In Our Last Episode On 10:57 AM 1/8/99 -0600,Earl Truss Our Hero Wrote...
> ----------

> >
> You will probably get a lot of knowledge, experience and a better system
> from building your own system yourself but there is no way you can save
> money doing it these days.  If you are a person who wants a first computer
> or are building a system for someone else primarily for the functionality
> and not for the learning experience of building it yourself, in the long
> run, it's better to buy a ready-made system.
>
> Adding up the lowest amounts listed above, I get $835 and it does not have
> a CD-ROM, floppy drive or a monitor.  Including those runs the cost up to
> around $1085.  Yesterday's newspaper had similar systems with no monitor
> advertised for $400 - $600.  At that price, it becomes difficult to build a
> system yourself and buy the software to run on it for anything close to
> what someone can walk into any store and buy ready to run with software and
> support (such that it is).
>
> This is why I've stopped trying to build systems for friends and relatives.
>  I cannot afford the time to build a system and give free support when the
> person can probably get the same functionality and some support from
> professionals.  The last system I built for a relative or friend earlier
> this year was a Pentium 100 with a 420MB hard drive, Windows 95 and Works
> and it cost me $600 for the complete system.  For the same money, she could
> have gotten a faster machine with a bigger hard drive and a guarantee and I
> would not be getting support calls three times a week.


Earl;

I couldn't agree with you more on it being cheaper overall to buy a system
complete rather then build.

The only other comment I would like to make that has not been brought out
is if you can get ahead of the game a bit, it still pays to build yourself.
 What I mean is if you have an older system you can use parts off and don't
have to buy everything new. For instance you might have bought a 56 k modem
or hard drive recently, or your current system has 72 pin simms and the new
motherboard can accommodate them.

 I built several systems this way and I know I saved plenty.

ken

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                Ken Kovler
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