"DerbyDad03" wrote in message
...

"In fact within the past year we've both had machines die
completely dead with DOA motherboards, requiring the purchase of new
computers."

DOA - Dead On Arrival - motherboards required the *purchase* of new
machines?

I phrased that poorly, I meant diagnostics on the machines showed the
motherboards were toast, so DOA at the bench. The Mac was four or five
years old so it made sense to get a new one. My top-of-the-line Dell was
less than three years old, so I looked into fixing it and learned that
Dell's proprietary motherboards cost twice as much as they have any right
to, and with labor factored in it made no sense to fix it. So I pulled out
the RAM and gave it to somebody, and yanked the drive, sound card and video
card (upgrades) and had them put into a new machine which runs circles
around the DELL for half the cost. I'll never buy another DELL because
their customer service is poor and their repair parts are vastly overpriced.
I found a local computer shop that's been in business for 25 years and they
built a new machine with impressive performance for half what I paid for
DELL's flagship model three years ago--another lesson learned.