"Powell" wrote in message
...

"ScottW" wrote

I don't find Dell prices competitive.

What brand names do you find more competitive?
What did you purchase?

No name clone from a little PC store around the corner.
They actually built me a machine with my spec'd parts
for about $100 less than I could by the parts on E-bay
buy it now.

An Asus mobrd, P4C800, 2.8 Ghz P4 with 800 Mhz
FSB, DVD, CD burner, ATI 9500 Pro vid card,
Sonata case.
It plays Call of Duty, MoHaa, and BF1942
with frame rates in the 90s at 1200x1024
res. (actually higher but the message text in Mohaa is
too small to read).
This machine has been the most stable I ever had.
I haven't had one OS lockup in 6 months of use.

It isn't bleeding edge but has been a rock solid
DX8, OpenGL gamer for about $900.
I'm sure prices are even less now, that was
6 months ago.


They did have a great deal on a large flat panel
the guys at work were raving about recently.
Some 21" for $800 in their business section.

I purchased a 17" Dell plasma last summer, works
fine. But I thought CRT's were better for gaming
applications, no? I wouldn't recommend plasma
for any type of graphic intensive application like
Photoshop.


Look at their system prices.
The dimension 8300 is kind of competitive
but the XPS is a joke. Most people won't see
any difference in these machines performance
(especially with a memory upgrade in the 8300)
yet they are almost 2x delta in price.

Don't know anything about the Dell Dimension series.
The Workstation series, for example, offers multiple
configurations of all the major computer components.

They are flexible and their machines are fine. They just
aren't the best of deals, particularly on the higher end
machines. They really tack on a premium.



Both have a crappy vid card BTW.
For the price the XPS should have an
ATI 9800.

On the custom Dells you can get a variety of high
end video card options... what's the problem?

They're already overpriced and you want to pay more?

Dell offers nice machines and stands behind 'em but you have to
pay for it. If you know what you want, you easily beat Dell's
price performance points.

ScottW