OT - Looking for a new computer

[Thermodyne]

Building a system is not that hard. But you need to be good at it if you are building your main rig. There are always unexpected things that pop up. And mistakes can cost money!

[Kamog]

I don't know why, but Compaq computers seem to crash a lot more often then other brands even when they are running the same operating system and the same programs. A couple of my coworkers have Compaqs and they are constantly getting blue screens of death, start-up problems, and crashes. What is it that's different about them?

[Atrocities]

Compq, HP, Del, Gateway, IBM, etc - made in Mexico by slave wage employees with parts made in Chine by captive no paid imprissioned slaved labor = cheap computers that often fail within days of their one year warrenty. Gotta love it.

[Thermodyne]

I've got a dell 530 dually workstation that has been going 24/7 for almost 5 years. I had one of the IDE hard drives fail at a litle short of 3 years. But other than that it has been great. I switched it to SCSI 160's a few months ago. The 160's are second tier now and I got 5 36gig 10k drives $175

Buy a cheap system....Get a cheap system. You will seldom get more than you pay for.

[Jack Simth]

You can also go on E-bay and search for misspellings of computer brands/parts; e.g., Compaq: Compack, Kompaq, Kompack. in the appropriet categories. Few people search on misspellings, so those that have them tend not to be bid on. Of course, it's a little bit of a gamble - you don't really know what condition the items are in, or what, precisely, they truly are, but it's an option.

Edit: Ah! Compac is doing pretty decent at the moment.