Dell computer owners...

[epoh]

Honestly, for $1000 you could build yourself a far better machine than you can buy from any of these places. Definatly get a good processor when you buy it. You can upgrade the memory and hard drive and vid card very easily later on by yourself.

[Paulo]

Thanks Amy. I also keep that in mind.

[Wes]

I have 3 Dell desktops at home which I purchased through a discount program. It's not the normal discount program, though. I work for Alcon Laboratories in Fort Worth and we are owned by Nestle. (We used to be 100% owned by Nestle, but they sold off 25% of us a few years ago. But I digress.) Nestle replaces roughly 33% of their machines every year. For Nestle and all of the companies that they own, this works out to roughly 50,000 machines each year. Translated - they get sweet deals on their computers. We have an arrangement with Dell which allows us to buy the same machines that the company buys for the same price that the company pays. For example, I donated a Dell Latitude D610 laptop to my church a year ago. I paid something like $1200 (before tax and shipping) for the machine; the exact same machine through the normal employee discount programs would have cost around $1500.

Shoot me a PM and I'll send you a link so that you can configure a machine to see if you can come up with something that works for you.

[Wes]

One more thing... I'll also agree with Amy that you could build a heck of a machine for $1000. I've always went the Dell route because I like the fact that everything on the system is covered by the same warranty. Plus, after my discount, I'm usually within $100-150 if I had built it myself.

Oh, and I have never had any problems with upgrading memory, hard drives, video cards, optical drives, etc. in any of my Dell machines. They accept over-the-counter stuff from Best Buy just as well as any other machine.

[Paulo]

Thanks Wes.

[adirty1]

It all depends on what computer you buy if it will take an over the counter product. sometimes dell computers will only take dell parts. the lower end home computers are the worse. Just something to think about.

we have had those issues at work with computers not taking memory or scis cards.

[Wes]

About the only thing that I've found to be proprietary on Dell computers is their power supply and their motherboards. SCSI cards tend to be more for servers or high-end CAD types of workstations, so I could see how those kinds of machines might be picky about what kind of cards are put in them. Same goes for memory, too. However, on my Optiplex GX280 at home I bought it with 1Gb RAM and added 3 more gig from Newegg. No problems.