Time and Tiny Stores Close

[Steve]

Granville Technology Group, parent of cheap-as-chips Tiny and Time personal computer brands and the UK's largest maker of PCs, has closed all its 78 retail stores leaving "uncertainty" over its future according to the BBC.

The BBC reports the company as saying that all directors except the non-executive chairman have resigned and the firm has begun laying off staff.

http://www.hexus.net/content/news/ne...lld19JRD0xNDEx

The story has now been updated with a response from Granville. Their response is essentially "no comment".

[nichomach]

Not unexpected, and forgive me for saying this, not entirely unwelcome either. I feel sorry for the staff who may be losing their jobs, but Time, from my POV, have sold crappy machines that have added to my workload because their support was...less than optimal. As an aside I saw the BBC News 24 business report on this and the guy discussing it was ****ing clueless; apparently he didn't know that the UK had any computer manufacturers...twit.

[0iD]

Read on ZD Net yesterday that they'd sent all their staff home. Sad for the employees.

I still have a Tiny P3 pc that I've had for yonks. My 4 yr old has it in her room. Supprisingly flawless performance over the years.

[nichomach]

Tiny used to do some acceptable quality systems; I was sad when they originally went under, because I used to be able to direct home users to them if they wanted to have a look at a prebuilt system in a shop before they bought. Unfortunately, the brand was critically compromised after being taken over.

[Dougal]

Time were the evil people of computers. I can remember the hassle I had to go through with a mates machine to get a repair sorted for it.

Then they said that because of a piece of hardware that was installed by a different company the warranty would be completely void. Even though the problem had nothing todo with the new hardware (CDROM drive IIRC).

SO we ended up trying to salvage bits and got stuck with hot glue >:E

[joshwa]

My dad used to work for them about a month ago, luckily he got a new job before this happened - but when he was leaving all of the directors / managers etc had to sell their TFT monitors, and go back to CRT screens!

[Stoo]

Pity for the employees, but basically, good riddance to bad rubbish..

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

Pity for the employees, but basically, good riddance to bad rubbish..

Dammit I had those exact words on the tips of my fingers for typing

[=TcQi=]

Shame for the employees of that comp - maybe they will be bought out though?
Do you guys think they will try to sell remaining stock or will the "liquidators" get it?
There could be some stunning deals if the first one happens.


=TcQi=

[Rabs]

IMHO they used cheap tat components and the support was terrible at best - the Supanet 'optimisations' or isp locking was borderline illegal.

I hope the staff get jobs elsewhere quickly (with a decent company) but good riddance to bad rubbish. meh...

[Dougal]

Shame for the employees of that comp - maybe they will be bought out though?
Do you guys think they will try to sell remaining stock or will the "liquidators" get it?
There could be some stunning deals if the first one happens.


=TcQi=

It will probably be taken by the banks and sold on cheap.

Normally in pallets of stuff.

[slinger]

It will probably be taken by the banks and sold on cheap.

Normally in pallets of stuff.

It will all end up at computer fairs. When Tiny when bust a few years back I bought a couple of base units at one fair because they were so cheap (I understood why when I got them home) and they had pallet loads of badged monitors for sale too.

[Nick F]

My first ever PC was a Tiny, about 6 years ago though. It was a top of the range gaming system with a 400mhz P2 Oh how things have changed.

[Rhyth]

Am I right in thinking Tiny sold very cheap systems compared to similar spec ones from other companies? There does seem to be a trend with companies offering machines at very cheap prices with poor build quality then going down the pan, Carrera SSC for example. If your not going to self build then I think it's worth paying that bit extra from a company that has high build quality standards, which I consider to be very important in this industry

[rc55]

Looks like it's just Dixons group stores on the high street for PC's now.

Ah well, The Computer Shop's stores were kinda cute, I suppose it's a shame to see them go. One thing however, the PC's they made in my experience have always been pretty mediocre.

I remember a friend being sold a Cyrix 233 system with S3 Trio 4Mb as a games machine back in something like 1998, when really a P2 at least was needed (and Voodoo's were getting popular). To top that it was sold on credit at a stupid rate, with a useless after sales cover too.

They saw him coming, now I'm watching them going!

Ruairi

[Splash]

/me keeps eyes out for those stupid big tellies on the cheap...