Dev wrote on Oct 12, 2012, 15:55:
Beamer wrote on Oct 12, 2012, 15:27:
DangerDog wrote on Oct 12, 2012, 15:08:
only businesses buy brand name pc desktop/towers - just about everyone else puts their own system together, better components and lower price.
HAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
::coughs, wheezes, takes a few minutes to catch breath::
It's a growing percentage, sure, as many of the former desktop buyers have moved on beyond the platform, but there's no way it's "just about every [non business].
Yep. Places like alienware wouldn't exist if gamers and other non business purchases didn't want to pay tons of extra money for a prebuilt higher end computer. Some people just dont want to take the time to build, and they have enough money to not care that its significantly more.
Most people don't like building their own.
For one, DangerDog didn't say gamers, he said all non-businesses. Gamers are only a fraction of desktop users. A growing one, as non-gamers leave the form factor, but still a fraction.
But even then plenty don't have the knowledge. They don't want to take the time. They don't want to take the risk. And they don't want to lose the support. I've built 4 of my 7 computers. The only one I didn't build past HS was a Dell that was purchased for less than the cost of the goods on Newegg (back when you could get a $750 off $2000 coupon.) The HDD came DOA. Dell sent someone to my house the next day to swap it out, which he did with one that had double the capacity. That was a very nice perk, and had I purchased the HDD and had to RMA it I would have been furious and it would have been very time consumer.
Most people don't want to bother with that. They want something that works, and if it doesn't they want it to be someone else's problem.
Of course, that Dell ended up a nightmare. The PSU was underpowered, custom sized so not swappable, and started having very serious issues. I got 4 years out of that Dell (longer than any PC I built, but because I typically replaced them after 2-3), but the last year was touch-and-go with the PSU.