On Jul 14, 8:38*pm, Oren wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:00:42 -0700 (PDT), "

wrote:
When you can buy a whole system for $400,
and given the problems that can arise,
the idea of building a system for someone else
out of parts doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.
Also factor in that the $400 system comes
with a legal version of Windows 7, a warranty
and someone to go to for support. You can also
typically get MSFT office for another $100,
3 years of antivirus for $40, etc.

Just saying, sounds like aggravation and a good
way to ruin a friendship.

We disagree. *Bought my bride a "system" for some bucks under or
around $400. *The system is full of OEM trash-ware, much of the
software is useless or not used. I don't need stuff, except the OS.

I don't know what all the "bloatware" that you find
so objectionable is. I'm sure some of that comes
with SOME systems, but it's never been a problem
for me. I believe that was more of a problem
years ago when systems would come loaded with
offers from AOL, Mindspring, and other ISP's, etc.

I recently bought two HP systems about a year
apart and they have an HP support assistant on them,
and free limited use versions of MSFT Office,
but other than that, there isn't anything else. The
support assistant keeps track of any updated drivers
or bios that HP might have and it will install them if
needed and you OK it. It doesn't bother me and
I don't bother it. The MSFT office starter software
was a plus and I use it. Even if it has other software
on it, if your friend doesn't use it, I don't see the
big issue.


Built mine (for 20 years) *from scratch without ALL the bloat ware..

It would seem in a few minutes you could also just
remove the bloatware that you don't want.




As to warranty, any system can fail in a matter of days. Burn in is
around 3 days. After that it will run for years.

Yes, the failure rate is higher in the beginning, but
clearly they can still fail at 6 or 9 months too. With a
system from HP or Dell then it's their problem. And
building the thing for a friend, those failures in the
early days would seem to be YOUR problem to
then deal with.



Windows 7 has *free* *AV and Open Office is free (open source) and
just as good (better) as MS Office, plus compatible. No cost, ever.

PS. My friend will not be lost. He asked, because he trust me.

I didn't mean to upset anyone. *I appreciate this group for the
intelligence and vast knowledge of common sense.

I didn't mean to imply that your friend doesn't trust you
or that you aren't competent. The common sense
aspect you speak of is why I suggested that for me,
building a system for someone else or even myself
for general purpos use doesn't make sense because
you're not saving much, if anything. It's been that way
for a decade or more now.





In a few hours I can build a system for him *as I WOULD want for
myself or meet his expectations. *I'm not looking for what *an OEM
"thinks" he needs.

I think for myself. Hardware advice?

You said elsewhere that he's just using the thing for
email and web browsing, nothing special. Hundreds
of millions of folks are doing exactly that with all kinds
of off the shelf systems so I don't see why his
expectations would not be met with a $400 system
from say HP. And you can customize those to a
reasonable extent, change the CPU, memory,
hard drive size, etc.

Being in the position of building a system for someone
else today, from as you say a common sense standpoint,
is not where I'd want to be because I can see a lot
of downside and not much upside. But clearly you
can and should do as you please.