Hi again. I'm not the best authority on brands. From 1985 through 1997, I never bought a computer but built them all from components. Probably averaged 50 per year towards the end. And then things got squirrelly. They started to get commoditized such that there was not much money to save in do it yourself efforts and pervasive technological obsolescense meant that you could no longer plan on keeping a computer 3 or 4 years and just just keep making incremental improvements to keep up with the mainstream. It also made the do-it-yourself even less viable as too much inventory of "obsolete" 12 month old computers brought prices down even further.
In working on other peoples computers, I saw the following:
Compaq and IBM tend to use proprietary components so that repair is difficult and expensive. Packard Bell (Now NEC-PAckard-Bell) was too low end and a pain to improve (everything on the motherboard), and Gateway had unusable support (spending forever on hold). I had a Toshiba Pentium Pro that was like a high end Packard Bell. Cheap and reliable. Never tried customer support. I've stayed with Dell the last three years and have found the hardware to be fast and reliable. I have never used their support but have seen good results in passing. ie Other sections/divisions that I was not supporting.
The only exception had been laptops. I started with Toshiba's ten years ago and then went with IBM's. The IBM's have been great machines and their service has been great as well. But (and I blame it on this thread and all that talk of new computers last week, Mark; especially if I end up sleeping on the couch), I went to order an IBM laptop last week and then checked Dell as a comparison. For the same price as a 384 MEG RAM, 30 Gig hard drive, DVD, PIII 850, 15" UXGA IBM; the Dell had a 512 MEG RAM, 30 Gig hard drive, DVD/CDRW combo drive, PIII 1GHz, 15" UXGA. With a tear in my eye, I turned away from the IBM and ordered the DELL. It's showing a projected ship date of APR 10.
Yes, a DVD/CDRW will cover most applications. The only thing I am unsure about is digital extraction on audio CD's. Haven't done enough to know the ins and outs yet.
Best,
Steve |
