Buy or Build?

There is an emachine at bestbuy for 579 after rebates that has athlon xp 3200, 160gb drive, 512k, dual layer DVD burner, card reader, monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse and speakers, and warranty, along with XP.

For my purposes, I can't seem to justify building in light of this.

It's your choice. Have fun with your new machine.

Definatley build, I have a Gateway desktop, and I hate it. When I bought it I wanted DDR RAM for its speed and realtivley cheap price, but the only options I had was PC133 or RAMBUS, I went with the RAMBUS, but when I upgraded it it cost me a small fourtune just to run 384 MB up from the 128MB the system came with.

Also I thought I was getting a Soundblaster sound card with it (as that was the selection I made), but when I tryed to upgrade the drivers using soundblasters latest drivers, the install told me I did not have any soundblaster equipment on my PC. According to the response I got from gateway thier sound card are built special by Soundblaster for Gateway, and use propritery (sp?) drivers only aviable from gateway.

There is a long list of other problems I have had, but basically it has not be the machine I thought I had ordered.

Also on the warranty issue, as long as you don't buy OEM parts you have no real concern about warranty, most parts have a 1 year manufactures warranty, and also places like NewEgg and TigerDirect offer extended warranties on the stuff they sell.

Putting it togeather, 1st go to CompUSA and spend the 7 bucks on a ESD Wrist strap, a lot of guys will say you don't really need it, but I have accidentally fried enough pieces of RAM and Vid Cards to make me spend the extra 7 bucks for the piece of mind.

Next if you have some experience upgradeing or adding parts to your PC you can probally do it by just using some common sense and looking at it, if not you should be able to find a good book at Barnes and Noble or some other bookstore that will tell you what you need to know (I am sorry I can't give you a title). It is a farily simple process, requires a clean work area, and some pateince.

Best of luck


Oh and one last thing, these warranties that you get from these places like Gateway, or eMachines, etc, etc, are not all they are cracked up to be. Most of the time if you have a problem you will end up speaking to some idiot in India who can't understand, nor will listen to what you are telling him, and 9 times out of 10 it is more of a pain in the %^# than it is worth.

I notice no mention of a video card. What card is in that machine?

For that price, it is most likely integrated graphics.

like my box, i cant even upgrade cus theres no agp slot

Yup. A lot of prebuilt machines will have a motherboard with no upgrade options.

tomK, are you tom kafafian, i saw something like that name on winamps skin page?

Well, I got the emachine T3256. So far so good. Everything works and I used Move Me to transfer apps and files from my old machine. Since someone asked, it has Nvidia graphics built into the motherboard.

No I'm not.

Build a pc if you have a techie friend, but dont forget to get oem version of XP by buying a hardisk or motherboard from the same place at the same time.

If your going to buy one then buy a good one and check the graphics card is not intergrated.

Depending on what you are going to do with the PC an intergrated card is not a bad idea. Just make sure the board has a AGP port so you can upgrade the vid card if you want to

I'm gonna have to say build like a lot of people did. But before you do make sure that you know a thing or two about computers. I built my own computer and I love it, I'd say it's truly top of the line material.

Build ,build ,and build again..you would no that if you did alot more reading,that , thats the only way to go ,sept if you have 2 left feet.

OZZU is a great place ,but it does not have that hard core relationship with first time builder's to Xstreme,way more bag for the buck .
I suggest HardOCP,great site ,great people ..and if you read for a month
there ,you will no it all ,cause thats what they do ,take a noob ,thats never done anything ,and help him on his or here's way !with whats the
hardware for your means. 90% of there forum is based around what you want to Do and Learn..So that why i recommend. Thing is ! Don't let anyone tell you how to build it ? You need to lern whats out there,take what these people no ,and turn into ,not only a cheaper build,but one that will last for 3 years.


http://www.hardforum.com/

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=1279

TigerDirect:

Asus A8V Deluxe Socket 939 Barebone Kit / AMD Athlon 64 3400+ / 120GB HDD / 512MB DDR / 128MB Video Card / DVD±RW / CPU Fan / Mid-Tower Case / Keyboard / Mouse / Speakers

$489 USD

What a deal...Athlon 64, great Asus A8V MB, gigabit lan, lots of USB, firewire, Via K8T800 Pro northbridge, 8X AGP...