Zzzz and yet not as boring as it may look

[Ogmuk]

Yup, he died for the first time on Stormrage yesterday, arguably the toughest encounter in the game right now, hence he will be weakened in 1.9, but Lethon is no more!

As always, details of acquired Phat Lewtz can be found to your left. Jackpot, Huron!

[Gionnelles]

Congrats all, its about time this stupid dragon died.

[Elsington]

[Clive]

Err... Olgar is too slow to post news.

[azek]

Originally Posted by Clive

Err... Olgar is too slow to post news.

Did you ever hear of the sleep of the victorious?

[Clive]

Originally Posted by azek

Did you ever hear of the sleep of the victorious?

Sleep is for the weak!

[azek]

Originally Posted by Clive

Sleep is for the weak!

..and the victorious!

[Artanis]

Grats on the kill and a server first. Can't wait to see how you guys do in AQ when it goes live. Right now I wish I could atleast log into the game lol.

P.S.
Alienware sucks.

[Dardatheus]

Alienware sucks.

QFT

[azek]

For the price you'd pay more for an Alienware, you could buy a solid state hard drive from BiTMICRO Networks

[Demetrius]

Originally Posted by Dardatheus

Alienware Sucks.

QFT

I'll take my Dell with a 4 year parts / labor / drop me out the window warranty any day. Don't give me a load about "speed" either, 7800 GTX, 2GB RAM, and RAID striping 10,000 RPM hard disks can't be that bad.

[Dardatheus]

Dell = Cheapest components for biggest profit margin.

Homebuilt = Highest quality components for same price as Dell.


If you are staunchly set on retail though, Dell is the way to go.

[Clive]

Originally Posted by Dardatheus

Dell = Cheapest components for biggest profit margin.

Homebuilt = Highest quality components for same price as Dell.


If you are staunchly set on retail though, Dell is the way to go.

If you get a Dell, make sure to also buy the longest warranty possible.

[Demetrius]

Originally Posted by Dardatheus

Dell = Cheapest components for biggest profit margin.

Homebuilt = Highest quality components for same price as Dell.


If you are staunchly set on retail though, Dell is the way to go.

10,000 RPM WD hard disks = not cheap
BFG 7800 GTX = not cheap
2 GB crucial ram = not cheap

Trust me, I've had my fair share of 90 day warranty home built PC's, and finally gave up when it came to replacing parts. When my DVD burner broke, Dell had a new one at my door the next morning via overnight shipping. Plus I get a very nice discount through my employer so the pros greatly outweigh the cons.

$3200 for a self built computer with a 90 day - 1 year warranty on separate parts, or $2000 for a Dell with 4 years of complete system warranty and the same performance. I'll take the latter.

When you're a college student strapped but you can't live without a nice PC, you tend to change your habits... cause I love building PC's just like anyone else.

[Gionnelles]

Originally Posted by Demetrius

10,000 RPM WD hard disks = not cheap
BFG 7800 GTX = not cheap
2 GB crucial ram = not cheap

Trust me, I've had my fair share of 90 day warranty home built PC's, and finally gave up when it came to replacing parts. When my DVD burner broke, Dell had a new one at my door the next morning via overnight shipping. Plus I get a very nice discount through my employer so the pros greatly outweigh the cons.

$3200 for a self built computer with a 90 day - 1 year warranty on separate parts, or $2000 for a Dell with 4 years of complete system warranty and the same performance. I'll take the latter.

When you're a college student strapped but you can't live without a nice PC, you tend to change your habits... cause I love building PC's just like anyone else.

Agreed. I have built every PC I've ever had since I was 12 or so, but when I just bought a PC for my gf, I ended up going with a Dell. The performance can easily match whatever I would put together, and the deal I got was better than buying the parts separately, not even counting warranty or the labor to put it together. There just isn't much profit in actually building the system these days unless you have existing hardware you want to keep. Dell gets components in bulk for so little money, they don't have to charge the consumer anything for the labor of building it. It's driving Mom and Pop computer stores into the ground because thats where they made their money; labor.

[Stryken]

everyone I know with a dell in r/l had it fuck up like nonstop =p


alienware atm, custom built the other one.

[Dardatheus]

This is way off topic to our Lethon kill. Haha.

Couple things though: There is no way anyone will spend 3200$ on a homebuilt thats the equivilent of a 2k$ dell. Just won't happen. Ever.

When you buy your own components, you are ensured that you are getting quality if you know your shit. If you look inside a dell, most of their mobos are generic Intel, same with their RAM. PSU is usually underpowered. They can sell seemingly comparitive (specs wise) systems for close to the price you'd spend on buying your own crap because they buy lowest common denominator components in bulk. Dell didn't get rich on tiny profit margins.

I've built every box I have ever owned since my first pentium, as well as at least 25-30 boxes for friends and family over the years, and I can count on three fingers the amount of times a component has died. And two of which were those infamous Ti4200's that shipped with a timebomb defect that made the screen pink checkerboards. Other than that I had one hsf die that killed a processor. That's it. In almost 10 years thats it.

Meanwhile, we sell Dell's for our software all day long at work, and I've seen RAM, PSUs, Mobos, HDDs all die; some in a matter of weeks.

Dell needs to offer that good of a warrantee because their shitty parts are prone to breakdown.

Saying that a Dell is as good as a comparable homebuilt is sort of like saying that a Kia is as good as a Porsche because they both have 6-cyllander engines, and get you from point a to point b.

For Grandma or Stupid Customer X or Mr. Casual Comp User or Mr. I-use-my-comp-for-porn-and-poker, Dell is the way to go for sure; its not worth the hassle for them.

The company has its place. But imho its off-base to say that place is everywhere, because homebuilding always has and always will get you the best quality, highest performance parts for the same or less money than the generic-but-functional crap Dell uses.

[Demetrius]

Originally Posted by Dardatheus

Couple things though: There is no way anyone will spend 3200$ on a homebuilt thats the equivilent of a 2k$ dell. Just won't happen. Ever.

I disagree.

Spec one of these out at Newegg:

221-5712 Dimension 8400 Series, Intel Pentium 4 Processor 550
(3.6GHz) w/HT Technology and 1MB cache
311-3978 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
310-1582 Dell Quiet Key Keyboard EA 0.00 0.00
463-4016 19 in (19.0 in viewable) 1905FP Ultra-Sharp Digital Flat Panel
Display
320-4076 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX Graphics Card
341-1594 NCQ SATA RAID 0 with Dual 160GB Hard Disks
340-8628 3.5in Floppy Drive
412-0409 Generic Dimension Dell Support
412-0688 Image Restore
420-4834 Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition,Service Pack 2,English
420-4927 Windows Media Player 10 EA 0.00 0.00
310-1871 Dell 2-button Optical Scroll Mouse
430-0742 Intel Pro 1000 Integrated PCI NIC Card
313-2279 56K PCI Data Fax Modem EA 0.00 0.00
412-0705 Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 EA 0.00 0.00
313-3008 16X DVD-ROM and 16X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer
420-4919 PowerDVD Software Decoding for DVD Drives
313-3039 Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, PCI w/Dolby Digital EX, IEEE1394,
7.1 channel, THX cert
313-2720 Factory Installed Audio EA 0.00 0.00
461-3821 Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 THX Cert.
412-0739 Network Associates McAfee 6.0, English, 15-Month Subscription
412-0741 Music Match 9.0 Basic EA 0.00 0.00
412-0744 Paint Shop Photo Album 5.1 Standard EA
412-0584 EARTHLINK TA2003 ISP EA 0.00 0.00
412-0625 Dell/My Way Home Page EA 0.00 0.00
412-0687 NETZERO ISP EA 0.00 0.00
420-3224 Broadband Icon for Inspiron EA 0.00
412-0701 Word Perfect Productivity Pack EA 0.00
950-3339 *3 Year Limited Warranty EA 0.00
412-0359 Soft Contracts - Qualxserve EA
902-4502 *Type 15- Third Party At Home Service with Nights and Weekends, 24x7 Technical Support, 2 Year Extended
902-5560 *Type 15- Third Party At Home Service with Nights and Weekkends, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year
960-2800 *Technical Support, Initial Year
950-5462 *Technical Support, 2 Year Extended

Ship. and/or Handling $0.00
Subtotal $2,008.15
Taxable: $263.12 Tax: $15.79
Total $2,023.94

[Stryken]

Some people also get access to the cheap as shit computer shows that roama round town =p

[Dardatheus]

Originally Posted by Demetrius

I disagree.

Spec one of these out at Newegg:

221-5712 Dimension 8400 Series, Intel Pentium 4 Processor 550
(3.6GHz) w/HT Technology and 1MB cache
311-3978 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
310-1582 Dell Quiet Key Keyboard EA 0.00 0.00
463-4016 19 in (19.0 in viewable) 1905FP Ultra-Sharp Digital Flat Panel
Display
320-4076 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX Graphics Card
341-1594 NCQ SATA RAID 0 with Dual 160GB Hard Disks
340-8628 3.5in Floppy Drive
412-0409 Generic Dimension Dell Support
412-0688 Image Restore
420-4834 Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition,Service Pack 2,English
420-4927 Windows Media Player 10 EA 0.00 0.00
310-1871 Dell 2-button Optical Scroll Mouse
430-0742 Intel Pro 1000 Integrated PCI NIC Card
313-2279 56K PCI Data Fax Modem EA 0.00 0.00
412-0705 Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 EA 0.00 0.00
313-3008 16X DVD-ROM and 16X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer
420-4919 PowerDVD Software Decoding for DVD Drives
313-3039 Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, PCI w/Dolby Digital EX, IEEE1394,
7.1 channel, THX cert
313-2720 Factory Installed Audio EA 0.00 0.00
461-3821 Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 THX Cert.
412-0739 Network Associates McAfee 6.0, English, 15-Month Subscription
412-0741 Music Match 9.0 Basic EA 0.00 0.00
412-0744 Paint Shop Photo Album 5.1 Standard EA
412-0584 EARTHLINK TA2003 ISP EA 0.00 0.00
412-0625 Dell/My Way Home Page EA 0.00 0.00
412-0687 NETZERO ISP EA 0.00 0.00
420-3224 Broadband Icon for Inspiron EA 0.00
412-0701 Word Perfect Productivity Pack EA 0.00
950-3339 *3 Year Limited Warranty EA 0.00
412-0359 Soft Contracts - Qualxserve EA
902-4502 *Type 15- Third Party At Home Service with Nights and Weekends, 24x7 Technical Support, 2 Year Extended
902-5560 *Type 15- Third Party At Home Service with Nights and Weekkends, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year
960-2800 *Technical Support, Initial Year
950-5462 *Technical Support, 2 Year Extended

Ship. and/or Handling $0.00
Subtotal $2,008.15
Taxable: $263.12 Tax: $15.79
Total $2,023.94

I will when I can freely and overtly use the internet (i.e. not at work). But off the bat I ask: What motherboard is that? What RAM is that? What HDD is that? What graphics card is that? Answer across the board: GENERIC. They buy and use the cheapest lowest quality crap that will work and get them the desired 'advertisement specs', i.e. OMG 3.2GHz! OMG 2GB RAM!

Slightly off-topic, but I would always prefer AMD. Much cheaper, imho same performance at lower 'clock speeds', and great oc'ers.

That software is cheapass and you could download much higher quality programs for free (including wxp), barring any self-righteous moral opposition to software theft. I think thats also going to be where you see a lot of price inflation. We are talking components not software. The progs you listed including windows if bought retail are easily a thousand bucks of wasted cash.