My lesson in buyer beware with a cut-price Aldi tablet

The deal was just too good to pass up. A $200 windows tablet was reduced from $249. Nice!

It accompanied me home from my local Aldi, powered up first time and proved to be a top-notch machine. Throw in a year’s Office 365 and the value proposition was difficult to fault.

My problems began with Microsoft’s automated Windows 10 upgrade process. Like most budget tablets, engineering compromises are made to hit a specific price point. In the case of this Bauhn Sphere tablet, the disk space was limited to 16GB, with a third of this dedicated to a recovery partition.

The remaining space was shared with the operating system and applications, leaving just 4GB for adding new software and data. This was all OK until about 75 percent of the free space disappeared when Microsoft kindly downloaded the new Windows 10 software to my machine. In its wisdom, Microsoft doesn't permit opt-out for updates, so tough luck for those tied to a mobile contract.  

I made the decision to upgrade to Windows 10, recover this space and return the tablet to a usable state. During the upgrade, an error message flashed alerting that the upgrade had failed. I repeated the process. In spite of reading the error logs and using the batch file Microsoft suggested, nothing worked.

It was time to blow away the upgrade and do a clean install. I also got rid of the recovery partition – the lure of that additional storage space was just too tempting. One hour later I had a perfect Windows 10 tablet with lots of extra storage. Well, almost perfect. In the upgrade process I had lost audio and my search for sound drivers began.

My first support call was to Aldi’s technology partner, a Sydney-headquartered outfit called Tempo. Their website boasts that our “service centre team directs the claims between the engineering department and our large service agent network to ensure the fastest and best solution is provided”. Very comforting.

These claims were markedly different from reality, however. After waiting in the phone queue for 20 minutes and relating my story, including details about the flawed upgrade process, I requested a copy of the audio drivers. I was placed on hold while my agent had a discussion with a supervisor. No, they were unable to help, nor could they proffer any solution. My one-year old tablet would remain muted.

Keeping cool is always the best policy in this type of situation so I tweeted to Aldi and they replied with a link to their website’s online form where I duly lodged a complaint. I have emailed Tempo every day for the last week with a request for drivers. Like my tablet, all I got was silence. A letter to Aldi’s MD posted on Facebook prompted an almost immediate apology from Aldi and I wait in hope for the situation to be resolved.

So what have I learned from this sad tale?

If you don’t buy a tablet from a channel that employs people who understand their products you are asking for trouble. Tempo have no firmware, drivers or downloads of any consequence on their website. If the hard disk fails then locating this software could prove either difficult or impossible.

Would I buy more technology from Aldi? Absolutely. It was half the price of the equivalent branded products and worked like a treat until the unfortunate operating system upgrade. Aldi have helped make affordable computing available for a lot of folks, in particular retirees – and that’s a good thing.

Hunter Valley-based copywriter Mike Ryan writes many case studies for enterprise IT vendors. His website is www.brassrazoo.com.au