High-end prebuilt systems

I'm looking to help a family member who is sick of having his Dell
systems crap out on him, he wants to stick with PCs and get something
high-end but NOT a custom-built system (he doesn't know much about
computers, he just wants a fast and *reliable* Windows workstation at
home; I'm a Mac person so I don't know which components to recommend).

Where can he buy a high-quality *prebuilt* Windows desktop system? I
looked around a little bit (newegg, tigerdirect, a couple others), and
it seemed like the only offerings that fit this description were
gaming-dedicated (e.g. Alienware). As gaming is not important to him, it
seems like overkill to pay for the latest and greatest video cards, etc.

Thanks for your help

someoneelse wrote:

> I'm looking to help a family member who is sick of having his Dell
> systems crap out on him, he wants to stick with PCs and get something
> high-end but NOT a custom-built system (he doesn't know much about
> computers, he just wants a fast and *reliable* Windows workstation at
> home; I'm a Mac person so I don't know which components to recommend).
>
> Where can he buy a high-quality *prebuilt* Windows desktop system? I
> looked around a little bit (newegg, tigerdirect, a couple others), and
> it seemed like the only offerings that fit this description were
> gaming-dedicated (e.g. Alienware). As gaming is not important to him, it
> seems like overkill to pay for the latest and greatest video cards, etc.
>
> Thanks for your help

All of the high-volume PC vendors (Acer, Dell, Gateway, HP, etc.) are
in a very competitive market. They compete based primarily on price, and
secondarily on time-to-market; reliability is not a goal, other than
running longer than the warranty; so, they tend to scrimp on cooling and
power supplies. If you want a really reliable PC, then you need to
carefully define what reliable means to you; 24x7 unattended operation is
very different from simple (but expensive) data integrity.

Fast doing what? For a non-gamer, you must first decide what aspect of
speed you really want -- is it a high-volume transaction processing PC,
or a high-throughput compute server, or what? Note that for many home
PCs, doing email and browsing, any PC built in the last few years will
be fast enough with adequate RAM and a fat pipe to the 'net.
--
Cheers, Bob

In article <>,
Bob Willard <> wrote:

> someoneelse wrote:
>
> > I'm looking to help a family member who is sick of having his Dell
> > systems crap out on him, he wants to stick with PCs and get something
> > high-end but NOT a custom-built system (he doesn't know much about
> > computers, he just wants a fast and *reliable* Windows workstation at
> > home; I'm a Mac person so I don't know which components to recommend).
> >
> > Where can he buy a high-quality *prebuilt* Windows desktop system? I
> > looked around a little bit (newegg, tigerdirect, a couple others), and
> > it seemed like the only offerings that fit this description were
> > gaming-dedicated (e.g. Alienware). As gaming is not important to him, it
> > seems like overkill to pay for the latest and greatest video cards, etc.
> >
> > Thanks for your help
>
> All of the high-volume PC vendors (Acer, Dell, Gateway, HP, etc.) are
> in a very competitive market. They compete based primarily on price, and
> secondarily on time-to-market; reliability is not a goal, other than
> running longer than the warranty; so, they tend to scrimp on cooling and
> power supplies. If you want a really reliable PC, then you need to
> carefully define what reliable means to you; 24x7 unattended operation is
> very different from simple (but expensive) data integrity.
>
> Fast doing what? For a non-gamer, you must first decide what aspect of
> speed you really want -- is it a high-volume transaction processing PC,
> or a high-throughput compute server, or what? Note that for many home
> PCs, doing email and browsing, any PC built in the last few years will
> be fast enough with adequate RAM and a fat pipe to the 'net.


It's not for 24x7 unattended operation like a server, just a home PC
that's used an hour or two a day for personal stuff like Web shopping,
email, and so on.

You're right when I said fast I didn't mean cutting-edge in any
particular way, a decent mid-range set of specs would be fine. The main
thing is reliability, just not crapping out all the time, and a decent
warranty for if and when there is a problem.