Don't buy...build your next computer!

[hech54]

I don't know how to dual boot.

I don't dual boot anymore. I use removable drive racks. Power off the computer, swap drives, boot. It's far safer -- though more of a hassle.

Same here basically. With the old Dell "Scissor Case" it's a breeze to switch drives.
Card seating is a bit of an issue with these cases BUT you still have the option
to screw the card in like normal cases.

[rkr1958]

Another big plus for building your own computer is that you can load only the software you need. You don't get all that crapware packaged with a lot of off the shelf computers. I built my computer almost 5-years ago and it's still going strong. It's got 2.6-GHz P4 (Prescott) CPU, runs cool & quite, 2 GB of RAM and 750+ GB of harddrive space. I know it's not the latest, fastest or multi-core but it does everything I need it to do.

[rcguy1]

Yoda 313, it'll be a easy to configure board settings and driver onfigurations with a medium to high price motherboard.

[mpack]

My main computer is a Compaq, and it's been upgraded so many times (including the CPU) that it doesn't use anything "original" beside the case and motherboard.

Ditto. Back in the 90s every PC I got was a custom build - sometimes the combo I chose was reliable, sometimes not. Eventually off the shelf PCs just go so cheap and reliable that I switched to them instead - but I didn't stop upgrading them. Why should I? they contained standard far east manufactured components just like my custom builds did. Maybe they weren't the components I would have chosen, but they were standard components with standard connections and could be replaced if I wanted something else. I learned the hard way that you do have to take a good close look at the PSU in these cheap PCs though.

Having said all that, my latest (June this year) home PC was a custom build. I'm not entirely sure why I did that. Maybe a bit of nostalgia, maybe it was so I could choose XP instead of Vista.

[Billf2099]

Yoda,
When you added that dual core machine did you re-install the OS? I ask this because on XP you can't get the OS to use the second core unless you start from fresh. My company issued me a very nice dual core laptop on which they did their ususal HD image install and I now have a dual core proc that uses one of the two cores. Nothing I've tried works and I for damn sure am not re-installing the OS. I don't know if Vista is different, I suspect it isn't. That might be why Vista didn't require reactivation.....

[jagabo]

My company issued me a very nice dual core laptop on which they did their ususal HD image install and I now have a dual core proc that uses one of the two cores. Nothing I've tried works and I for damn sure am not re-installing the OS.

I've done a repair reinstall in cases like that. It takes as long a full installation but at you retain all your programs and data.

I'm not sure if you can use the /NUMPROC=2 argument in BOOT.INI to go from one to more than one. It works the other way around, limiting the OS to 1 core on a dual core system.

[lordsmurf]

Another "dual boot" option these days is virtualization. I often use VPC, DOS Box, VMware and others to run secondary or legacy OS.

[jagabo]

I also use VMs for unsecure operations -- naked web browsing, etc.

[handyguy]

One nice thing about a Dell is it uses bios activation. So I can change almost anything in the computer & won't have to reactivate.