First desktop in 10 years.

[Curtis Johnson]

Mike:

Check out Puget Systems (www.pugetsystems.com) for a custom job. Great people, use good parts, easy to contact tech support and/or sales people and get questions answered/help; good technical info on their website, reasonable custom build prices. NO BLOATWARE installed on their custom builds.

I used to be a Dell fan in the past (have two of their machines now) but agree with others that they've really gone downhill from the company they were years ago.

[Chad Cardin]

Good advice Wendy, Im going to look for just that, if it exists out here... HAHA! Usually good humor and computer fixing dont go hand in hand these days!

[WendyWelton]

Usually good humor and computer fixing dont go hand in hand these days!

Oh but it does! Humorous computer dudes are just a very dry humor, not "ha ha" jolly humor. The wisecracks can be so subtle they'll get right past you if you're not watching for that evil twinkle in their eye.

[adamjedgar]

the system i am using right now (see spec below in my signature) was built from scratch by myself 6 years ago. the only changes made to the original were video card and ram.

it cost me around $4,000 to build at the time and 6 years later it is still better than my hp laptop with an i7 720 and 1 gig radeon video card. i am not a fan of lower end name brand systems like DELL or TOSHIBA...in fact im probably not a fan of any name brand desktop pc for that matter! (i also use my systems for gaming so i prefer to build my own)

anyway, the equation for my money is as follows
go for high end cpu and video card. The rest is not really that important unless these two are right. Windows 7, functions fine with very little RAM even when running Chief so you don't need to focus too much effort initially on more than average quantity of RAM (4-6 gig). for those critics who disagree, check out your system monitor whilst running chief and watch the memory stats!
My machine is currently running 6 gig of RAM, however, because its so old and running in 32 bit mode only 3 is usable (it functions perfectly on that amount)

[Chad Cardin]

Wendy,

Then if thats the type of humor your talking about, Ive seen it! They say I have the high maintenance Ferrari that always needs work! Thats the exact opposite of what I was looking for... to bad the sales guys at Dell didnt tell me that before I bought!

[WendyWelton]

So Chad, you're saying we should be wary of people recommending car mechanics that they know a little bit too well? I had a string of accidents a few years ago and the body shop guys dog even stopped barking at me, thought I was family.

[Chad Cardin]

Yeah pretty much Wendy, Im starting to know all the techs full life histories. Like yourself with your prius, Im a toyota Lexus guy too and wanted the same in a computer. IT looks like this time I got the Ferrari type that should have had the computer tower include live in casita on back, for a full time live in tech!