Man... I have used nothing but Dell for the last 10 years. What have they done to their website?

It is completely clunk-ified. I don't know if it is Flash or Silverlight or Ajax or what, but I go there and it hangs and chugs around.

No point, just annoyed.

dell sucks chunks

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

I knew if I posted this someone would post to the effect of "dell sucks".

So where would you buy a computer? Just curious, because I will pretty much only buy Dell.

As far as desktops, BYO is the best option IMO.

Laptops...well, Dell, Lenovo and HP make the best out there right now.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Hard to beat build your own. Just gotta be willing to RMA stuff and not have a warranty.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

No warranty? Explain then how I have built mine piece by piece and have lifetime warranty on my RAM / Video Card and Motherboard + 3 to 5 years on the hard drives (have many).

Depends on what you buy.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Buy retail parts, not OEM white boxes. You get the manufacturer warranties.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

just bought a Dell Studio 17

probably the nicest thing I'll ever own that I can't live in or drive...

Ok... I assumed the BYO crowd. But a couple hundred bucks isn't worth it. Any resellers other than Dell?

Couple hundred? Last time I priced one out the nearest Dell could do was $400-$500 more.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Fuck, this forum, oh well. What I was going to add was...

I'm sure if you post a budget and what you want it for someone would price out one for you.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

If you're going to buy a prebuilt, at the very least go local. Surely there's some variety of "Mom and Pop" computer shop that will put a comparable machine together for you and save you a few hundred bucks in the asking.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

This is turning into a tech post... but here are the specs I'm considering:
XPS 420 is their name
Intel Core 2 Duo 6MB L2, 3.16ghz, 1333 FSB
Vista...
4GB RAM, 800mhz, 4dimms
DVD / CR - Read/Write
24 inch monitor - cheaper model - like $440
ATI Radeon HD3870, 512MB
Sound Blaster Xi-Fi
keyboard etc
500gb DataSafe Hard drive (2 500 drives, auto-backup etc)
MS Office Home / Student

That is right around $1650 before taxes.
Back in the day I used to build, but unless you're buying used parts, I don't see how you beat that price by any significant amount.
Figure monitor, board, and processor alone are $700ish.
Add RAM, $100
Add MS Office $100
Add Windows $100
Add Case $100
Add CD / DVD $50
Add mouse / Keyboard $30
Add sound card $100
Add graphics card $100
2 500 gb hard drives - just stand alone = $150ish

Even if my guestimates are high, I don't see how you could piece that together for much less than $1400. And someone still has to put it all together. If I' wrong, I'm all ears.

From my experience, the primary savings in BYO is from pirating the OS

You can buy 4 gigs of OCZ ram for $53, that's just off the top of my head.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

And honestly, most decent mother boards have 8.1 onboard, do you need a seperate sound card for something?

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Ok ok I know I am a broken record. But get a laptop!!

The last computer I built was for my sister about 2 years ago. She was looking at a Dell. After I showed her that I could save her over 1k by building for her it became a no brainer. All my computers have been home built for the last 8 years, no breakdowns, no problems, no proprietary software and all upgrades easily done because none of the hardware is proprietary.

I have been happy with Velocity Micro, check them out.

A 3870? Why? They suck.

Get a 4870 instead, or a 4850 at least.

Some people would rather not muck with it, and that can be worth hundreds.

Building your own, if you really aren't that into it, can be a hassle. Couple of things go wrong or a part here or there doesn't work, and it can be a real frustration.

I would probably prefer to build my own or go mom and pop, but I can see the merits of buying from dell.

It's not like it's hard or anything though...everything goes in the slot that's sized for it, you can't accidentally put the ram in the CPU slot or something. =D

People call me a smartass when I say that, but it's true. There's a handful of different-sized slots and a handful of parts with matching sizes. Sound familiar?

http://sisterschoice.typepad.com/sister ... hole_2.jpg

Hahaha that's great.

But the JPG was not what I expected when I read "sister" and "hole" in the URL...

Dirty mind!

Making supper isn't hard, but people will pay not to do that too.

Supper doesn't require much in the way of tech support though.

I'll build my own system, but I'm done building machines for other people.

I often recommend Dell, but never ever pay the price that's listed on their website.

How do you wrangle a lower price out of them? Typically I wait until they have a 'sale' for whatever reason or free upgrades, but what else can be done?

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

He meant he recommend Dell to other people so he don't but he is intelligent enough to pay less than what Dell ask and build his own instead. He's not saying he haggle the Dell price down.

Oh I forgot to add that if you call them you might get them to get you a better deal than if you buy directly from the web site. Especially on the monitors and accessories.

You can prowl cheapstingybargains.com for good dell coupons (and other manufacturers)

There's really no haggling with dell if you're buying from the "Home" section, the small business and enterprise sections they will negotiate price.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Actually, I mean taking advantage of sale pricing, special discount codes, and corporate purchasing.

The thing that irks me most about Dell is their pricing disparity. You can configure the same machine and get different prices depending on which model you start with and what type of user you claim to be.

This is exactly what you want to do, support those little guys.

Usually you will get better service this way too, why talk to someone in India on a technical problem when you could talk to someone local in your own language.

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-VGN-NR240E-P ... 786&sr=8-2

bought this at the fry's in town here. red tag was 699, i got it for 499 because it was an open item that was a display model for a couple weeks. even got them to do a fresh install on all the software so my admin name wasn't FRY'S ELECTRONICS. that happened to my dad when he bought a laptop from there ;p

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actually it's not that exact model, but it's the same specs

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This is so true. I used to help people put machines together. Horrible mistake because you're doing free tech support for 5 years every time they download WEATHER BUG.

And yes - the system I was considering was either $2000 or $1700 - depending on whether you found the right coupon code.

But anyway - everyone can be happy... I found a slightly better solution. Local geek friend is putting one together for me. Whatever the top AMD chip is, a good mother board etc... $1300.

Have him watch/teach you to put it together. When you want to upgrade it will be easy.