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Old 3rd July 2008
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TerryP TerryP is offline
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: USofA
Posts: 1,547
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Grrr...


I've never been able to build my own computer thanks to family... Who would have made made it 100,000 times more painful then losing an index finger.


All of my systems are pre-built, although I've taken them apart and put'em back together again on occasions.


In the future, given the economical freedom, I would never buy a pre-built unless I had to (business reasons) or just needed a system -- the difference between a computer to use (buy) and a 'personal' system (build).


I would *very* much like to one day build my own laptop, since I understand their internal structure less then desktops.... but the probability of that ever coming to fruition is about the same as winning the lotto.


Next computer I get, I pray will be a custom built one, without having to kill anyone in the process.


Why:


<probably a rant>
The Story of SAL1600:


The original plan of attack was to build my own system, dedicated for running BSD and XP -> work on BSD, game on XP.


For $1400 I had a nice AMD based system lined up + LCD + great GPU + UPS !!! Plus every single thing I wanted out of the system, including a pair of 250GB Seagate's and a lone stiffy drive.


Then my mother started going on about "what if"'s (vote of no confidence?) and my brother started getting pissy. So I ended up looking at an HP that would hopefully fit my needs and make my mother STFU.

Which then set off my brother again which lead me to a Intel based Gateway machine which got them both to SHUT UP -> My mother because it was pre-built, my brother because it was 'high performance (at the time) and more upgradeable' but still not what I really wanted.


The result?

I spent $1600 instead of $1400

The machine works but she is the most headache giving b**** I've ever had. Every thing along the way has had it's quirks and I had to threaten to sell it in order to fix one problem with the computer -- don't ask!!!


I also got a piece of crap graphics card and tv tuner instead of my dream card, which also died a few years later.

I had to buy a new sound card, which sucks under windows but works wonderful with FreeBSD and Linux 2.6


And I got stuck with 1 500GB drive (of a brand which I've been told had bad failure rates once upon a time) and a card reader that sat unused until this year.
</probably a rant>

The system has been to much of a royal pain with the seven fires of heck to use for any of it's original purposes beyond gaming.


The lesson:


_N_E_V_E_R_ listen to family when building _Y_O_U_R_ computer !!!
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