I'm not sure I really believe that anymore. The margins on these things (Dells) are so slim it's ridiculous. I'd also wonder which route would be better for someone based in Mexico. I honestly don't know whether it's better/cheaper to ship one pre-built system or a bunch of parts.


I said I wouldn't be upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Your arguments seem to be for someone buying a new system and doesn't have a choice. All I hear when I read this is "you should upgrade to 8 because you can make it look like 7." I already have 7 and love it. I don't see any advantage in upgrading my own system, and I won't need to for many years yet


While I'd never say that Dells are perfect, you can certainly get a system worth bragging about. They've got nice video cards in them these days, and as long as you have a Core i7, a good amount of RAM, and an SSD (which is pretty easy to replace yourself) you'll have a really nice computer.

On the other hand, it certainly is fun building your own system. For my own use, my main computer for the past 10 years has been a self-built computer, and the guts have only seen a single major overhaul in that time. I've been running a first gen Core i7 since just before Windows 7 was in beta, and it's still going strong with no failures. All I've done in that time has been to upgrade to a massive 24GB of RAM, but that's ridiculous.


Your reasoning makes sense, but to be fair you should mention the downsides. The main one for Doug is that he asked for something he could tinker with. You can't upgrade anything in a laptop (ok, other than RAM and the hard drive).

I also don't think a laptop is a good value. The price/performance ratio is lower than a desktop, and if you're never/rarely going to take the laptop anywhere, you might as well just get a desktop and save some money, particularly if you already have a monitor you like (I don't know if that's the case with you, Doug).

I usually tell people that unless they anticipate moving their desktop replacement laptop at least once a week, you're better off getting a workhorse desktop computer and slinging around a netbook or something. Maybe get a keyboard for the tablet they already own.


I wasn't aware of any, and was under the impression that the only ones available would just work for the devices they shipped with, but this device seems to get good reviews.