. I upgraded the video card and the power supply, and the machine handles everything I throw at it with ease. I post-process large photography files, passing the files between Photoshop CS4, Lightroom, and numerous other large plug-ins. All these processes are completed within a few seconds. I have had no need of support, as everything installed easily, so the reports of poor support haven't affected me at all. The total cost of the computer, with upgrades was about $1400, and I will be recapturing some of that by selling the pre-installed power supply and video card."
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Review 7 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
Fireballsocal
Location:Rancho Cucamonga, Ca.
Date:February 17, 2010
Monster power on a budget.
Pros: very inexpensive for the specs and performance., the money goes towards performance not flash., a brute of a processor and ram package., exactly what i wanted., delivers everything it claims to.
Model Number: ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz
"I bought this tower to replace an old Dell and am very happy so far. The ZT is built as good as my old Dell was and the power button doesn't feel cheap at all. I will eventually upgrade the keyboard and mouse to better corded units but they work very well as is. Setup took all of 5 minutes and there have been no issues to speak of. The fan noise is noticable but not obtrusive. All software works as intended so far. I am very happy with my purchase and would buy another ZT in a heart beat should I ever need to."
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Review 8 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
Ksparkles
Location:Cincinnati OH
Date:February 7, 2010
Computer not reliable
Pros: lots of memory
Cons: if only it worked, two computers didn't work
Model Number: 474371
"The first one that I ordered back on Dec 1 would not turn on after the first time. After almost 2 hrs with technical, I returned it to Costco and decided it must of been a lemon.
I reordered the same computer. I don't know what I was thinking!! The second one seemed real good until it kept crashing 7 or more times a week in the past two weeks. Data dumping was the reason. I only had the computer less than 2 months. My IT person agreed with me that for $999 it should go back
I reordered the same computer. I don't know what I was thinking!! The second one seemed real good until it kept crashing 7 or more times a week in the past two weeks. Data dumping was the reason. I only had the computer less than 2 months. My IT person agreed with me that for $999 it should go back
I have decided not to buy a ZT computer again. I hope this helps you with your decision."
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.
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Review 9 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
IndioCalif
Date:January 21, 2010
Excellent unit.
Pros: large case, great price and quality.
Cons: none really at that price
Model Number: ZT 474371
"Large case to install 2 front removable hard drives and two optical drives. All other computers had screwy cases that would not allow this.
Very fast, use it for AVCHD editing with Pinnacle V14. Rendering 40 min of AVCHD with transitions, tiles etc takes less than 90 min, at least 10 times faster than my old 2 core .
Very neat inside. Replaced video board with NVIDEA GE Force GT 240 1TB DDR3.Only 6" long and needs no extra power connection. Nvidia claims that it works fine in a computer with a 300W powersupply.
Power consumption computer at idle app 120W, full throttle , rendering AVCHD video app 250 W with all 8 cores around 99%.Blue Ray PB just fantastic, CPU usage less than 2%!!
. Spend app $1500 , for computer, 3 extra hard drives, 2 Kingwin 813 mobile racks plus 2 extra trays, video board and a LG HD DVD / BR player/ DVD burner. A 800 page book on Win7 helped a lot.
Very fast, use it for AVCHD editing with Pinnacle V14. Rendering 40 min of AVCHD with transitions, tiles etc takes less than 90 min, at least 10 times faster than my old 2 core .
Very neat inside. Replaced video board with NVIDEA GE Force GT 240 1TB DDR3.Only 6" long and needs no extra power connection. Nvidia claims that it works fine in a computer with a 300W powersupply.
Power consumption computer at idle app 120W, full throttle , rendering AVCHD video app 250 W with all 8 cores around 99%.Blue Ray PB just fantastic, CPU usage less than 2%!!
. Spend app $1500 , for computer, 3 extra hard drives, 2 Kingwin 813 mobile racks plus 2 extra trays, video board and a LG HD DVD / BR player/ DVD burner. A 800 page book on Win7 helped a lot.
Trays had to be installed at the top, they are over 9" long. Below are the two optical drives.
Each HD rack has 3! fans so things are running very cool.
Have build my own computers in the past, no way with this one at that price and it came with a Win 7 DVD !!"
Each HD rack has 3! fans so things are running very cool.
Have build my own computers in the past, no way with this one at that price and it came with a Win 7 DVD !!"
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.
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Review 10 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
CAtoAR
Location:Northwest Arkansas
Date:January 14, 2010
Capable Machine at Value Price
Pros: affordable, blazing fast speed
Cons: seemingly cheap power switches, tethered mouse, manuals and documentation
"I have had this system for about two weeks now. Plugged it in, turned it on, and it's worked fine since day one straight out of the box. No issues whatsoever.
There is some discussion here about the help line. If it's lame, I wouldn't know since I never have needed to call it. I can tell you my experience in the past with other computer manufacturer help lines have NOT been particularly enjoyable so poor customer service seems to be the hallmark of this industry.
I have it hooked to a Vizio 23" Razorthin LED TV as a monitor and it's a stellar combination. One concern was whether or not the TV/Monitor would shut down when the system went to sleep and it in fact does eliminating having to turn the TV/Monitor off. Works just like any other monitor. And when the system comes back up, so does the monitor. This Vizio is superthin and just generally oozes cool. Also sold online at Costco.
Back to the system. Power up is quick, and boot from sleep is almost instant.
No issues with Windows 7. In the house at the moment, I have two machines on XP, one machine on Vista, one machine on Linux and I hate to admit it but Windows 7 is by far the most intuitive and [so far] very stable.
Noise from the fan is present but not extroardinary one way or the other.
The keyboard is Logitech and included is the cheapo tethered mouse. But just as I do, you probably already have a cordless optical mouse anyway.
On/Off switch seems cheap. But should last the five years or so I will have this thing before I upgrade and send this one to who-knows-where.
Manuals and documentation are lame. But who needs em anyway.
The graphics card is adequate for my needs and works stellar with the aforementioned 23" monitor. I don't do gaming.
If you research the Intel I7 chip, you'll find that it isn't the fastest you can buy, but it's about the 2nd fastest. A significant difference between I7 and the rest of the field as far as performance. WAY faster than the AMD's or the Intel CORE.
I haven't loaded anything close to taxing the 12g of memory yet. And the hard drive is at a fraction of capacity.
Overall, I'm very impressed with the performance of this machine, especially for the price. No way you can touch this performance in a Dell, HP, etc for the price.
Bad news is I live in a state without any Costco stores in it. Good news is I live in a state without any Costco stores in it. Online purchase, no tax. Score!
I absolutely recommend this box and would buy it again."
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.
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Review 11 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
bskousen
Location:Southern CA
Date:January 13, 2010
Great Value
Pros: very fast, quality components, did i say very fast?
Cons: cheap keyboard and mouse
"I've seen a few negative comments about the case or the power button feeliing cheap, or the power supply and video card being inadequate. There is a full discloser of what is being purchased, so there shouldn't be any surprises. The only surprises I had was how fast this baby is. Although the power supply and video card are not the best one can buy, they are adequate for the average user. Personally, I changed out the video card so that I could play more high resolution games if I decided to do so. I don't find it necessary to have a higher capacity power supply at this time. I had no problem adding a second hard drive and a Blu-Ray disk drive, although I had to buy two molex-to-sata cables because the power supply has only two sata power cables. Again, no biggie; they only cost me a few dollars. Windows 7 has been working just fine, however, I did have to do a system restore two days in a row. I found the culprit to be the Norton anti-virus software which I quickly deleted and replaced with Microsoft's new free anti-virus software (no more problems!). This computer is FAST! It used to take me anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half to convert one of my DVDs to a format for my Ipod. It only took 9 minutes with this beast! I thought of buying one of the more expensive computers with a higher capacity power supply and a better video card, but found that I could replace them myself more cheaply."
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Review 12 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
AgPaladin
Location:Los Angeles, CA
Date:January 11, 2010
Great Value in mini-tower
"Carefully compared Dell and ZTsystems i7 920 systems at Costco and key advantages of ZTsystems (before purchase) were
1) price
2) mini-tower with 4 5.25" and 2 3.5" drive openings (all Del products have very limited drive openings, even on their website)
1) price
2) mini-tower with 4 5.25" and 2 3.5" drive openings (all Del products have very limited drive openings, even on their website)
Disadvantages were
1) Unknown name, quality and service
2) Office 2007 (Home) not provided and Norton (Anti-virus) very limited protection (60 days I believe)
3) Loss of some front access ports (USB, Firewire)
1) Unknown name, quality and service
2) Office 2007 (Home) not provided and Norton (Anti-virus) very limited protection (60 days I believe)
3) Loss of some front access ports (USB, Firewire)
I have Office 2007 already and prefer another anti-virus over Norton so not having the added software wasn't an issue for me. I also like to use multiple pullout drives (5.25" front access) so that was a definite attraction as well.
I was concerned about the computer not working when I got it based on some of the previous comments, but figured Costco's 90 day policy could allow me to switch to Dell if it didn't work out.
When I got the computer I hooked it up, got my old monitor from my old computer and had it up and running in 5 minutes, no problems.
Spent a while moving my personal files over and re-installing my programs but pretty straightforward (Some things wouldn't install due to Window 7 and incompatability with 16 bit/32bit products (games and old pre-XP software mostly).
Opened system up to put in a pull out drive. I've build my own systems in the past so I have at least some idea of what I was looking at. Found most of the power cables bundled in plastic straps and out of the way on a little internal hook -- cut one of the straps and the power cables were available for a short distance (cut another and they would be completely free).
Drive bays all had plastic quick-install fasteners instead of old fashioned screws -- nice.
Overall I was impressed with the layout of the case and motherboard -- it was nicer than any system I had ever put together.
Provided video card will drop your overall performance ranking from about 5.9 (7.4 on processor/memory, 5.9 on hard drive) to 4.4/5.3, but when I played my most video intense game my frames per second went from 20-30 on my old computer (AMD 64 with GeForce video card) to 60. More than adequate for me, but I'm not an extreme gamer.
Computer came with the CD/DVDs for the motherboard drivers and Windows 7 Home Premium along with the motherboard manuals, all of which I like to get instead of it being on the hardrive.
Interestingly it comes with 2 Multi-GPU Cross-fire video links for hooking up another GeForce 8400GS (if you bought it) but no spare SATA cables (I got 6 with my last motherboard).
Keyboard and mouse are Logitech (which I like) but the typically lower end models. Again, more than adequate for my needs.
Only truly "cheap" thing I noticed was the on/off and reset buttons -- they wobble slightly when you press them.
All of my frustrations with the system have to do with Windows 7, but I don't consider that ZT's problem and it wouldn't be any different on another computer
Overall I'm VERY happy I made the purchase and the hardware operation has been flawless. Windows 7 is OK, with some things that are improvements and some that are very irritating (forcing Outlook associations for email the worst one so far)."
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Review 13 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
Wallybox
Location:Yakima, WA
Date:January 10, 2010
Cheap product
Pros: cheap
Cons: built even cheaper
"Seemed like a very good deal considering what I was getting for the price. Didn't think I could build one for this price. Until I used it. Overall the machine feels very cheap and poorly put together. Wait until you press the power button. It feels like it's barely attached. I used the computer for less than a week when it died. WIndows wouldn't load and everything on the display was unreadable. Took the pc back to local costco and I will be building my own."
1 of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Review 14 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
Pakchi
Location:Gonzales, CA
Date:January 10, 2010
ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz
Pros: best deal on line
Cons: video card is below specs for this machine
"I have been working with computers for over twenty years. This has got to be the best deal ever. I used this computer to replace a Dell XPS. True the video card leaves a lot to be desired, but you get 12GB of ram and a 1TB hard drive. I have had this unit for over a month now. Used daily It runs Windows 7 very well. After I replaced the video card and added two more DVD drives It makes a great gamer."
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Review 15 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
PeterZ
Location:SF Bay Area
Date:January 6, 2010
On the cheap side
Pros: good specs for the price
Cons: bad video power supply cheap case
"The good specification - CPU and Memory come at expense of being cheap all over the place. The case is pretty based, compared to Dell XPS I'm replacing with. The holes for extension cards are "rip off" so if you temporary place some card into the case you'll have the hole unless you go and get something to fill it with. The PS/2 mouse and Keyboard is something I have not seen in years and which are bad compared to USB at least because they are not pluggable.
The Video Card is not even funny if you plan to do any gaming or anything like it it is a lot slower than 2 years old card I have in other box.
Power supply is another joke. Not just it is not powerful enough to put any decent video card inside but also it does not have any SATA power which you could use to put another drive in.
I wish they would spend another $100 to get a bit better case and power supply for this box.
I now spent another $300 to get decent video card and power supply for it."
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Review 16 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
LJLJL
Date:January 5, 2010
Frustrating
Pros: very quiet and fast
"Computer delivered on Christmas Eve. Spent hours over next 5 days transferring files from old computer. Finally convinced all is there, I began cleaning off the old computer by formatting. 2 days later, computer won't boot. Bad hard drive. Lost all data. Tech support not very helpful. Wanted HD shipped asap, out of stock, have to wait to get this one back before ordering replacement. Probably will just take entire system back to Costco and do something else. Bad feeling after losing all data."
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Review 17 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
Johanson
Date:January 4, 2010
Defective
Pros: great value, good phone support.
Cons: poor quality control
Model Number: Core i7 920 2.66GHz
"The computer seems ok. Very quiet. Didn't run it much before I found front
panel USB connections didnt work, and make noise through the headphones when USB device is plugged in. Back to Costco, will probably order another one the same and keep my fingers crossed."
panel USB connections didnt work, and make noise through the headphones when USB device is plugged in. Back to Costco, will probably order another one the same and keep my fingers crossed."
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Review 18 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
BMWMichael
Location:Porterville, CA
Date:December 31, 2009
A Great Value!
Pros: great value and a quality build
Cons: none buy as-is and modify if you are going to game
"I bought this computer last year in July, or I should say this computer with 6 gig. of ram, and have had nothing but a relaxing experience since. I built my first computers back in 1992 and have to tell you I could not come close to matching this package both in quality and price. Now if you just get on the internet and mess around with word and excel you will be so very content with this computer for a very long time, but if you are a gamer there are a few things you will need to do. The video card will have to be changed out, I went with a BFD275oc and find it to be able to run all of the games very well. The other two changes that I made were the power supply and the cpu cooler. In order to run the higher end video card you will need a min. of 650 watts. I also changed the stock cpu cooler to a Noctua part number NH-U12P. This a very quit solution that offers superior cooling. I have now one of the best that money can buy and couldn’t be happier!!!"
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Review 19 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
prav
Date:December 22, 2009
Excellent product
Pros: very quiet
"Excellent purchase. Its worth the money. Very quiet and even on 100% load CPu tempratures doesnt go beyond 78c . I will post the pictures later ."
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Review 20 for ZT Systems Desktop Core i7 920 2.66GHz Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium
Rating:
JaxGrandPa
Location:Jacksonville, Florida
Date:December 21, 2009
Poor Tech Service
Model Number: 7425 Ti-41
"After spending 5 days trying to get a screen resolution issue resolved, I was told by a tech rep to get a new monitor or return the machine to Costco. As the monitor I have works perfectly fine with my Windows XP system, I will be returning the ZT to Costco after Christmas. The machine is a great buy if you can get it to work properly. Fortunately I bought the machine from Costco! There return policy is outstanding!"
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.
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