Manufacturers

[Guest]

In my opinion building your own is the only way to go.
You can purchase retail versions of the hardware you want
(fully supported by the manufacturer for tech & updates)
and when you are done you have EXACTLY wat YOU want. You
also have no surprises when you go to update any
hardware. Replace a power supply in a Dell without a
special cable and you'll fry it and the motherboard. Give
me a good reason Dell has the supply & motherboard pinned
differently than standard and supplies the buyer with no
information about it. This is not a rant against Dell, as
prebuilts go they are preatty good, but it's just an
example of what you can run into if you buy instead of
build.

 

[John Barnett - MVP]

I agree totally. The one advantage with a self build is that a) you know
what goes into it, and b) it gives you an insight into how a pc is put
together.
Before i built my own machine i had suffered a hard drive crash - the hard
drive was beyond repair. Fortunately, it was still under warranty. However
the repair man told me, had it not been under warranty it would have cost me
£95 per hour plus call out for someone to install a new one. It took the guy
10 minutes to put the new drive in and 50 minutes chatting to me. After he
had gone i realised i could have done the job myself!

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

I agree that it's often best to build one's own PC, but there's no
need, in my experience, to pay the extra cost (for the fancy packaging
and occasional paper manuals) of using "retail" components. The OEM
components don't come in the fancy packages, but normally have the
same capabilities and warranties as their "retail" counterparts, and
often cost significantly less.

Bruce Chambers

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[Ken Blake]

In

I agree that it's often best to build one's own PC, but there's no
need, in my experience, to pay the extra cost (for the fancy packaging
and occasional paper manuals) of using "retail" components. The OEM
components don't come in the fancy packages, but normally have the
same capabilities and warranties as their "retail" counterparts, and
often cost significantly less.

My view is different. For the vast majority of people, building
your own is the *worst* way to go. Building a computer is very
easy, but troubleshooting hardware problems if it doesn't work
can be much harder.

If you're a hobbyist who gets pleasure from building, and who has
the skills to troubleshoot, that's fine. I have nothing against
someone like that building it himself. But the great majority of
people want a computer as painlessly as possible. They want it to
work right out of the box, and aren't interested in getting their
hands dirty doing it themselves, or dealing with the frustrations
of troubleshooting, repairing, returning and exchanging defective
parts, etc.

I've acquired computers many different ways over the years. I've
bought from companies like Gateway, I've built them myself, and
I've upgraded hardware in older systems. These days I use a local
builder who builds to my specifications. It costs only a little
more than if I build it myself, I get a two-year warranty, and I
get to let *him* worry about fixing it if there are hardware
problems. I get the advantages of building (I choose all the
components individually) without the potential headaches. It
costs me only a little extra, and in my view it's well-worth the
expense.