Brand name computers, why buy them?

[jimmm33]

Since I sell "white boxes" I figured I throw in my 2 cents.

Don't give up on the custom built machines.

The machines I sell to my customers are better than any branded solution out there. I use Antec power supplies, Asus or Gigabyte mobos, Crucial or Kingston Ram. I burn them in at least 12 hours and otherwise test the heck out of them. I promote them as a high end business class machines with a fast response onsite warranty. I usually make between 120-150 bucks per machine. The trick to all that fancy stuff is that I only sold 24 machines since January. All my money comes from labor.

As for the ones that don't want to spend the money one one of my machines, I tell them I will help them in any way I can after the sale. When asked what brand I recommend, I tell them that can't in good conscience specify a name.

As for Dell, I think they are killing the business. I briefly did some Dell warranty repair work. They drive down the value of service work to the point that non skilled entry level jobs pay better. They keep driving prices down on hardware and I think quality is down too. You get a crappy restore disk, and support doesen't care about your data. They are doing the same thing to the printer market.

I was thinking about telling my sister to get a Dell so I wouldn't have to build and ship her a machine, but I could'nt bring my self to it. I still don't know what I'm going to recommend.

Support standard parts, so these things wont go away. What if all manufactures where huge companys? They would ditch standards and force junk on the market.

I dont even remember where I was going with this. I guess I dont like Dell.

[TripleRLtd]

As for Dell, I think they are killing the business. I briefly did some Dell warranty repair work. They drive down the value of service work to the point that non skilled entry level jobs pay better. They keep driving prices down on hardware and I think quality is down too. You get a crappy restore disk, and support doesen't care about your data. They are doing the same thing to the printer market.

Tell it like it is jimmm. Nothing wrong with the truth!!
Right?

[TechZ]

Well jimmm33, you are a good guy for putting all that extra effort into each machine, but I bet the majority of other vendors like yourself dont do that, here in bahrain & pretty much everywhere else its just about the cheapest box.

[GHSTECH]

I just went to fix my uncle's Gateway PC, not only are all drivers proprietary making it impossible to change or upgrade the OS, it's a Pentium IV 3ghz with 512mb ram and it's at LEAST 10 times slower than my Athlon 1400 even after a format, not to mention it must have cost at least 3-4 times the price. To top it off, there's no reset button (you definately need one on a gateway, it was freezing constantly even after the format), and no HHD let (perhaps they decided it was noisy enough not to need one, it is incredibly noisy when there's HD access).

So why in the world do people buy brand name PCs? You're just paying 3 times more for 10 times less and 10 times more trouble. ALL my computers were total nightmares until I built one myself, and it didn't even freeze in 4 years (although that's also thanks to Windows XP which is incredibly stable comapred to 98).

My uncle said he got a brand name because there's less compatibility problems If anything they'res WAY MORE compatibility problems with brand name PCs because they make everything proprietary so you have to buy everything from them for 10 times the cost.

I guess people buy brand name PCs because they feel safer, but in fact they should feel less safe, because AFAIK all brand name computers are a pile of overpriced worthless unstable garbage that never work.

I have to disagree with you on the problem with Gateway. I am a network admin at a school system that has over 1500 GW systems. Gateway does not use/have propritary drivers/parts, Gateway is not a OEM they are a reseller, their destops use standard Intel brand motherboards, and their video is either the onboard intel, ati or nvidia. The same with sound, they use the onboard Intel approved analog devices chips, or soundblaster. Any driver can be updated from the part's manfacturer site. The one exception as with most brand name computers is the MB bios. And there are work arounds for that. GWs cases are either Intel, antec, or ensight. As for stability they usually use CL3 memory leaning in favor of stablity instead of 1 or 2 % speed difference by using memory with closer timings. Their harddrives do vary but at the moment the stadard drive brand is Western Digital, any system faster than a P4 2.4 likely has a 7200 rpm, the are no longer shipping 5400 rpm drives as of this past June.

For your situation first reset the bios defaults, then try updating with the latestest chipset inf update from intel.com also while there if the system has the intel onboard graphics grab the latest driver for it. GW usually only maintains the drivers released with the system on their site. If you go to support on GW's site the support page can run a diag on your system and tell you what hardware is installed then you can go to the OEM sites and find the correct downloads.

[thorian]

gateway Motherboard as shipped in the box under my desk

was a jabel after it fried it was replaced with a

MSI Athlon motherboard - 1.3-GHz [Part #2512742]
and now had a asus a7n8x the only thing i found as proprietary is the connection block for the front panel I had to remove the pins and place them in diffrent plugs to use the a7n as the gateway mo bo's use a specific harness.