Shopping for the best family computer.

[Doh!]

Howdy. First of all, I've been lurking here for about a month. You guys really taught me alot about computers and are very friendly. :)

Now I have a little "problem" and I wanted to register to the forums and ask. My family wants a good computer that can do bit of gaming (not DoomIII style gaming, but something like UT2k3 with acceptable framerates.) email and surf the internet. Now here's the problem. My family does not have enough money to do it all up front. We would rather finance the computer for about a year instead of waiting a long time to build up the funds.

Dell, and IBM are the best places right now, but I want to know other options. I tried looking at Alienware and Falcon Northwest, but neither of them offer financing. I looked at a dozen other places online, but none of them offer financing. So am I stuck with Dell and IBM? If anyone knows any good company, please tell me.

Thank you.

[Emericana]

why dont you build one yourself for around $400 not including a monitor?

AMD1600+
KT266a
256mb PC2100
Cheap Case
DVD ROM or CDRW
Whatever hardrive you can afford
Radeon 8500 or Geforce 3 Ti200

etc etc

[Doh!]

I want to, but it'll be my first computer I ever built if family lets me. Trying to convince them that I won't blow up the computer is an uphill battle. They also want a very good warranty.

[Miknow]

I would build one also and SOME companies base their warranty on the parts like when they say 3 year warranty its based on say the cpu but not the system so be careful

[nealric]

My experience has been that most oem warrenties arent worth the paper they are written on. I would reccomend that you find someone who knows what they are doing to watch your back the first time. The first time i built one, the motherboard was bad. It gave me a bios checksum error. If I didnt have a friend helping me, I would have been completely lost.
In the end, you will save tons of $$$ from diy. You can often do it for about 40% off what the oem is charging if you do your homework and overclock.

[Doh!]

Thanks guys. I'll remember to view more carefully between the lines when looking at warranties. :)

I'll try to convince my family to let me build it. 400 bucks isn't a bad deal and with better parts than Dell's $800 deal. Wish me alot of luck.

[kaltag]

i'll agree with nealric manufacturer warranties aren't woth jack. Heck even if a part does go bad you could litteraly replace the entire machine and still be ahead versus buying a dell :P . Good Luck

[zachj]

unless you overclock, you should have at leat one year warranties on all parts you buy for the computer if you build it yourself.

Z

[SickBoy]

Ya know, this would be a no-brainer if you didn't say the word "games". Gateway $700 deal... (1.8 GHz Celeron, CDRW, 15" TFT)... Not sure if you can add an AGP card to one of those but if you can I'm almost sure that one of those with maybe a Geforce 4 Ti4200 would smoke on UT2K3 for really cheap...

I would NOT suggest building a PC for your family on your virgin PC-building expedition. Too many things that can go wrong that you learn the first time you build one. Heck, it took me and my roommate (who HAD previously built a box or two) two weeks to get my first box running. Not the kind of stress mom and dad want to have, believe you me.

sb

[William]

Dell and Gateway are the way to go. I would definately not suggest building a computer for the first familly computer. Once you get it though, you will have plenty of chances to work on it, upgrade, etc.

[nerd4life]

William. Man I'm slow tonite. took me a sec to get your sig. that's coo.

[X2sandman]

Yeah that quote is the best. Also i would agree, go prebuilt so you don't put a lot of stress on your parents.