Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 25th Sep 2007 12:28 UTC, submitted by stonyandcher
Critics who blasted Microsoft three months ago for failing to deliver Windows Vista add-ons have again called the company on the carpet, this time for missing its self-imposed deadline to provide promised extras. In late June, bloggers and users were already panning Vista Ultimate Extras as a bust. Extras, available only to customers running the top-end Vista edition, was one of the features cited by Microsoft to distinguish the USD 399 operating system from its USD 239 cousin, Home Premium. Microsoft's online marketing, for instance, touted Extras as 'cutting-edge programs, innovative services, and unique publications' that would be regularly offered to Ultimate users.
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Member since:2006-12-28
The price for retail PCs is lower or at least the same, the warranty is longer, and the service is often better.
Absolutely correct. With midrange to low end PCs, it's cheaper to buy from a large OEM.
The difference, in my experience, is when dealing with high end systems. The cost of a high end system from Dell or HP can be considerably more then when assembling from bought components. Usually, large OEMs offset this by adding free memory upgrades or price reductions on monitors and other peripherals.
So, knowing this, why do I roll my own? It's quite simple, control. I want to select each and every component that goes into my machine. I don't want sub standard RAM, or a HD with a slow seek time and only 8mb of catch.
If you know a good internet hardware component vendor, you can also get OEM components for far cheaper then retail price. Usually these online stores offer price reduction deals for spending a certain amount of money per order.
But most of all, it gives me a feeling of enormous well being to be able to assemble a machine. I suppose a car mechanic would probably feel the same after having restored or assembled a car.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I'm sorry, but often that claim is just false. When you buy single parts, the distributor has a quite high profit margin for every single piece of hardware.
If you buy a complete system, the profit margin is applied to the PC as a whole.
This, of course, strongly depends on where you buy the system. Bigger distributors have a very small profit margin and hope to sell a lot system to compensate the smaller margin.
I gave up building my own PCs years ago. The price for retail PCs is lower or at least the same, the warranty is longer, and the service is often better.