Old people and computers

[Naaman]

You offend my inner geek! Is there any OTHER kind of computer to build?

Due to laziness and a cushy, well paid office job (no customers - bliss )I go for the half and half.

Go to a reliable component site that offer builds, pick from their list of good components and pay them an extra £200 to build + a years onsite warranty.

It's funny, but when I worked in Advanced Tech support, my computer melted (seriously... the CPU cooling fan went out). I asked the super-techs what they had... and they all had Dell or HP or whatever.

Were these mainly software guys? I see that a lot with our developers at work. They don't game or run Uber music\video software, all they're looking for in a machine is a super fast processor and chock full of RAM so that when they hit the 'Compile' button they're not left hanging around for hours...

[earl colby pottinger]

On the other hand

It's funny, but when I worked in Advanced Tech support, my computer melted (seriously... the CPU cooling fan went out). I asked the super-techs what they had... and they all had Dell or HP or whatever.

They all explained it this way... "When you call a company and buy a motherboard, it's $50 or more. When Dell calls and orders a million of those same motherboards, they pay $5 a piece. The same is true of the CPU, the optical drives, the RAM, etc. Unless you're building some super-advanced custom rig, buy off the shelf."

However, unlike the average buyer of a DELL or HP, they went thru every model available. Found which models were junk, sub-standard in performance, or just used odd-ball parts with no third party support and cross those off their list before buying.

Joe Average buys what ever model marketing is pushing. And you just know that is a cut-rate design that makes the largest profit margin for the company.

IE Joe Average will buy a 3.0 GHz machine with DDR2 memory, I buy a 2 GHz with DDR4 and guess who ends up with the faster machine?

[Shabo]

You know, some of those pre-fab machines aren't terrible. And if you don't want to be bothered with getting all the parts, spending a few hours putting it together, spending another hour installing the OS, etc, then I could see where buying pre-fab would be ok. Especially if you are just going to be typing papers and surfing the net on it.

Myself? Well, pre-fab just isn't an option anymore. I've built a few computers now, including my own, and I will never go back again! I enjoy researching the components and taking the time to throw it all together. Although plugging in the wires from the case onto the motherboard still irritates me. Why can't they just make all the wires attached together instead of having 8 separate little ones that you practically need to use pliers to plug in?

[Naaman]

Why can't they just make all the wires attached together instead of having 8 separate little ones that you practically need to use pliers to plug in?

Because...

Oh, and for UK buyers (see above ^^) that can't be arsed to put together their own machine check out the Scan 3XS systems. Apart from their thing with ASUS mobos they're the mutts (said only as a satisfied customer)

[Shabo]

Hey! Asus is good... as long as you are one of the lucky ones that doesn't get a defective board...

[Naaman]

Hey! Asus is good... as long as you are one of the lucky ones that doesn't get a defective board...

I know they are It's just my favoured manufacturer is Gigabyte

[Banrion]

Hey! Asus is good... as long as you are one of the lucky ones that doesn't get a defective board...

Then I must be super-duper extra special lucky. I have bought probably 12 Asus boards in my life, and have never had one defective out of the box, and only 1 fried, due to a bad power supply. (the board was at least 5 years old when that happened)

And how would it be that a company that builds custom computers for people could ship a machine with a bad mobo? The company my friends had doing that ran extensive testing and benchmarking on every machine before they shipped.

[LostMyMind]

Hey! Asus is good... as long as you are one of the lucky ones that doesn't get a defective board...

Same here, had tons of Asus boards. Only had one defective one and I really can't blame Asus for that. Damn Via chipset.

[MadMike]

I know they are It's just my favoured manufacturer is Gigabyte

Gigabyte really pissed me off awhile back. I ordered a board from them that was capable of surround sound, only to found out that when it arrived that if you wanted anything more than 2-channel sound, you needed an optional accessory which was not included, and not available to anyone outside of Australia and New Zealand. Ended up having to buy a sound card that I did not plan on buying.

I don't know if that's changed since then, but it pissed me off enough that I won't buy another board from them.

[protege]

And if you don't want to be bothered with getting all the parts, spending a few hours putting it together, spending another hour installing the OS, etc, then I could see where buying pre-fab would be ok

It didn't take me a few hours to put mine together...mainly because I screw around with computers all day at work IIRC, mine took about a half hour to assemble and make sure it was set up correctly. Couldn't fire it up right away though--the damn CPU heatsink hadn't come yet.

I've seen some really 'interesting' things manufacturers do with their machines. Does anyone remember DEC? Those things were crap. We had a pair at work. Both had motherboards about 18" or so square...two halves that plugged into each other

[Shabo]

I've seen DEC's laying around that are no longer used, but I've never had the pleasure of opening one up. They looked like crap and undoubtedly were nothing more.

And yes, I have purchased 2 Asus mobos for myself as well as my OH, with no problems. But if that's not your preferred manufacturer, then that explains your previous comment. I know other people that have their mobo fail after about a year, but ASUS support is great and gets them a new one very quickly. Hence why I chose them . I recommend Asus for people when they inquire about brands to purchase.

Oh, and Protoge, when I say a few hours, I mean unwrapping all the components, plugging them in, testing them out, installing the OS, etc. from the bare bones. I don't do it often, but I've got it down to about 2 hours to install everything now. Maybe I'm just slow?

[protege]

Maybe I'm just slow?

Nah, I'm just giving you a hard time

I've replaced boards and other parts before...but this was the first one I'd built from scratch. As such, putting everything together was the easy part. But, before I could fire it up, I had my neighbor, who helped me pick out the parts, take a look at it. He was more familiar with that particular board than I was. Even so, we couldn't fire it up right away--the heatsink hadn't arrived yet. Also easy, was to set up XP--I'd done that several times previously on some of the junkers at work.

[MacPrince]

IE Joe Average will buy a 3.0 GHz machine with DDR2 memory, I buy a 2 GHz with DDR4 and guess who ends up with the faster machine?

I could well be mistaken, but isn't DDR4 RAM only currently used on video cards (GDDR4)?

[Aressel]

It didn't take me a few hours to put mine together...mainly because I screw around with computers all day at work IIRC, mine took about a half hour to assemble and make sure it was set up correctly. Couldn't fire it up right away though--the damn CPU heatsink hadn't come yet.

*snip*

For me, after working in a computer shop that custom builds all of its own computers for the past 2.5 years, I can have a computer assembled, loaded (other software included) and updated in about 2 hours.

We use mostly ASUS boards and find them to be pretty good. The few times that they've failed, its been right out of the box. I've had a couple of ethernet "cards" (built-in) fail on me though.

[Naaman]

Well I'm just going to say that brand preference is a personal thing

Since I've generally only brought the top end stuff from Gigabyte I've never found anything lacking (they all come with bells, whistles AND spangly bits plus more back panels and pins than I ever needed). Asus had their issues in the late '90s, on the then brand new, boards that came with extra IDE\Raid and jumperless design.

Same reason that I didn't buy Seagate drives for ages, it used to be they were uniformly rubbish and Maxtor were the best bang for your buck - fast foward to a couple of years ago and Maxtor drives had an atrocious failure rate and the Seagate Barracudas were the must have drives.

Things change including our brand loyalty