I've built at the very minimum 25 computers since age 15 and I can tell you that sometimes I really have a hard time figuring out what's going wrong. From a screw short-cutting the motherboard to the keyboard lock feature on the front panel connectors, to a myriad of other dumb mistakes (connecting IDE's wrong). I've had my share of hardware issues, power supplies frying, or motherboards not responding. Sometimes it's frustrating and most of the time it will take you at least 3 hours to get everything running (including OS), if you have a rough idea of what you're doing. I don't recommend putting a computer together from scratch for that reason if you don't have a minimum of computer mumbo jumbo background, a lot can go wrong and debugging isn't for everyone. Moreover, you have to know what's compatible with what, DDR, SDRAM, RAMBUS... Yes, you better know how to read, but you especially have to know what to look for.
Dell's not alone. My in-laws went down to the local Gateway store in Oct. They sold them a $1500 computer (w/o monitor) to check AOL e-mail and type up a few recipes. I found out a few weeks after the fact. I could've saved them ~$1,000 easy, but they didn't want to bother me. As with most things in life, "Buyer Beware".
I built one from scratch finally, after only having installed the usual CD Drives, and RAM Chips, before. Had directions and the over watch of a guy that builds them. But Its not for everybody. The local Computer stores can save you 500 to 1000 bucks on a Clone. Last Clone that I bought retail was a AMD 1800 with DVD and CDRW, 512 Ram 80 Gig HD, 21 Inch NEC Monitor, for just at a Grand. XP Ops installed.
....Funny how often salespeople end up in the unethical or stupid queue huh ? The people that tend the phones at dell are IMHO not very bright and not very ethical. You can bypass all this and order through the web: it works very well. IMHO dont expect the folks at dell to actually help you unless you are a business looking for larger purchases.
Building a computer is a lot of fun and saves money, but face it -- 90% of America is not composed of geeks. Therefore you have companies like Dell and Gateway and HP that appeal to people who know jack about computers or what you can really store with 200 gigs of HD space, etc. The nicest invention I've seen so far is the elimination of the old parallel drive cables. ATA interface is now being replaced with a serial interface and a cable that is more like a wire than a thick beast that sits in your system. But yes, I agree. Once you get a good motherboard (Abit, Asus, Tyan, etc), you can just go out and buy the parts wholesale and put together a $1,500 system that Dell would charge $2-$2.5k for. However, the software is the problem. If you go out and purchase all the software that comes with a system, you eliminate your savings. I doubt Joe and Jill down the street would want linux as their first operating system.
Dell is not the easiest company to deal with. One of their scams use to be charging a huge shipping fee. You cannot order a regular pc from them with multiple vid cards or a multimonitor card. You have to go to their "workstation." What's up with that? You'd think they would want you to go multimonitor so they could sell more monitors. My sister-in-law got a gateway and had horrible problems with it. Their customer service is a bad joke. You buy it, you're stuck with it seems to be their policy. I had a couple of clones as my first pc's. They seemed fine. Had some dells, they were fine too. Looking at upgrading saometime soon. Can I trust a clone now or should I go dell/hp?
I'd take the advice of others here and look to a reputable shop near you to build one. Besides the huge savings and customizing, the customer service aspect alone is enough, imo.
We recently bought 2 Dell 2350's, complete with monitor for $599 each, with no shipping charge. This was a late 2002 special that we probably spent an hour looking for on their website. We just kept looking in various places until we found the best buy that met our needs. If one has any computer savvy at all but does not care to build a system or purchase a clone I would suggest at the very least, going to Dell's website, selecting a system that is close to your needs and use their customizer option to get a price on the system. At that point, at the very least, you have a basis for comparison and you have not had to leave your home or waste your time talking to some braindead salesperson. It is unfortunate that when a prospective customer calls to purchase a system, the sales person would rather peddle as much crap as possible than find out the real needs of the customer and perhaps in the long run establish a more lasting business relationship. Previously, somebody mentioned Gateway as an option. A friend recently purchased a Gateway and he is very satisfied. Part of his satisfaction may be due to his upgrading from what had become an electronic abacus. Personally, I am concerned that Gateway may not be around much longer, judging by the deals they are offering, to say nothing of their financials and stock price (would have been a great short ). This made me very uncomfortable about seriously considering Gateway as an option (plus I've heard that their systems SUCK!!!). For anybody who is not computer savvy, I would highly recommend that you find somebody who knows enough so that they can at least interface with a salesperson (who often times are no more that a $5/hr clerk) to find the best system at the best price point that suits your needs.
Actually in principal Dell, Hp, Compac are CLONES. They are considered clones of IBM. I had a computer builder put a Amd with Gigabyte mb together for me . I supplied win xp pro op. It is amazing and it would beat any Dell at twice the price.
Despite my earlier comments about Dell, I too have seen some pretty amazing deals on their website. Why should I go with some strip mall guy who may put who knows what in the box for roughly same price? I lookd at that www.sys.com site and their rprices are roughly in line with dell. also, what is the processor/mb combo least likely to give troubles with multimonitor trading app's?