jam13 - 10:41 pm on Oct 31, 2004 (gmt 0)

It's funny, that's what a friend of mine said recently, I wasn't around to build his new pc, he's not a power user, just standard office apps. So he got a $450 dell. The next thing I hear is, man, this thing is slow (2.5 gigaherz machine), windows xp runs like crap on it.

I've not really noticed that the low end machines are particularly slow _unless_ they don't have enough memory in them - some of the base specs are a bit stingy. Crucial and Kingston both sell compatible modules for half the price of the Dell stuff though.

Anyway, those people who want quality stuff will make their own if money is a question, if not I'd recommend anyone else but the big guys, there's a lof of people who put boxes together, and many do it much better than the big guys, by a wide margin.

Maybe the systems from smaller assemblers in the US are better than here in the UK, because my experience in this part of the market is generally not good (and I've worked for a few of them).