Mail order computers.

[ViRaL1]

Not to knock building your own PC, but another fact to consider is that while your individual parts will come with warranties, you'll more than likely have to deal with the manufacturer for any support. You also open yourself up to being bounced back and forth from one manufacturer to another when you encounter problems that could potentially be caused by more than one component. The advantage of buying a whole PC from a company like DELL or HP, they are your support contact for almost all issues (including some but not all things you add after purchase). If your system won't POST you don't need to know if it's the motherboard, or the CPU or the memory or a bad power supply to have it resolved during the warranty period.

That said, I DO build all my own machines (as well as machines for others) and I agree with what people are saying as far as the advantages of doing it yourself. It also helps when you need to fix it yourself or change anything. If you have specific needs it's almost always best to build it yourself. If your needs are generic and you just want something to do one or two basic tasks, you're better off with a pre-built system.

[pyrate83]

I guess I'm partial to building my own system. I like the ease of use factor when buying a prebuilt pc but I also like to add things to it myself later so it would have to be upgradable.

[Prot]

AOpen AX4SPE-UN mb
P4 3.2 GHz
1024meg PC3200 RAM (512 meg added)
120 gig SATA HD
Aopen 16x DL DVD+-/RW (replaced 8x burner with this one)
Sony DVD-ROM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700LE w/256 meg
17" Viewsonic flat screen

In addition:
Epson R200, USB cable, and ream of paper
NAV 2005
PCI wireless card (Extreme G)

Total cost was just under $2200 (but I wasn;t the one who paid for it)


One nice feature I do like about this system is
6 USB 2.0 ports (4 in back and 2 in front)
2 firewire ports