Build or Buy?

[WWS]

My mother-in-law wants a computer just for the internet and other basic sh!t. Should she buy a cheap Dell for 450.00 USD or should I build her a cheap computer?

I don't know if I can beat the 450 bucks on a build though.

 

[Outofwords]

Dell. Cheapest one you can find.

 

[Kdar]

Sure you can make comp cheaper then Dell.

I builded comp for one guy.. I think he wanted to buy Dell for 450.
And I build it it for about 300.

 

[Outofwords]

$300 Dell.

You may indeed be able to build a computer that performs better than the Dell, but the price would be the same. I've seen exceptions to that, but its very hard on such a limited budget.

 

[triskit]

Dell comp w/ shipping = 329 plus tax (20 bucks mabe i donno where you live

xp home - 88
17 CRT - 60
80 GB HD - 50
Celeron D @2.53 - 52
= 275 shipped from newegg
so youve got 54 dollars to get a keyboard mouse cd/dvd drive, case, power supply, RAM, mobo... pretty unlikely... just go with the dell

 

[Kdar]

Or.. if she have more money.. Why dont you build for her a "ok" comp with flat lcd and such...

Without buying Dell

 

[talldude123]

For a "basic" computer user, what's wrong with Dell? $300 including a monitor, and Dell monitor's are very nice. But once a game is put into the CD-ROM drive, then the computer will just blow up. No questions asked..

 

[triskit]

Or.. if she have more money.. Why dont you build for her a "ok" comp with flat lcd and such...

Without buying Dell

on such a low budget computer i dont see why you would want to get an lcd... unless space is a big issue, which doesnt seem to be the case. The picture quality on lcds is already noticably worse than with crts, and its really just lain bad on really cheap lcds.

What will she be doing other than internet? I mean if it really is just totaly basic stuff then i done see anything wrong with that dell... mabe do the 50 extra bucks for 512mb ram just to speed things up a bit...

Ive (me/ my family) bought from dell three times and theyve always delivered on time and the products have never had any problems. My current experience buying from Monarch Computers has been 1000 times worse than my experiences with dell.

 

[Ken11235]

Try going to TigerDirect.com and looking at the barebones. Most of them have mail in rebates that create a great deal if you're willing to mail them in. If you're not up to the stress of mail in rebates, I'd go with Dell or even try eBay.

 

[triskit]

or newegg/ monarch have a lot of barebones too, but i still didnt really see any that would beat the price once you factor in that youll still have to spend 2/3 hundred on OS, Monitor, input devices, harddrive, optical drive, etc to get the barebones where you need them to be