I have owned only 2 Desktops so far that were bought from OEM manufacturers and not assembled by me. The first one was a used Dell Dimension desktop that I bought while I was in College and the other one was a new Compaq Presario That I bought with my first paycheck after college. Ever since I have always assembled my own desktops. People keep giving me the arguments that I won’t have to worry about individual part warranty/compatibility if I buy from a manufacturer. My counter arguments for not going that route are

• You get the best possible configuration (or Bang for your buck, if you may). That is, if you know what you are doing and do you research.
• You get the best warranty. Most hardware come with a warranty of their own which is one a generality longer than the standard warranty provided by the manufacturers like Dell, HP, Gateway. For example, Seagate refused to replace my dead hard drive from the Dell computer even after just 2 years since it was part of OEM sale. Their retail hard drives come with an excellent 5 year warranty.
• You don’t get stuck with proprietary hardware. In both the systems that I bought, I was stuck with proprietary hardware that would not let me upgrade the Power Supply (Dell) or the OS (HP no longer supported the drivers for the OEM Creative Audigy card, for Vista).
• You don’t get the plethora of adware/malware preinstalled.
• You get the satisfaction of building everything on your own. And you end up knowing much more about the workings of your computer which leads to better working and maintenance of the computer in general.

Now OEM Software is something I love. When you buy hardware you can get software which retails for much higher price, free or at comparatively lower prices. For example, you can get a OEM version of Vista (Ultimate Edition) for almost $100 cheaper than the retail version or you can get a scale down version of Nero (DVD/CD burning Software) or Power DVD (Media player software) for free with DVD burners. This software is more than sufficient for most users. And in case you need the full, retail version. Upgrades are much cheaper that buying the retail version in the first place.
I get a lot of spam about websites selling OEM software for really cheap prices. Now, that is illegal. OEM software is supposed to be sold/given with purchase of hardware. I am in no way encouraging that.

Update - Was pointed out as soon as this post went online, that Dell is ditching proprietary parts, starting with their XPS series (Link via MaximumPC) . Now that is a good step. HP did not use proprietary parts in their Blackbird 002 system (which I think is a work of art). One can argue though that, Blackbird was designed by newly acquired Voodoo and not HP.

Posted by admin in system