John Rumm wrote
Owain wrote
John Rumm wrote

The advantage of pre-built is you get someone else to sit through the
tedium of OS installs!

But wont necessarily install it the way you want it installed.

Are you compiling Gentoo from source?

It was a slightly humorous comment, but there is the serious point that if
you want a machine with windows and office on it, its potentially a couple
of hours of waiting about getting them both installed and patched up to
the current configuration.

Hardly ever with Win7. And you can do something else while it updates
anyway.

That may be enough to sway a decision where there is only a few quid
difference in price between components and pre-built[1].

It was a lot more than a few quid in my case.

(patching speed being partly a function of your internet speed as well)

Yes, but you can do something else while it happens with a slow net service.

[1] When discussing pre-built, its also worth thinking about the big OEM
built systems. With many of those, your software problem is the other way
around - you spend hours uninstalling all the crapware they loaded for
you!