Apophis

I'm not sure what things are like in the UK, but in the US neither Dell, Gateway, or IBM void your warranty for opening the machine. Those are three of the largest retailers of pre-built systems.

In your experience, what pre-build system retailers *DO* void the warranty when you open the box?

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The Muffin Man

Gateway voids your warranty as soon as you remove your PC from the cardboard and shrinkwrap!

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The Muffin Man

DudeMan

Vulcan

IBM

Gateway

have not seen dells warranty... but on the rest there is a security tag which if removed, (which you have to do to get into the PC) voids the warranty..

i have access to the HUB for the whole of eastlondon, on that hub there are 20 pcs for use in a school, all these had this warranty catch and further more, the vulcan PC my aunt bought, her husband opened it because the motherboard refused to work, and they said... your hard cheese should have phoned us first.

i had to go over and fix the problem.

this may hav changed i dont know but the point remains that for pure performance, and for the cost effectivness of that performance, custom is far better.

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The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
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TheFeniX
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Vulcan

wow i can't believe everyone here builds there own comp!

that's awesome

Of course i built my own, I remember when i first started my list of newborn parts. 500 bucks at the time for an AMD Duron 1GHz box (my sooped up vid card was about 150 though lol). ah good times. Anyway, the only pre built i'd ever buy is Dell. I'm personally custome built all the way and i provide better tech support than any company can fathom making comps at this time.

Pokerface

I've never made my own computer. I've upgraded plenty, but every time I've been at the point where upgrading wouldn't bridge the technology gap any more, I've bought a whole system.

Through this whole debate, the ability to treat your computer as if you had built it has been kind of lost. For me, getting a system with space inside and some free slots was pretty key. There are more and more vendors who are thinking ahead like that; for people like me who like to tinker, but don't have the time/inclination to build a system from parts laid out on my floor.

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DudeMan

negative, seems to me you are doing it backwards, i dont add things to my computer that are not needed, i built mine with the latest **** out at the time, i threw all my old stuff into another comp for my little brother, i never re use anything accept the monitor, you always buy the essentials, vid card, sound card, motherboard, chip. if you only buy the essentials, and buy the largest (single or 2 of the largest) sticks of memory, what else is there to add. alot of having free space to upgrade comes with buying the right motherboard, i have only once been at the point where upgrading was ridiculous, and that was when i bought a whole new set up and got rid of the old one.

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The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community

TheFeniX
"Guns don't kill people: effeminate men in green tunics do"