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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RagTimeBand who wrote (4381)	12/19/1998 8:26:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

The justification for buying a partially built system (example: case, mother board, pwr supply, cabling) would be if you couldn't find an OEM offering the drives and or cards you wanted. I agree. The more time you spend investigating the machine you want the more difficult it is to find an oem that will match your needs (wants). I prefer a custom machine..home built or assembled by others because I am confident that the machine is not proprietary. I want an ATX case and power supply, a stand alone video card. I want the OS on a separate CD and all of the software on separate CDs. Many of the big box makers will give you a recovery CD and nothing else. To reinstall software you will have to reformat your harddrive and lose everything. Gateway, DELL, Micron and others do have open architecture machines but you still have to be careful. Some of their machines are proprietary.I would not advise Compaq or IBM if you want an open architecture machine. The last time I looked into this it was much cheaper to buy an already built system from an OEM. Generally cheaper but not much cheaper. I think the OEM machine is good for a first time computer buyer. The new buyer does not have a personal collection of software so the limited edition software supplied on an OEM machine works as an introduction to computing. For an experienced user the software installed on an OEM machine is useless garbage IMO. An exception is a 450 machine based on an overclocked Celeron 300A CPU. This customized machine is much cheaper than an OEM 450. The OEM packages come with support (you have to like pain... Your call is important to us, all of our representatives are helping other satisfied customers, please hold ...music...then Have you run scan disc?? shame on you..please run scan disc and then call back). I find the documentation supplied with the custom machines much more complete than the documentation I get from the OEMs. (Some, not all..ABIT, Aopen, TYAN, ASUS have excellent documentation compared to the OEM machines I have used). You can get Internet user support for the main stream mobos. It is easier to get answers for an ABIT BH6 than it is for a Compaq for example. Do I go cheap or expensive? Cheap, but go for quality<g> If I go cheap I'm concerned about buying a motherboard that's 6 months old and thus doesn't have the latest and greatest chips and chip sets on it Stick with the BX chipset.. Also by going cheap am I getting what I pay for? In other words I might save, but will I run into serious problems because of trying to save a few bucks? No. You will run into problems if you do not research the components and your overall system design. I want to go with a SCSI HD (probably the latest I can get, either SCSI 2 or 3). Why? Stick with IDE. Half the price and the same performance. Go for SCSI for peripherals and when your IDE controller is full (four devices) I'm leaning towards Win98 but haven't made the final decision. The consensus of the thread is NT. Then they tell us you have to buy books just to figure out how to use it! If you want stability go for NT and spend some time on the learning curve. If you want the best multimonitor support go for Win98. Either way you will end up in NT as you indicate. Best solution to guarantee NT hardware compatibility is to follow in Clarence's foot steps. He researched his NT machine and then had Minotaur put it together for him. The machine will be burnt in with NT ensuring an NT capable machine. Zeuspaul

To: RagTimeBand who wrote (4381)	12/19/1998 11:14:00 PM
From: mowa	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14778

Emory, I read thru Zeuspaul's reply and it is all textbook, right on the money, I will see if I can add some things. "The last time I looked into this it was much cheaper to buy an already built system from an OEM." Let me offer an opportunity to question this assumption, I have found most (all?) major OEM's to be 10%-30% MORE expensive than a system I can put together from !'Net! resellers, if I compare part to part. Most OEM systems will cut corners somewhere, Winmodem (doesn't work on NT), mediocre printer, small case, 15" monitor (a very good 19" can be had for $425 (CTX VL-910)), no ergonomic kb, small HD (under 6 GIG), and my personal pet peeve a video card with either a second rate chipset or the cards smaller memory option( ooo i hate that). Once I factor in that I am almost always sacrificing quality somewhere with an OEM the "perceived" savings start to evaporate, and I am just refering to the $800-$1200 systems from there on up the gap widens, quickly, try pricing a high end system sometime. The trick is buying off the Net(my favorite spot killerapp.com ). Comp USA a major national chain has prices that are literally 15%-40% cheaper on THEIR OWN website than in THIER OWN stores, this kills me, I love telling their customers about this whenever I am in a Comp USA. I have OEM friends who often can't mach Net prices with their COST. "Also by going cheap am I getting what I pay for? In other words I might save, but will I run into serious problems because of trying to save a few bucks?" I think it is important to consider HOW to save a couple of bucks, as stated above WHERE you buy is important the next part is WHAT you buy. I have concluded that the leaders (Tier 1) in the field have some advantages I don't want to do without. Drivers, some companies are already working on NT5 drivers, these are the same that have NT4 drivers, and drivers ON the Win98 CD. Compatability, does it work on NT, Linux, BE OS? Experience, Tier 1 products have alot of users, many of wich have already worked thru the problem I am about to have. So to me the WHAT is usually not which maufacturers but which of their products (more accurately when, since I like yesterday's "Picks" and "Editors Choices"), there is a price drop that depending on conditions occurs 2-3 months after a product release ( like a new car driven off the lot) this is the end of the "bleeding edge" markup, and then when rumors of the next "Greatest New Thing" start arriving the price drops again and begins to enter it's sweet spot. I end up with great products for a good price, mature drivers, and a wide knowledge base of support. In the case of Zuespaul's recomendation of a BX board this is the kind of situation where I will pay the extra for something not in it's sweet spot, eg a catagory of hardware has advanced to "next generation" ( Pentium to Pentium II, this generation of vid card with 3D heavily imbedded,) and the performance and length of usefulness justifies the extra cost. I have found Emory, that with a good collection of Tier 1 products an NT install is fairly painless (special considerations ie. multi-moniter, multi-modem, ISDN, extensive peripherals, not-withstanding). This has been a long post, I hope of some value. I will leave a final recomendation for any interested in NT. I am a huge fan of O'Reilly Press ( oreilly.com ), their book "NT in a Nutshell" should be shipped with each copy of NT and their other books are generally well regarded also. As to your Question about the from field, I have been wondering that as well. Nothing special on my part. mowa