AdamH.us

It’s true that, in general, a pre-built system is less likely to have hardware conflicts. However, there are a few companies I’ve had experience with that used incompatible hardware on some of their systems and it caused serious headache. I’ve written this up for those of you who are considering building your own system.

Pre-built cons:

1. You don’t always get installation disks*
2. You get loaded with literally dozens of programs you DON’T need.
3. Little to no control.
4. Limited support**
5. Screwed up organization.***
6. Pay all of it upfront (unless buying from a place that offers payment plans, like Wal-Mart’s Layaway)
7. Upgradability****

Pre-built Pros:

1. It’s all set up and you don’t have to worry about it.
2. Generally cheaper and frequently includes MS Office.

Home-built Pros:

1. Complete control
2. Pay-as-you-go (buy a little at a time instead of all at once)
3. Install disks*
4. You know what you’ve got
5. You know what it can do
6. Upgradeability****
7. Support**
8. Organization***

Home-built Cons:

1. More expensive
2. You have to worry about hardware compatibility.
3. More time-consuming.
4. Support**

Now for explanations:

* On pre-built systems, usually all you get are restore disks — NOT install disks. Say you upgrade from XP to Vista and you wind up needing to reinstall Office or your CD burning program… You can’t because it’s archived on a DVD!

** With a pre-built system, support places can’t help as much because you need hardware or software direct from the manufacturer. With a home-built system, you can take it to a support center and they can help you with every single piece of hardware. With a home-built system, you don’t get free support from a company for the computer — only from hardware companies for *components* within the computer.

*** On some computers the organization on the HD is downright hideous. Some companies split your HD into two partitions without telling you and their choice of sizes leave to be desired — users start installing stuff and find they’ve run out of room and wonder why — they got a 160 GB HD — the OEM gave Windows only 10 or 20.

**** On a pre-built system you often find extra slots you can’t use because of the case or find no slots at all. Or a case that’s a pain in the butt to open if you want to upgrade your HD or add a drive. You find case configurations that leave you scratching your head and can cost you more to fix because it takes the tech guy longer to figure out what’s wrong with it. On a home-built system, cases are easy, simple, nice looking, usually streamlined, etc. You can add cards, drives, RAM, etc with relative ease. You don’t have to contact your OEM to have them ship you RAM that you’re going to overpay for.

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