But I know it won't be HP or Compaq!

The story starts a couple of months ago when I began to realize that my new computer (Compaq Presario, Athlon 64, 512 meg of RAM and Windows Vista) was slower than the computer it replaced (Compaq Presario, Celeron 2.53 GHz, 760 meg of RAM and Windows XP)! I did some research and discovered that Vista (MS bloatware that it is) really needs at least a gig of RAM and preferably two. So, I went to Fry's (where I bought the computer) and bought two 1 gig RAM sticks, brought the home and installed them. I marveled at how much faster and smoother it ran and puzzled that with the low cost of RAM, that HP would sell such a crippled computer!

My joy was short lived. Within a week, the computer started crashing unexpectedly. Since the only thing that I had changed was the RAM, I suspected that it may have been faulty, so I took it back to Fry's and had them check it out. They said that the RAM was good and that it was either the CPU or the motherboard. Here's where it gets really weird! HP wouldn't send Fry's a new mobo. Something about only HP techs are qualified or some such BS! So Fry's had to send the whole 'puter to HP with an estimated turn around time of 6 to 8 weeks!

Here's where I decided to never buy another HP computer again. After keeping it for a month and a half, HP sent the computer back to Fry's unfixed because it had non-HP RAM in it! They promised to send 2 GIG of official HP approved RAM sometime within a week!

My bet is that Fry's will install the HP RAM and find that it still doesn't work (remember they already tested the RAM that I installed and found it to be good) and we will be back to square one!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Why go through the middleman, who robs you of your bucks? My current computer, built in 2002, consists of a 2.54 GHz processor with 2 GB RAM, a 30 GB C: drive a 120 GB D: drive, 200 GB of offline/backup storage and a 4X video card.

Cost? $700. And it's still serving me extremely well, today. I BAUT (there's a new verb for you), watch movies, do research...

The only caveat I would have is that you give yourself a bit more room on the front end, as I only have 5 GB left on my C: drive, with no files (personal folders) on it. It's all prgrams.

So, please give yourself enough room up front.

Other than that, build your own. Have at it. Have fun! You'll learn something.

Here's an excellent link.

That's the site that I've used since 1994 and three home-made computer upgrades. The just get things right!

But if you want to pay the man the addition $700 to $1,500 for the exact same thing, that's your choice.

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WIKIPEDIA and GOOGLE are your friends! But only if you use them.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often, not a very good one at that.

Perception is what happens between the senses and consciousness. Reality is what happened before that. If you think the two are equivalent, you've never heard of Von Claustwicz, Sun Tsu, or street magicians.

Formal Logical Fallacy List

Yeah, Dell's the same way.

And you've answered your own question, BTW. HP, Compaq, Dell all short you on RAM (and note they set it up in a configuration where it's impossible to add RAM, only replace it) so that they can sell you RAM twice, plus the tech support fees, and quite possibly talk you into a motherboard upgrade (rather than replacement) in the process.

Why do you think Dell, Compaq and HP can undercut the Mom&Pops so severely?

How many people who discover they've been shorted on RAM don't think to remove the old RAM when they're forced to send the machine in? Will HP send the sticks back, or quietly "dispose" of them for you in a machine they're about to sell to some other dupe?

The best bang for the buck is always shopping for specific components on sale online, then building it yourself (or bribing a techie friend of yours with a case of beer and/or pizza.)

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New! It combines the power of science with the gentleness of your mother's best intentions!
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It depends on your level of cover, I have worked with HP, Dell, Apple, Siemens and Acer systems at one time or another. Dell most recently as a field service engineer. If it's a warranty job then only a Dell certified engineer can work on the system if you want to keep your warranty. Turn around atthe most basic level is Return to Dell and it usualy takes about a week to fix. At the top end they do a next day home visit. Servers have a different set up.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

According to Dos for Dummies, it is Cheetos that is the bait of choice. Has the Common Techie evolved since then?

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how do ypu work that out? when you buy a Dell you choose your config on their website, if you want more ram just specify it when youbuy the machine. If you want it later then get it from wherever you want and stick the stuff in. Ram upgrades are user upgrades, they can't have a user upgrade invalidate a warranty, it's not legal. That's why Laptops have their expansion slot under a little flap on the base.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

I don't mean they'll tell you they're giving you one gig and only put in 512megs. I mean they sell machines with only 512 megs when XP requires 1Gig to do more than idle.

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New! It combines the power of science with the gentleness of your mother's best intentions!
A new miracle technique, we apply homeopathic methods to achieve scientific efficaciousness
for dilutions WAY beyond Avogadro's Limit. It's New! It's Fresh!
It's Placebo^[tm] Brand Power Drink! *[Use as directed. May increase kidney function.]

I get you.
On Friday I was over in Liverpool trying to install Exact Dental software onto a PC, it was running like tracle it only had 256 Ram.
There was something else wrong aswell, the fans were roaring. It came from a local store and was 'custom built' a couple of months ago. I told them to take it back.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

Mine cost half that!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

If I am going to buy a computer from a "name brand," (which will only be laptops), I will only buy a Dell XPS. They are slightly more expensive than the standard systems, but the XPS support blows everything else that I've seen out of the water. Almost no time on hold on the phone, and when my battery on my notebook went dead after 8 months, they shipped a new one to me for free. With same day air. Dell's standard systems have little better support than anywhere else though.

Of course, for any desktop system, I'll be building it myself and not dealing with the computer companies.

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WANTED:

Schroedinger's Cat

Dead And Alive

My last 4 computers were Dells--mostly, it's been good for me. Dell now has the option of "no crapware" (based on user comments). In fact, Dell is rather finely configureable--if you get a computer with 512mb ram and run Vista, it's only because you chose to do so! I mean, you can't sue a lawnmower company because you buy a lawnmower and it's not good for cutting hedges. (oh...wait a minute...actually, that was an urban legend anyway).

Dell lately uses commodity parts (e.g. mine has an NVidia motherboard--so if there was a problem getting a new board from Dell, I could just order a new one from NVidia) rather than home-branded parts, so that motherboard issue would never be an issue (except for warranty service of course). Dell's warranty is pretty generous--on the phone it was determined I needed either a motherboard or memory--and they sent a tech to my house to check it out (at no additional cost to me). It turned out to be memory, happily.

Now, one thing--on the phone with tech support, sometimes I get someone who actually knows what he's talking about, other times he badly fails the Turing test (it's like some tech support centers think Searle's "Chinese Box" was a serious proposal for solving problems). I don't know that any other major company is any better in that or not.

My biggest problems with my current computer is I have Vista--and despite patches, upgrades to SP1, etc., Vista, the drivers, the software, etc. still don't always play well together.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Personally, I prefer cash. I can do anything with cash. I can only eat Cheetos (and while I will eat Cheetos, they don't top my list on snack foods anyways).

Anyways, I'd recommmend building your own system next time. You can customize it anyway you want, specify all your parts to your needs, and probably do it cheaper than buying a generic box from a manufacturer, and it will probably last 2-3 times longer.

The big brands (Dell, HP, etc.) all seem to go the absolute cheapest route when it comes to items such as hard drives. I know this for a fact, because I've had to replace at least 10 different hard drives in 10 different computers from friends/associates in the past year alone. 2 of them were the exact same dell model (Dimension 4700). These HDs are the slowest, cheapest, and junkiest ones they can buy. And people wonder why they fail. Fortunately, I was able to get most of the information off the old drives before they totally died on me, making the people I was fixing them for very happy (especially the pictures of their kids that they have been saving for past 2 years).

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DOOM Master

I was a Dell field engineer up until a few months ago, I was actualy Self Employed and doing work for a 3rd Party company called Getronics. Dell use 3 3rd Party companies for all their UK support.

I got an Email with the following days jobs on it and went by a local courier company to collect my poarts for the day.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

DOOMMaster,

1) I don't build my own computers for the same reason I don't build my own cars or refrigerators.
2) I doubt that I could custom build a computer for less than the $350 I paid for this one (reconditioned).
3) Hard drives are irrelevant to my situation.

To recap: I replaced the inadequate (for Vista) 512 meg of RAM with 2 gig. It worked great for about a week, then started crashing more and more often. I took it to the place I bought it (Fry's). They said the RAM checked out fine and that it was either the CPU or the motherboard and that it would have to be sent back to HP for repairs. After keeping it for over a month HP decided it was the non-HP RAM that was at fault and sent it back to Fry's unrepaired. They did say that they would send 2 gig of HP ram in a week or so. So I'm back to square one and out two months of my time!

This is intolerable and I am fed up with being jerked around! This situation will be resolved, one way or another, tomorrow!

Stay tuned.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

If HP is right and it is an incompatability with the RAM, your two complaints
are that Fry's failed to recognize the incompatibility, and that it took HP so
long to return your machine. By themselves, those are not very damning.
Every manufacturer/seller/servicer of everything has those kinds of failures.

I have been using a temporary replacement computer for (way too long),
but am committed to getting a new desktop system Really, Really Soon Now.
So I thought this thread might provide some advice, but so far, not much.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

When I get back from my military deployment in 2010, I'm expecting to have a huge surplus of saved funds, so I'm going to buy myself a MONSTER machine. Self made of course. I'm thinking dual quad cores, eight or sixteen gigs of ram, quad LCD displays, 2 or 3 linked PCIe graphics cards, even a solid-state hard disk for the operating system alone. It's gonna be SWEEEEET!

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This signature has been compressed due to rising photon costs.

Ok.....

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Bonus Agricola .

I think of computers like other guys my age think of cars. When I get home, I'll be able to afford the best for once. Anyway, I've decided to go to College as soon as I get home, and a machine like this would be very helpful. (Taking game and simulation design).

#EDIT, addition: My primary field of interest is artificial intelligence. I want to be the guy to program the next rover to do its own thing, without guidance, and just send us the data!

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This signature has been compressed due to rising photon costs.

By 2010 it will be obsolete

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'