I have an HP machine.  My two cents is what I will do from now on - build your own or have someone do it for you.  It took me three months to get all the drivers for a clean (non-OEM) install of XP on my HP.   My 1st Dell and 1st and 2nd Gateway were standard clones with software on CD or floppy - I partitioned and installed myself.  My last one of each brand had this "proprietary" garbage on it.  I bought my first HP last time around - never again!  

I just helped a friend set up a basic PC bought on ebay (had to buy software (except for drivers) separately) and its a charm.   Lightweight aluminum case with lots of bays, 3ghz P4 Northbridge chipset, 120gb hard drive, 512 memory, DVD reader, CD writer, floppy, 6 USB ports, Internal modem - NIC Ethernet,  nice audio & video, SPU overheat shutdown, Firewire - 3 w.w PCI slots, AMR Moen Slot, support for 4 IDE ATA 133 Ultra DMA devices & all drivers for - $200, including shipping!  It works great!

People are getting wise to these proprietary OEM computers - and hopefully won't buy them, so the manufacturers will have to start providing clone machines and software on CD again, like they used to do.     --Anna Summers

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Excerpt:
On the subject of Dells drivers supplied with the restore disc, I have found
that while the manufacturer of their add-in cards (Creative, ATI and others)
have more recent drivers, theirs is not always the right ones to use. Dells
components are "modified" and somewhat proprietary. While they may have been
manufactured by a name brand company, often they are specifically engineered
according to specific requirements and a lot of functions are either missing
or have been disabled. My 8400 uses an Intel motherboard with a 925X
chipset. The board does not support a lot of the functions that the retail
version of the board does. The same goes for the ATI X300 video card that my
PC uses. It may have been manufactured (or at least powered by) ATI, but it
does not function correctly with the drivers from the ATI site. Dell
components need to use the drivers provided by Dell, and you can get updated
drivers for the components directly from the Dell website. The same is true
for a lot of parts that are "powered by" a particular manufacturer, as the
drivers are specifically tuned for that particular component. They are
usually missing a feature or two, or are "software crippled". Cost is a
primary factor. I suspect that a lot of the problems you are experiencing is
due to the fact that there is a driver conflict with the hardware. You may
be able to restore a lot more functionality with the PC if you just stick
with the drivers supplied with the OEM restore disc and look for updated
versions (if there are any) from the Dell site. Just my 2 cents.

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