and why do you think this way?

Depends on the purpose, and the level of the user.

For gamers, I HIGHLY suggest Alienware or VPRMatrix (Best Buy brand). They both use the best components IMHO, and their support is only matched by Dell.

Dell is a great company for the novice to mid-range user or mutimedia type person. Excellent support, and great built systems. Gateway beats Compaq and HP IMHO, but they are slimming down operations.

I was turned down from IBM PC's a while back when I bought an Aptiva for my mom, and later found out the only memory I could use for upgrading, was proprietary to IBM, and had to be bought from them. They have probably stopped this horrible practive (Compaq did it too), but I won't be buying one anytime soon.

For desktop graphics and/or multimedia heavy users I recommend buying a Sony built PC, as they cater to the elite multimediaist (That a word?), and have some great (Although more expensive) pre-built systems.

I of course can always admit that building your own PC can often save you money, and give you the confidence of knowing your parts/machine. However, pre-built systems have come down in price, and gone up in quality. I have recently found it is nearly as cheap, if not just a few dollars more to buy a VPRMatrix brand PC, get name brand insides, and add-on as I need. I actually spent $10 less for a more powerful system then I could have built myself at the time.

Oh, and please never, EVER, buy a Emachine brand PC. I say this from extensive knowledge of their systems and the parts therein.

Anyone know if Northwest computing is still around? They made some great gaming machines too for quite a while.

I don't know why, as long as it's not an IBM

Anyone considering a "Tiny" or "Time" pre-built PC should go and buy a dog because they are obviously too stupid to own a computer......

Thus speaks the voice of experience ... and dog owner.

Well, I don't get prebuild PCs, so I have no idea

I trust only one instance in this subject. And it is ME
Yeah, I will allways build my own computer. I would never buy a "prebuild" PC, but that's me

Co-workers from time to time come and ask me about buying pre-built systems. Smaug just as you said a novice feels they might break-it and it's better to go with "Name Brand" for that 24hr support line. If you are a casual user and want MS Office suite and AOL these systems are fine.

But if you want to do everything and Game. The down side is "Name Brands" have "On-Board" everything. Example: Graphics, Audio and LAN.

I started from a Micron and a Gateway. But I was finding myself upgrading hardware on those to play the 3D graphic games. I didn't like the cheap "On Board" VGA, Sound and low RAM.

So now I built my own to have exactly what hardware I want in them.

Pale

You can just make your own at :

www.IbuyPower.com

I choose "Other" because of the choices listed, only "Other" has the possibility of using all standard parts. Proprietary cases, memory, onboard everything, etc. means that you won't be able to upgrade the system easily or cost-effectively. You can buy "normal" systems from local computer vendors who assemble the pieces for you. It's like a do-it-yourself computer except someone puts it together. I haven't checked out the Best Buy PCs but I assume that they use standard case, parts, etc.