Best/worst computer brands.

petrthomas said:
I would say Dell is the best for me so far.
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Same here although I usually buy the off lease office type ones such as OptiPlex, Precision & the Latitude but I do like the fact you can easily find the service manuals even for their consumer based product lines.
 
Format _C: said:
Same here although I usually buy the off lease office type ones such as OptiPlex, Precision & the Latitude but I do like the fact you can easily find the service manuals even for their consumer based product lines.
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Dellrefurbished has Latitudes for really cheap. When they had 50% off a Latitude 7490 was $450 w/ 16GB ram and 512 GB SSD. Gonna get one for my kid.
 
Back before the Internet there was Computer Shopper. When you ordered HW out of it you said a silent prayer that 1. You received what you ordered and 2. It wasn't defective. If you had to return something it was on your nickel and you may or may not get a refund or replacement. The Internet changed all that and drove an untold number of companies out of business because if they had to stand behind what they sold they suddenly became unprofitable. So today instead of having thousands and thousands of retailers we have only a few hundred mainstream ones. Of course there are still niche markets and specialty markets where the little guy can still make a living but these days the big bucks go to the big players. This goes for both HW and SW.
 
Krenum said:
Best, Falcon Northwest. They've been around for 20+ years. They are the best prebuilt systems you can buy. They are pricey though.

This is the brand we used to drool over when looking at PC's in the PC Gamer magazines back in the late 90's early 00's.
https://www.falcon-nw.com/

Talon: https://www.falcon-nw.com/desktops/talon/design
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This. And Origin. And Digital Storm (if you're going REALLY crazy). I may do my next workstation from DS, if they add in the TR Pros.
 
A couple of years ago I bought a system from Puget Systems (Threadripper 3960) because they carry a strong reputation in the workstation / video rendering community. They design systems around off the shelf parts, so no specialized OEM motherboards, power supplies, etc.
As others mention this is not bargain hunting, this is quality parts, clean builds, and they provided a binder full of the testing information of your system (they burn them in and run benchmarks on it) as well as the manuals, an actual OEM DVD of Windows, and a restore USB to put it back as it was when it was shipped.

I did it with that TR because I didn't want to deal with the possibility of ordering one of those CPUs and getting bent pins or possibly murphying it myself and then trying to get that replaced through some place I ordered online. They got to deal with all of that. I pay a little extra piece of mind and quality.

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Maybe I missed what he was using it for but used Dell Optiplex Micro machines have been very good to me. Nearly 300 of them deployed for business and home office use over the last seven years. Have had very few failures. For basic office and internet use they work great. Considering the cost of a legit Windows 10/11 license, the hardware cost is $63 and $174 for the below two machines.

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Puget systems is pretty good. I've also been a fan of the intel nuc extremes which are basically prebuilts.
 
Jandor said:
Best computer is that I build myself with best parts, less overclocked.
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Same here.

Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3
AMD FX 8350 8 Core 4GHz
Segate ST480HM000-1G5162
Initially it had 32GB of ram but over the years 24GB of that has been "borrowed" so now she's only running 8GB
Windows 7 Ultimate and all the other bells and whistles. Can't remember the PSU but it's original to the build.
 
The_Heretic said:
A couple of years ago I bought a system from Puget Systems (Threadripper 3960) because they carry a strong reputation in the workstation / video rendering community. They design systems around off the shelf parts, so no specialized OEM motherboards, power supplies, etc.
As others mention this is not bargain hunting, this is quality parts, clean builds, and they provided a binder full of the testing information of your system (they burn them in and run benchmarks on it) as well as the manuals, an actual OEM DVD of Windows, and a restore USB to put it back as it was when it was shipped.

I did it with that TR because I didn't want to deal with the possibility of ordering one of those CPUs and getting bent pins or possibly murphying it myself and then trying to get that replaced through some place I ordered online. They got to deal with all of that. I pay a little extra piece of mind and quality.

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Rather than build computers for people these days I just send them links to Puget Systems and System76 depending on their linux proficiency and affinity for woodgrain desktops. There are so many pins to unbend nowadays I just don't want to do it anymore. I thought I might have a stroke while building in the 42u rack I got for free last week but all the thousands of pins went in without any niggles, this time :/ If it were a longer return trip i would have packed this differently utilizing the cab to hold some bits but 2.6 miles without any stops.
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Acer could be worst for me personally, 'cause it's the one I've had most problems (dead power, faulty fans...). But maybe the brand doesn't matter, maybe it's just about luck. If desktop machine is what I'm after, I build my own setup.
 
Any consumer model that loads up crap is the worst. ie. Anything Best Buy sells.
Lenovo or Dell business lines are good.
 
DogsofJune said:
I see they are still in business. https://www.gatewayusa.com/
I hate them, and E machines, and every fucktard that bought one and wanted my help with it....... Proprietary crap!
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Gateway was bought out by Acer some time ago and exists pretty much only as a rebranding of low-end Acer systems sold through Walmart and other such retailers. Yeah, mostly crap now. Ars Technica had a couple good take-downs of their laptops in reviews a year or two ago.

They were fine back in the '90s, pretty much as good as Dell, Compaq, etc., though AFAIK mostly focused on home/small business and less of the more enterprise sales of the others.

The real shit PC of the '90s was Packard Bell. So many of those came back at the store I worked at. But they kept selling because of the included software bundles. And yeah, E-Machines (bought out by Gateway at one point mid-2000s) took over that title late '90s/early 2000s when PB faded away (also purchased by Acer, I'm seeing a theme here).
 
As I recall it was Gateway's decision to open retail stores that ultimately lead to their doom.

Packard Bell did have pretty good service after the sale. I was one of their field parts changers . Never a dull moment, LOL.
 
Desktop: MSI. ASUS, Crucial, AData, Corsair, EVGA, SeaSonic
Laptop: HP (love my Omen 15), Lenovo, Dell is hit or miss, but really good when it hits. MSI, Asus
 
Nenu said:
You missed the thread title :)
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I suppose I did post before reading fully. My comment definately sounds like it leans towards someone building a PC, but a prebuilt with the listed brands would probably better than an acer, ibuypower or w/e
 
DogsofJune said:
I see they are still in business. https://www.gatewayusa.com/
I hate them, and E machines, and every fucktard that bought one and wanted my help with it....... Proprietary crap!
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Emachines used bog standard components, besides the weird cases. I restuffed many an Emachine with newer, better hardware.

Proprietary crap was Compaq, HP and Dell's domain. Compaq was the worst, having torx screws and custom floppy drives that nobody else used.
 
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Best experience: AVA Direct- Don't want to jinx it, but 2nd PC through them. 1st lasted 9 years...2nd one going on 7 years

Worst Experience: Embarrassed to say I gave Cyberpower a chance a long time ago. Absolutley the worst customer service I've ever experienced. Shipped it back within a week. Just thinking about it makes me nauseous
 
Young Reg built his own systems from scratch to squeeze out every last drop of performance. Old Reg, like many others now goes almost exclusively for off lease business class machines (optiplexes, latitudes, thinkpads, etc) for most typical use cases. I stopped keeping up with the Joneses about 15 years ago, and my wallet has been thanking me ever since. I have great experiences with both Dell & Lenovo class machines. all of them have had some minor level of upgradeability ( ram/cpu/half height GPU, etc.) that I have been able to get excellent value from over the years!
 
Worst IMHO

1. Compcraq
2. e-machinina
3. Backward Bell
4. Gaterway
5. ToshiByBy

And probably a few others I've long since forgot about....
 
I really like my Framework laptop. Battery is tiny but it's very well put together.

As far as desktops go, I only recommend tiny NUC style machines now. They are prebuilt and you just slap in memory and an NVME and you're done. Install windows and you're on your way.
 
OFaceSIG said:
I really like my Framework laptop. Battery is tiny but it's very well put together.

As far as desktops go, I only recommend tiny NUC style machines now. They are prebuilt and you just slap in memory and an NVME and you're done. Install windows and you're on your way.
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The NUC has it's place but it's mostly unsuitable for gamers and power users. I use one for a HTPC. The media is stored on network server. The NUC is small and silent which makes it perfect for a HTPC. Would I game or run Photoshop on it? Nope.
 
ochadd said:
Maybe I missed what he was using it for but used Dell Optiplex Micro machines have been very good to me. Nearly 300 of them deployed for business and home office use over the last seven years. Have had very few failures. For basic office and internet use they work great. Considering the cost of a legit Windows 10/11 license, the hardware cost is $63 and $174 for the below two machines.

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At work, we've seen some problem with the 7070 USFF class of machines though. So, IMHO, ups and down, you just never know.
 
Normally if I do a prebuilt it will be a Dell Optiplex or a Precision for a desktop, for laptops I generally do Latitudes. But I recently got a Lenovo T470 and I quite like it better than any Dell I’ve had.

I’ve even put Dell 7010 motherboards in custom cases for budget gaming computers. Since that generation was actually mostly not proprietary
 
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