On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 11:28:19 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

In article , Lobster
scribeth thus
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
I know there are many people on this group who are knowledgeable about
computers, hence the question.

Got a flyer from Dell Computers a while ago offering what seemed like a good
deal on a new PC. SWMBO decided we needed one.

Four phone calls, two e-mails & several visits to their web site later I
still can't seem to buy it at the price on the flyer.

A quick Google search reveals loads of bad news about their service.

Am I better off leaving them well alone?

If you're talking about a desktop why not build one? You'll save some
money, get a machine that is exactly as you want it and know how to fix it
if it goes wrong. I did this for my first ever PC about a year ago.

I can certainly see the benefits of building your own, but AFAICS for an
average sort-of joe-public-specced PC I can't see how you're ever going
to save money on building your own these days.

Last time I looked into doing this I was going to cannibalise my old PC,
and use what I could from that, however there was no way I could get
close to the overall cost of a new PC (which I bought monitor-less from
Dell).

David


Well if you but the bits from the right places you can make a better PC
especially some money directed at quite power units and low noise
cooling and of course you learn a bit and can mend the gubbins..

However unless the field support id very good expect to pack it off for
repair especially if its a laptop. For this very reason I bought a
couple of second hand dell latitude's quite good machines, from a place
locally that repairs them.. quite rare but worth it in case of need...


I have had three Dells and have built three to my own spec.

If you want a run of the mill home PC it is not worth building your
own. You will not be able to build the same spec for 250 quid as they
can sell you one for. However, if you are looking at overclocking - a
couple of huge drives - RAID - serious sound card and graphics then
build your own.