Opinion: If you have one custom built by a local shop you may have better support than you will from some remote company. May cost more, but English is usually their primary language . Most of my experience on the phone with Pakistan, etc. has been bad. Make you up a list of exactly what you want and compare some prices. Good Tech support is priceless! Grady

Your Dell off the shelf computer would be enough for perhaps 90% of the population. Absolutely nothing wrong with these for the average consumer.

Pros. It comes complete and with all software installed so you only have to unpack it, allow it to come to room temperature if you live in a cold area and plug it it. Nice.

Cons. You have no control over the quality of the components and as profit margins can be slim not the best are used. Too many 'trialwares' and 'bloatware ' that needs removing.

Custom built. A custom built computer can only be as good as you or any adviser you use. However with due diligence you can build a fantastic computer.

Pros. You can select the make and model of every item used. Plenty of good, free software.

Cons. Fail to name a make or model number for any part and a cheap component will be used possibly (been there and made the mistake once). Your builder may have some older stock he will use rather than buy later models, this is fair business practise but not necessarily the best on a computer build. No proprietary software at all unless bought.

Alternative. Build your own. This is not a difficult task by any stretch of the imagination and the thrill of those LED lights and the fans coming on the first time you press the start button is better than any drugs. The biggest obstacle is fear of the unknown.

Pros. You are in total control. You buy your name brand parts at the very best prices if you are paying attention.

Cons. You will overspend your budget unless you have great self control. Any mistake is yours but this is minimal, non existent if you are paying attention.

A computer consists of about a dozen components depending on what is built into the motherboard. The power supply and motherboard need to be screwed in place, the rest are clipped in.

Christopher,

Not knowing anything about IPODs, why XP?

I can understand why XP users do not upgrade their current systems to Vista. However, for someone to purchase new I have always supported the position of purchasing the most current O/S. In fact, I replaced my old reliable Win98 OE with a new HP dual core Vista just this last Spring.

I say this with great respect to anyone who disagrees:

Don't listen to the doom and gloom about Vista, or the sky is falling attitudes.

Vista is not a reincarnation of ME.

Drivers for peripherals have improved in the last six months, but yes some software and peripherals will not work with VIsta.

The coming of SP3 is not a savior for the computer world. It appears to be a quality improvement on an existing O/S, but all it is is O/S code. There are no new features.

The claim of SP3 creating benchmarks equal to or surpassing those of XP are as always possible. However, in those cites it is a particular system, a particular individual and a particular environment. It is not us folk who are just glad our system booted up.

I guess it is the old question, "It is 2008, would you buy a new 2002 (when XP was released) vehicle?"

DA

Chris to assist you in making an informed decision, the below link is my latest reading on SP3.

DA

Here is a link that might be useful: The Elder Geek

Or get an iMac and don't worry about any of this stuff. You'll love how it works with your iPod. Don't know about your other favorite aps but Macs come with quite a bit built in. And no bloatware to be deleted either.

Owbist pretty much hit the mark answering your question. You are much better off building the computer yourself or having it custom made buy a TRUSTED builder. Pre-built mass marketed computers use lower quality components and usually leave little if any room for future upgrades. No upgrades guarantees you buying another computer in a few years.

As for price, if you do some research you can build a MUCH better computer than those offered by the big companies for LESS money.

I have had a Gateway in 1993, a computer built for me in 1996, a Dell Computer bought 1/02/02 (still going strong - I have added RAM total of 512 ram -- it is now my husband's) and bought another Dell Computer in 01/02/06 (still going strong) my computer.

I love my Dell computers.....the best! I never had a problem with both computers. I keep them clean and do all the necessary maintenance that is required.

Years ago with Dell you received great technical help from Dell ...but for the past few years you get women and/or men who don't speak English.... so I never call Dell for help -- I write to Computer Help Forum and the people here always help me.

Thank you Computer Help Forum Posters

You can order Dells without any installed junkware. Go to their Business side and you order whatever you want installed. The Business side still sells XP (which is what I'm sticking with) and the prices are better. You don't need to have a business to order their business machines.

Owbist, I want to ask something. I've been shopping around for a laptop, researching and learning more than I care to. What I find is most of the hard drives, motherboards, processors are made by the same companies. If I look at a Dell, Toshiba, HP, I find the hardware has the same manufacturers. Nothing unique to a brand. The rate of repair changes among computer companies, but the parts are the same. Both Toshiba and Dell let you custom configure some of their machines. Dell is the only company which will not put in the junk-ware if you request.

Knowing that, what advantage would buying from a small shop have? They probably use the same parts as the big guys.
The shops in NY come and go quickly. I would be afraid to get stuck with no support.

Jane

Nice thing about custom, something goes bad you just replace it with an industry standard size replacement thing-a-ma-bob. Plug and Play,,, everything mostly snaps together. Anybody can do it.

Usually thats not so with the Dell and HP, etc, the main consumer computer makers.

My first computer was custom-made, but something was wrong with the motherboard, resulting in my taking the computer back several times for repairs that didn't work, before they finally gave me a different machine, and then months later, the place went out of business. No more support if I had needed it. So if you go that route, be sure it is a place that will be still there if you need them.

Our last three computers have been Dell dimensions. We have been completely satisfied with them, although, like Cricket, I do not call Dell now if I have a problem (unless something goes wrong with the hardware under warranty--which happened once, and they were good about taking care of it); I go for help online. There are plenty of helpful sites.

You can visit the Dell site and do a fair amount of picking and choosing of what you want in your computer. For my new one, I didn't want Corel Work Perfect but because of other more important considerations, I had to take it; so I just uninstalled Word Perfect and bought Microsoft Works Suite to be able to have Word.

You can do a certain amount of upgrading and changing things even with a ready-made computer. With my previous Dell (5 or 6 years old now), which my husband is using, I replaced an internal CD drive with a DVD/CD drive. It was my first experience, so was scary, but it wasn't very hard. The other day I replaced his internal floppy drive, too.

I also called Dell for advice about installing more RAM. They told me what I would need (I knew absolutely nothing about adding RAM), and I ordered the memory from Dell. No problem. Maybe the audio or something else is integrated and you couldn't mess around changing it--I haven't checked on that--but for where I am at now, this machine is perfect.

Re the XP/Vista question. This is something that depends upon what is important to the individual user. Personally I don't care if I make a purchase that could be compared to buying a 2002 model car in 2008, so long as it runs very well, does everything I want it to, and gives me no trouble. XP is far more stable than Win98 was; in fact, I can't remember any real headaches running it. No reason to call Dell (and get India or some other place)!

What *is* big, big, big for me is the thought of how much of the software I have been happily using and--not a small consideration, have paid for--may well not work with Vista. Then I would have to pay to upgrade some of it or might even be forced to search for something else that is compatible. Well, maybe there is Vista someday in my far distant future. But the way I feel now, and unless the quality of Dell computers goes down the drain, my and my husband's next few computers will again be Dells, and they will run XP, not Vista.

Jane asked some very good, valid questions in her post above.

First, I have no knowledge of laptops as I have never owned or considered owning one. My comments are purely related to desktop computers.

You would think all parts made by one manufacturer would be the same  not so. Quality varies. Some proprietary brands of computer makers have components modified to their own specifications so that any upgrade requires the parts to be purchased from the original computer manufacturer rather than a local source. Prices then are generally higher.

LetÂs take a quick look at motherboards. On this page from FryÂs you will see 25 motherboards all designed to take the Socket 775 CPU or processor. Note down the right side and you will see prices vary from $65 to $560. Now look for the manufacturer and take Asus, you will see their prices go from $135 to $560. Spread those differences over all components in a computer and you can see how one can be built for a very reasonable price and another would be very expensive. The price can reflect quality.

And before anyone responds there are many differences in what is or is not on some of those motherboards. But take a look at the Abit Fatality board (the red one). It has built in video, LAN and audio and is still only $110

Regarding the reliability of the local store being there next week, sadly they do vanish with amazing speed. Only the fittest survive. The best answer I can think of is be sure to ask around about the reliability and credibility of a store. Leave the barest of deposits. Can they build you a better computer? Absolutely as long as you tell them exactly what to include giving a make and model number for every part. That is not easy and I understand that. You can always ask for a written quote with model numbers then go home and Google each component listed.

Sorry that is long winded LOL.

Thanks for your response owbist. I have been driving myself crazy researching computers, processors, video cards, hard-drives, etc. Its a daunting task for someone who has no mechanical knowledge of computers. I feel like trying to buy a car and comparing all the engines, transmissions, and so on.

I had to purchase a desktop in June and went through the same nonsense and I'm not sure all the researching really made that much of a difference. The problem I find is understanding what certain parts do and how important they are to the whole machine. How important is GHz, MHz,RPM's SATA, Raid...

I did visit two computer shops in the area and was given such different information I left shaking my head. Everyone has their own opinion and is very convincing.

So now I visit Tom's Hardware and read all the forums I can find and get even more confused...I don't even know what I'm reading about!

The bottom line is as fast as you research, they develop newer systems. I was told to wait until Spring when Intel comes out with a different chip or something...

The hunt continues,

Jane

No matter what you get chip-wise, it will be superseded in no time. No relief from that. If you need something, go ahead and get it.

I agree with Asolo, no matter when you buy there is something better is just around the corner. Buy when you are ready.

RAID will not be important for you Jane. It requires 2 hard drives identical and a basic knowledge to set it up. Basically it involves the computer writing to both at the same time theoretically doubling the write speed.

Sata is good, this is the latest technology for the computer to converse with hard drives and Sata is very much faster than the older ATA or IDE drive.

Ghz refers to the CPU, my current computer is a P4 with 3Ghz processor, I am behind the times but it is sufficient for my needs.

Other than that stay away from Celeron processors

"...stay away from Celeron processors"

Why is that? Actually, I didn't even know they made them anymore.

The computer I'm typing on says it has 2.40 GHz. That is a lower number so I have to assume it is slower. I bought it 6 months ago. Does one look for higher number? What does that mean? I ran the Pit-stop scan on my older machine and it says it has a Intel Pent D, 2800 MHz. So is my older machine faster? The older one has a Raid drive? I have no idea what these things are or how important. Very confusing. Advice in the various forums talk about dedicated video cards.

I would like to know that I am getting a better machine than my older machines, although one machine is only 6 months old. I can't figure it out.

Going crazy,
Jane

Raid,,, my laptop uses something Intel raid ..somehow on one hdd ... its too fast. Double buffering into memory. Probably means I need more mem, so ordered $40 worth = 2 1Gb 667hz crucial memory sticks. Wish it had 800hz front side bus, or 1033,, faster! But the bus wont flow bytes that fast.
Maybe raid is now something to do with the readyBoost/superPrefetch or new flash cached hybrid drives, or the soon to be at the corner drugstore, the newest hard drives with absolutely no moving parts - flash hard drives.

Faster hardives are nice but most people are happy with 5400rpm sata in laptops. 72oorpm sata open and close programs and files percentage wise, about that much faster. Used to be 7200 rpm drives in laptops were hot and power hungry,,, not so anymore. Pretty much same Cool and efficiency. Sata is the standard hard drive now-a-days. Serial ATA. fewer wires.

Celeron type processors are still out there in low end stuff and in a laptop they used to get hot compared to non celery processors. A bit slower as they normally have only about half the usable memory onboard. In small confined places any extra hot isn't good,, especially sitting on your lap. Well hot in a processor anyhow.

Dual Core processors are a whole new world if you haven't had one... nice! No need to wait for defrag to finish before running a virus scan ;) Both programs will go full speed, sort of double your fun ... now there's Quad Core processors too, 4x as much fun !

Graphic cards with built in memory are nice on a laptop. Paints the screen Faster,, Paints the long list of text lines Faster. Makes pretty stuff prettier. 2d/3d move around faster/smoother.

Faster 'front side bus speed' are nice... for Faster.

Faster CPU's of course are nice ,,, Faster!

Light weight is nice... Look at pounds. Long life battery is nice, even if you seldom use battery,, two hours of battery when the thunder storm has your power off is going to run your laptop long enough.

Thank you all,I ended up with this custom made machine.

System Information report written at: 01/06/08 06:13:58
System Name: CNATHLON64-3200
[System Summary]

Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name CNATHLON64-3200
System Manufacturer MICRO-STAR INTERANTIONAL CO.,LTD
System Model MS-7327
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 95 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD ~1995 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. V1.4, 5/28/2007
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name CNATHLON64-3200\Chris Nelson
Time Zone Eastern Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 499.90 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.12 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Have no idea what all that means!

This is what I'm looking at:

Intel® Core 2 Duo T7250 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache), Genuine Windows® XP Professional

2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM [Included in Price]

Any comments.....Please!!

Jane

Jane your Intel T7250 processor (CPU) is quite an expensive one. Currently retailing from $210 to $250 so you would certainly appear to be looking at an upscale computer. 2gigs of memory is sweet too, even sharing it with the video you have plenty left.

Chris, thank you for replying to this thread, I thought you had forgotten it.

Window's Vista for the Aero Glass wants grapic card with min of 64mb onboard memory and 128mb preferred. Glass part is the fancier end. Clearish frames and 3d side views of all the windows when switching between them, generally fancier 2/3d stuff.

Someday, after xpSP3, everybody will have Vista.

Not me Mikie - XP only. Hopefully MS dumps Vista and comes up with something else.

Owbist, thanks for your replys. The whole set-up is around $1,400. It will be a office machine. The video card is 128 dedicated. We scan many documents and need to store them on the machine. Doctors office with many patient files which it will share with the main machine. The hardrive is 160GB 5400RPM.

How important is the GHz? I still don't know what that means. I read things which suggest that is low - what is it?? How important??

Jane

Maybe this will help: cpu speed

Jane,

Please obtain and enjoy any system that you wish. I want you to be satisfied.

However I am just curious. Can I ask what you base your harsh criticism of Vista on?

DA

Thanks, Bob, it's still 'Greek' to me. "One could be better, but not necessarily, a big cache could be good but might not be......"

DA I don't want to deal with the software problems. It's an office with printers, scanner, optical scanning, word processing and medical software. The medical software has been fixed (this month) to work on Vista. The fellow from the company said if we could get XP, get it. The other computers are all XP and they have to work together. They will share files and the same programs.

I don't want to deal with getting the equipment to work or have to buy new hardware.

If it were a machine for home use only, I might chance it, but for the office it just will create major headaches. As it is now, our year-old computer came with Office 07. The other machines have Office 03. They do not work well together no matter what balony MS states. When I try to move documents from one machine to another, it messes up the document even though they are saved as .doc.

We can't afford to change everything or hire someone to try to get everything to work with each other. The other computers are not old. But they came with XP because MS took forever to release Vista. We needed new machines last year.
This is why Dell and Toshiba still sell XP on their business machines. We aren't the only place facing these problems.

Thanks for your help,
Jane

Thanks Jane. I understand your position.

I just asked as there are many users who parrot what they hear about Vista without having total information to make an informed decision. Vista is not doom and gloom, and the sky is not falling. Then again , we heard much like that when XP was being released.

We all will have to plan ahead for the expiration of support for XP as SP3 is the last service pack. My recollection, and I don't have the information in front of me right now so a correction may be warranted, XP Origingal Edition support has expired, SP2 expires in June of this year, and the established Microsoft life-cycle for SP3 will start upon its general release.

It does seem the clock is ticking.

DA

Still, as I recall, many, including you, DA, continued to use 98 for some time after support for it had expired. So, I'm thinking that a successor to Vista will come out shortly after support for XP expires.

Same thing happens with autos. Those with older models are unable to get parts they need from the manufacturer, since those parts are no longer manufactured.

Time marches on!

For Christmas I got a new computer, and like Owbist says watching it boot up for the first time and watching all the lights light up can be very exciting. My new computer was built by my youngest son and I . I picked out the items I wanted and he purchased them at the Tiger Direct store in Miami. This is what I ended up with:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ processor
Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 motherboard
Ultra 2GB Ram
Liteon DVD Writer
Diamond Xtreme Sound5.1 card
EVGA NVidia DeForce 7300 GT video card
80GB SATA Hard Drive
Ultra UV Wizard MS Blue Mid ATX case
Total to get it together was $434.63
It is running XP and stays much cooler than my HP Pavillion did.
The only thing my son didn't get was the DVD burner drive I had picked out. He picked up one that didn't have the Light Scribe feature I wanted.

Good for you Daylilly. I remember the thread here and at the other place. Your son must feel really pleased with himself too.

LightScribe burner deal.. $30 delivered...

Here is a link that might be useful: newegg

Bobbie,

You are right I did stay with Win98. However, I stayed with it as I had no reason to upgrade. It provided me all I needed until just this last Spring.

In my personal opinion, in the last five years users have become more reliant on support rather than self-help. They want the answers now with minimal effort on their part. If I am correct that's were the void will develop.

I am quite sure the replacement for Vista is on the drawing board, but I haven't read anything about it. The only thing I have read about is the newest server O/S being readied. Believe it or not it is currently called Longhorn. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

Whatever happens XP is viewing the sunset.

DA

Any computer I order will be upgradeable to Vista when necessary. I purchased a desktop in June with 3 Gigs and a large hardrive. The laptop will be big enough to install Vista down the road.

I loved Win 98 as it was the first computer I learned to use. I remember the upgrade to SE and it was even more stable. I believe it will take MS time to work the bugs out of Vista and give time for the software people to get their products working more smoothly. I hear nothing but problems from people regarding Vista and software.

In a business situation, when computers must work well together, it is not wise to introduce a new operating system which still needs time to work well. I would love to try Vista, but we just don't have the time or money to fool with it now. Hopefully, all the machines can be upgraded later without too much of a hassle.

Most large businesses are not upgrading and still replacing their computers with XP. It is still to buggy.

Jane

Jane I am not pointing a finger at you as you shared some interesting views and I respect that.

Historically the large majority of those who have had concerns are users who upgraded their systems from XP to Vista. Same thing happened when Win98 was upgraded to XP. The clean install worked well, the upgrade had bugs. The doom and gloom, the sky is falling attitudes which people insisted on stating never came to fruition.

Remove the disappointment of losing pre-owned peripherals and software, and the complaints of those users who upgraded to Vista on a non-qualified system before evaluating. There is absolutely nothing evil or backward about Vista. I just wonder how many users who are citing all the "bugs" with Vista, and all the other alleged negativity have really tried a Vista system. Or is it they just read about it?

Is it just that there is an aura of negative attitude with some users who are spreading unconfirmed facts, rumor, or are perhaps of a mind set that if enough pouting is done XP will never be replaced?

XP is slowly on it's way out.

Now that I have said that, I have this feeling if I read between the lines that an off-spring of XP will continue to be present in a futured pared version, but only for the business needs. I guess something like NT.

DA

I also agree with damccoy, don't believe all of the hype either way about vista. If you have old programs that you need to keep, stay away from it. The same goes for many old pieces of hardware. They still haven't put out support for many older pieces of hardware and since it is a year after vista was released, they may not.

I support about 150 machines and I am avoiding vista. There is no real convincing reason to go with it for a machine that you already own. At home, I bit the bullet a little over a year ago and went to Linux. Depending on what you do, that may also be something to look at. It can knock a couple hundred dollars off of the price of a computer. I can do everything on my Linux box that I can do on my windows box now. There is a slight learning curve, but there will be in vista as well.