Best computer brand

Other Chit-Chat
1

I just got the best computer setup in my room. I have a Dell Dimension 4100 with Windows ME, a pentium 3 processor, and a 19 inch monitor. I have a PC internet cam and a digital camera with it. I also have a Sony Vaio with Windows 95. I have an IBM Aptiva with Windows 95. I am putting Linux on one of the Windows 95 computers…maybe both. I have DSL High Speed Internet and all 3 computers work great. I also have another 17 inch NEC monitor.

Between the Sony, the IBM, and the Dell (considering that the dell is newer than the others) I like the Dell the most. It is great!

If you were buying a computer, which brand would you get?

2

Ehh…I’m not a big fan of Dell’s. They’re…expensive. When my parents bought my sister a college computer, they went straight to Dell (haha…). I think the computer started out WELL over $2000…then when we downgraded the monitor, got rid of the speakers, reduced the processor, it was around $2000. I could have built the same system for less.

The one thing I like about building one yourself is you can make it as awesome as possible. Check out some of this stuff:

Two beautiful Lian-Li cases:
http://store4.yimg.com/I/xoxide_1730_733867
http://www.onepc.net/images/docs/157/pic.jpg
Those are two of my fav. cases.

I’m going for a mad-fast system. No less than 512mb of RAM (why would you want less? It’s so cheap…fill your memory bank!) Fastest AMD on the market… Anyone know if there are any motherboards with a blue PCB? That would be cool :slight_smile: (Or at least SOMETHING besides dingy green…) Then a top (or near-top) of the line NVidia card…since they have better Linux support than ATI. It’s going to be a kickin’ college machine :stuck_out_tongue:

You won’t find that kind of stuff on Dells :slight_smile:

3

I’d have to say Toshiba. I’m very impressed with their notebooks. I have a Toshiba laptop and a Toshiba Pocket PC, and I haven’t had any problems with either. The prices are reasonable, their powerful units, and very reliable.

4

I’m taking a break from putting together a fileserver, right now. We bought most of the parts today, and I just need to assemble them… After testing a huge pile of other motherboards, processors, and sticks of RAM. grumble

I’ve never actually bought a prebuilt computer, as I have always built my own (except for laptops, I own an HP laptop).

Around here, I can get all of the parts for a very respectable system for about $400, which does me quite well.

Oh well, back to work…

5

well i had a dell…there great for people who dont require too much from their computers. then i decided to build my own…no tech support or warrenties but it is much more of a computer that i wanted…

cheaper building your own too…

edit: evulish MSI makes there motherboards on red PCB(i have the msi kt3 ultra2) which utilizes the VIA chipsets…one model of the soyo dragon motherboard is on white PCB, and chaintech makes a motherboard on black PCB with yellow pci slots…

6

The Best Brand I know of is “Fluck PC Co.” :stuck_out_tongue:

I get to put what I want in it, how much I want in it and I have no restrictions to what parts I can buy (as long as they are compatible of course). I’ve had my Fluck PC for 6 months now and I am incredibly happy with it, heck I’ll never buy an in the box pc again!! :smiley:

7

Aside from laptops (not that I wouldn’t like to build my own), I’ve only had one store-bought PC, and it was, without a doubt, one heck of a POS.

Compaq Presario 3114
16 MB RAM
P1 133
Built-in video & sound

It was very awful, because it was all proprietary, and it took 30 minutes to take out the CD-ROM drive. That, and the fact that it costs too much, and you have to jump through the hoops in order to not get stuck with Windows XP home, or shudder ME and a four-year contract for MSN internet access and an overpriced monitor and speakers and unnecessary hard drive, CD-ROM, and DVD drives, and they try to pre-load all the unnecesary software they can trick you into buying, thus making it really difficult to set things the way I want them, is why I don’t like brand-name computers.

8

Alienware all the way, custom computers with awesome paint jobs, www.alienware.com

9

Building your own is only better if you know what or doing… A Dell is not bad…

10

Apple computer handsdown. The most innovative computer company. They also make the most stylish computer out there(Honestly do you want to lug around a 10 pound 2in thick laptop???)
Backlit keyboards with ambient light sensors, the iPod, the smallest MP3 player that can hold 4000 songs and charge itself from the computer.
Heck Apple invented firewire which is the standard for all things DV.
They were the first company with all optical mouses standard on a computer.
And you gotta love those free iApps, nothing comes close in the PC world in terms of free apps. (which are integrated together)
They also have the mosy bueatiful OS on the planet with a UNIX underbody.

And you don’t need to enter a 25 letter security code when you buy the OS, and you don’t have to register your credit card with microsoft to use software!!!

11

My desktop is homebuilt, originally by my dad, upgraded numerous times by myself. It’s rather old, AMD Athlon, 798 Mhz (don’t ask, I get that when I try to find the speed :p), with 320 Mhz of RAM. I tried to get more, but I need a new motherboard which can use the new “high-density” RAM :(. I have an ATI 8500 w/ 128 MB of RAM, DVD-Rom, 24x CD-Burner, a 40 gig hard drive and a 10 gig hard drive. The 40 gig has Windows XP, the 10 gig has Gentoo Linux (www.gentoo.org). Since I installed Gentoo (last week) I haven’t used Windows :p.

The best part about building your own system is the ability to upgrade at will, and be able to fix broken parts (I’ve had my share of things that stopped working and such).

Oh, I also forgot to mention that I have around 10 computers in my house, 2 are mine (desktop mentioned above + Debian Linux fileserver), 3 are my dad’s (900 Mhz Duron running XP, 400 Mhz something running win2k server, and old Compaq laptop), one is my mom’s (something sucky, it has ISA slots on the motherboard :p), and one for each brother (ok computers, nothing great though). I also have two computers running Smoothwall (www.smoothwall.org), a Linux firewall. One is a computer I’m playing with the beta on, the other is my actual firewall.

Of all the above computers, the only one that me or my dad haven’t touched the insides of is the laptop. My Debian server is an old Dell Server class machine, so it’s stable as all anything, as well as proprietary, but that doesn’t stop me from putting new cards/drives in :).

Long story short, I will never buy any completed machine, unless it is a laptop. It’s just so much easier to build your own. And yes, I’m a computer geek.

<EDIT>
Spikey, it’s called Linux. Runs on x86, as well as most (or all?) Macs. All free, with a great user support base (depending on the distro you use). The only cost is the cost of building your computer and the boradband connection to download the programs and such on.
</EDIT>

12

Apple. Hands down.

But ‘Fluck PC Co’ might just be number 2nd… :yikes:

13

*Originally posted by Ian W. *
**

<EDIT>
Spikey, it’s called Linux. Runs on x86, as well as most (or all?) Macs. All free, with a great user support base (depending on the distro you use). The only cost is the cost of building your computer and the boradband connection to download the programs and such on.
</EDIT> **

Yes it runs on all macs, but i was more comparing Mac OS to Microsoft OS, both of which you have to pay for. I was not comparing free OS’s. Linux is great, but in terms of compatibility Mac OS and windows can do more, (not that I like windows its ugly)
One nice thing with Mac OS is that you get a free develpor CD that lets you change every aspect of your system, try that on a windows machine without paying thousands of dollars.

14

*Originally posted by D.J. Fluck *
**The Best Brand I know of is “Fluck PC Co.” :stuck_out_tongue:

I get to put what I want in it, how much I want in it and I have no restrictions to what parts I can buy (as long as they are compatible of course). I’ve had my Fluck PC for 6 months now and I am incredibly happy with it, heck I’ll never buy an in the box pc again!! :smiley: **

How long did it take to get it running, though…

edit

and long did it run before errors???

endedit

15

*Originally posted by Steven Carmain *
**How long did it take to get it running, though…
and long did it run before errors???
**

First try. It hasnt, besides when I installed a video card with a “Guaranteed to work” sticker and it… well it didnt :stuck_out_tongue:

*Originally posted by Pin Man *
**Building your own is only better if you know what or doing… A Dell is not bad… **

I know many people who build if you ask them to. Heck if someone wanted me to build a pc for them, give me a budget and I would have them order parts and I would install it for free because I like to do that kind of thing.

Edit
Oh, and JosephM… thanks for the word of confidence :wink:

16

*Originally posted by D.J. Fluck *
**
Oh, and JosephM… thanks for the word of confidence :wink: **

Anytime DJ, anytime :slight_smile:

17

I work for a computer sales/service center in Fairfield, CT. I custom build computers for people every day. While the official name brand is “ACR” (the company name), I like to remind people it’s a custom built system just for them, since there’s no such thing as a “stock” system with us. Everything is built from component parts to suite for the people who order them, rather than just a preassembled pull from a shelf with a sticker pasted to the side. Generally the savings can be anywhere from 10-50% comparing a shop like ours to Dell, Gateway, HP, etc. in addition to the 100% standard parts/lack of proprietary components aspect, which means massive upgradeability in the future. Props to the big brands for making computer shopping easy, but they’ll never be able to completely satisfy the customer as long as they hide behind a corporate face. How many people who order from a big brand can shake hands with or even watch the person at the store build the computer for them? For some reason, that builds a considerable trust relationship between a company and it’s customer.

18

All of you guys talk about building computers… but anyone ever build a laptop? I slightly recall someone talking about making one in one of those old metal suitcases- but never heard a definite word on that one…

19

*Originally posted by Ian W. *
Spikey, it’s called Linux. Runs on x86, as well as most (or all?) Macs. All free, with a great user support base (depending on the distro you use). The only cost is the cost of building your computer and the boradband connection to download the programs and such on.

To clarify, Linux can run on x86, SPARC’s, Alphas, PPC (your Apple’s Proc), Motorolas, and much much more. It isn’t all free. The Linux kernel is free…but some distributions aren’t. Normally, what you pay for are the actual cd’s, manuals, tech-support, and commercials software that comes in one the box. Many distro’s offer a freely downloadable version in ISO images. These can range from one 200 meg file to having to download around 7 full cd’s (4.9+ gigs…whew :)) The free support is just Linux’s HUGE community…ChiefDelphi pales in comparison to the largest Linux community: justlinux.com.

(Also, if you don’t have a fast enough connection to download that much and you don’t really want to pay $50 to try it out…cd’s can be purchased CHEAPLY AND LEGALLY (!!) from www.cheapbytes.com.

If you want to try linux, but are unsure where to start, you can contact me through e-mail or AIM…I’ll be more than willing to help :smiley:

end of spiel

*Originally posted by OneAngryDaisy *
**All of you guys talk about building computers… but anyone ever build a laptop? I slightly recall someone talking about making one in one of those old metal suitcases- but never heard a definite word on that one… **

I was going to do that…but it would cost too much. It’s probably quite simple to do once you mount the power supply and motherboard. Everything else probably fills in the extra space. My efforts are now going to be turned to making a computer case out of LEGO’s. I’m not very sure how well heat transfers through multiple layers of plastic…but ehh…if this P133 melts, it’ll be cool to see the case go with it :smiley: I’ll post pics if I ever get around to it.

20

*Originally posted by OneAngryDaisy *
**All of you guys talk about building computers… but anyone ever build a laptop? I slightly recall someone talking about making one in one of those old metal suitcases- but never heard a definite word on that one… **

It’s possible, but not practical. Any home-brew laptop would have to be concocted from various name brand parts. That said, most, if not, all name brand components are proprietary, meaning a dell motherboard will only fit a dell enclosure, with a dell lcd, dell keyboard, etc. I’ve assembled and disassembled more laptops than I can count at work, and all brands have their own “special” features which in one way or another make them completely incompatible with other brands. It’s been said Intel is trying to develop a laptop standard (same concept as ATX motherboards/cases) to broaden the market while reducing costs for laptops. Granted, some components, e.g. memory, CPU, hard drives, cd-rom drives (in most cases) are already standard, and can interface with virtually any modern notebook, the motherboards, video cards, monitors, keyboards, pointing devices, the chasis/cases themselves are at present still proprietary, and can only be obtained directly from the manufacturer. To sum up, yes, laptops can be home built, as long as all the components are purchased individually from the manufacturer, which 99% of the time, the cost of components will be double the cost of the laptop itself retail. (Big brands in particular charge an arm and a leg for any component, e.g. keyboards for $45, motherboards for average $800, enclosures for anywhere from $150-$300, LCDs for $500+)