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09-04-2004, 08:05 PM
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#1 |
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Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 118
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retail vs oem
Im going to build a pc and my dad was wanting retail windows xp so he could have microsoft support. Is the support worth the $100 extra. Will I even need it. He also wants to get a pc retail instead of build because he things you save money. I think I can convince him about that but do I need to spend the extra $100 for microsoft windows support.
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09-04-2004, 09:00 PM
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#2 |
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Barefoot on the Moon!
Staff
Premium Member
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Northeastern USA
Posts: 13,285
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Chances are, you'll never need the "extra" support. There are plenty of free articles and forums that can assist with problems or questions about the O/S that may crop up.
Save a few bucks and go OEM.
__________________
There are two secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day, and you have to have a dream.
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09-04-2004, 09:56 PM
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#3 |
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Lest we forget
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1,870
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pcmech is all the support youll ever need, and free
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redqueen: Antec Sonata, Pentium-D 2.5GHz, MSI G31M3-L, 2GB ram, 320 GB HDD, OpenBSD hal9000: Lenovo T61, 2GB ram, 120 GB HDD, FreeBSD |
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09-04-2004, 10:00 PM
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#4 |
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Member (9 bit)
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Minnesota, USA
Posts: 382
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Agreed... you get for free here what you would pay $100 for with them... and you don't have to listen to annoying elevator music here! (wait... you don't listen to that music, do you?
)
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09-04-2004, 11:18 PM
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#5 |
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Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 118
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Good. Now I just have to convince my dad. Hell start to say that pcmech cant help all the time and it would be better to get support or something. He thinks intel is better than amd and wont even consider amd being just as good or better than intel. l think its because its never in commercials and he thinks its a company like e machines.
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09-04-2004, 11:54 PM
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#6 |
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Barefoot on the Moon!
Staff
Premium Member
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Northeastern USA
Posts: 13,285
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The AMD/Intel debate has gone on for ages. Both are good and neither is better.
As for eMachines, they are a low-quality grade manufacturer. Dell seems to be the better of the bunch of proprietary desktop manufacturers. |
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09-04-2004, 11:59 PM
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#7 |
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Member (12 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Woodland Hills, CA (suburb of Los Angeles)
Posts: 4,014
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If anyone in your family is either a teacher or a student at a college, they'd qualify for the academic pricing: so you could have it both ways: retail & discount. The Windows XP Professional Academic edition goes for as little as $85 or so at NewEgg.com [under Software/Academic].
If you do build your own, the hardware forums are a great place to post your parts list for comments and help. And read through the Build Your Own articles (see the PC Mech home page)... might look at the recent Build Your Own article in PC World magazine = nicely illustrated [and might help convince your folks that it's a legit idea]. One of the biggest worries is protecting the software investment from virus/spy catastrophe: so be sure to include some disk image software in your parts list. You can make your own Recovery Disk set (and custom update it now & then). When you buy the hardware parts yourself, you'll find that most come with warranties as good or better than what you're getting from the major OEMs (like Dell, IBM, Gateway, Hp...). Have fun, and make sure to get a decent power supply! . . . Gary |
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