Depends on what you are looking for, but From what i noticed its hard to beat dell laptops for price/performance when they have sales. Usually dell has really good deals on laptops every 3 months are so. I bought a e1505 with T7200 coreduo2 and all the top upgrades for about $1000 a few months ago.
I agree here. It is really easy to do. For the Motherboard (Mainboard) just follow directions on connectors to hook up. You get better components for the $ and it's customized to your needs. Dell sucks.
There are many plus and minuses to building your own computer. Many have been spelled out here. You just have to decide for yourself. Building one yourself will mean you get to customize it the way you want it. But that can be done at a white box store. The reason you gave for doing it yourself is to save money (get parts cheap), but you will spend the savings on labor. So its a wash. If you do want it built, send me a PM, I used to be an IT guy...
fxp125, if you are going to build-it-yourself, do it because you want to learn and you believe enjoy the process. If you are doing it just to save money I think you will disappoined with how little you save vs how much time you invested to get it done. If you pay someone else put it together it you will almost certainly not save money overall. I'm not going to get into another (http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88690) debate on the quality of parts of PC manufacturers vs what you can buy or the performance differences but to summarize for a trading PC I just don't see the benefit of going build-it-yourself. In short, if go the DIY route, do it because you will have fun with it, not because of financial or performance reasons. My 2 cents.
There's quite a few places. PM me if you're interested. I don't sell them, but there's guys on here with an agenda to pass a constitutional amendment banning the construction of a personel computer without the proper license or the last name Dell. Nitro you're saint.
I bought an HP once, nothing but problems. Iv'e built 3 computers since then without any issues. The problem with systems from the big companies like Dell and HP are: 1. As mentioned earlier, they don't match mobo, pcu, and memory correctly, causing bottlenecks 2. Eventhough the mobo and memory may be a brand name it's usually made with generic wafer board to reduce cost 3. Limited access to BIOS (they won't give you the ID string) 4. Proprietary software and hardware. I know exactly what I getting when I buy the parts myself. Cost wise, I can build a better computer cheaper. What I can't do is beat their price including a LCD monitor. It takes more time and effort to shop around and buy the parts (online) that it does to put it together. a few of build tips: don't use the thermal compound that comes with the PCU, buy good stuff install the pcu and heatsink on the motherboard outside of the case so you don't crack the mobo, should come with a foam pad to use when installing the mobo, don't tighten the screws too much or you might crack it.
if your going to build one, without question learn to "build" one your self. snap the cpu into the board, screw the board into tower, screw the powersupply in, connect some wires, connect some cards..viola. my suggestion is to make sure to get brand name memory. i think some people when building will use cheap memory, if it causes conflicts then you have no idea why. i always go with crucial for RAM and enermax for a powersupply.
I still don't think it is worth it to "learn" for 100 bucks. The chance I do something as mentioned above and break a component. I would rather pay someone to do it once every 4 years. For an extra 100 bucks I will be getting a much better computer. Just my opinion