[Milan]

Can anyone recommend a company I may use to buy my next Desktop PC? Who gives the best customer service, support and quality of product?

Please help!

[1nteger]

Personally, one of the best things i ever did was build my own system, and now I would never buy off the shelf again. Even if i couldn't build it myself, i'd spec up all the components seperately and get someone else to put it together. The main problem with full systems retail is that you can often get what sounds like a good top end machine, but the actual components are 'budget' hardware. For example, there are many graphics cards called, say, GeForce4, but this is just the chipset on the board - loads of different companies tweaking them differently...add different coolers and stuff, so they can vary in performance quite a lot. In addition, you end up paying for 'technical support' and this is often one of the bits they charge through the nose for! Learn to put your own together (and it isn't that hard) and you will probably never need to pay for technical support again...just use forums like this one!!

Anyway...it would be useful to know where u r based (UK, US, Canada?) and roughly how much you want to pay, and what your likely pc uses are...gaming, web, graphic design, etc?

(PS: I happen to know of an excellent system that's going to be available soon and from an excellent outlet called....'Me'!! )

[muckshifter]

As 1nt says, more and more people are "building your own".

I cannot recommend any propriety built system they ALL have a way of grabbing your testicles and not letting go. For every £1500 system "they" sell, you could build for £1000 & have better components.

What are you going to use it for?
How much have you in the kitty?

If you do have to buy “ready made” give us the “Spec” before you buy and we’ll tell you if it is a good buy.

Don't throw your money away too quickly.

[1nteger]

...unless of course you throw it my direction

[Milan]

I mainly use Office, (Word, excel, publisher and powerpoint)

I want to be able to download music on to CD etc. as well as edit digital video and photos and again record onto CD.

As well as surf the net with a decent amount of spead.... just waiting for broadband to be available in my area ....St. Albans, UK.

My buget is around £1000

[muckshifter]

This is what I came up with if I have to buy off the shelf.

Dell Dimension 4550
With the "updates" you would neet to do the job comes in at £1097 ... not bad for an Inhell system

An AMD system would cost £800 if you build it yourself.

Could you build yourself?

[Milan]

I don't mind trying to build my own but not sure where to start.

[1nteger]

Mmmmm...Dell? Not sure about that..I always thought Dell do something to their machines that don't allow upgrades (I read it somewhere recently and I'll check it out to remind myself what it was).

I know three different people who have baught Evesham machines...all very happy with what they got, service and support etc, plus their pc's seems to be pretty good spec for price.

I spoke about building your own system, and while it's relatively easy, it's often not plain sailing. Actually assembling the parts is usually the easiest bit. The problems start if the thing doesn't power up, for example...troubleshooting and getting disks formatted, partitioned, and software installed may be a little more involved.

I have a half-written guide on PC assembly that I put together for my own use...just to remind me of how it all fixed together! If anyone's interested, I could submit that for people to scrutinise and comment on...I'm sure I've put things in there that others would do differently or that are probably just plain wrong.

If it's of interest, perhaps between us (Muckshifter?) we could provide you (Milan) with some ideas of how to build your own.

Worthwhile you think?

[Milan]

Definately, would be worth a look.

[muckshifter]

Mmmmm...Dell? Not sure about that … I always thought Dell do something to their machines that don't allow upgrades (I read it somewhere recently and I'll check it out to remind myself what it was).

As I said above ... they ALL have you by the proverbial.

Milan, building your own is NOT as daunting as you think … its knowing what to do if you have a problem and finding someone who can help.

There are some good tutorials on the Web and we can certainly help.

We need to get your “list” of components together first then decide who/where to get them from. It may be better if you can get all you need from one supplier but that could cost more if “price” is of an issue.

In your case you’ve set yourself a budget of £1000 … stick to it … you should not need to spend that much and still get a dam good system.

If you think you would prefer to buy “off the shelf” don’t worry … we can still guide you to a good system.

Have a look at http://security.cclcomputers.co.uk/acatalog/
“Ready to go Systems” the Soltek SLKT400 board they use is ok and a good foundation for your needs. You will need to “upgrade” from the basic build they offer but I still got it under £800. They will build it for you or you could save £35 and build it yourself.

Let us know what you think.
Mucks