Check out some online store's maybe and you can see whats popular or whats a good price.

Pacific Computers, Atherton Road, Oakleigh, Victoria!!!!!

If you are not lucky enough to be in Melb find a good local White Box dealer.

You are not supported by your brand names as much as you would imagine.

Your local computer dealer is there to support you and not in the next State or country. They are at the front line and want your business and referal business.

To quote Darren: "Support your local corner store and they'll stick around - the vast bulk of stores are just like you and me, making a living from what they enjoy. These guys work on much lower profit margins so you get a much more powerful system for less than you'd pay for a brand-name."

When and if a problem occurs it's nice to be able to front up to them and nine times out of ten have the problem rectified on the spot. Rather than a spotty sales person saying leave it with us and we will call you. Also with the same ratio the problem is probably your making but they will set you right. Try that with your Dells. IBM's ect.

Get better bang for your buck with a good local White Box seller.

■Good judgement comes from experience. Unfortunately experience usually comes from bad judgement■

I'll drink to that. Living in Perth as I do, has some disadvantages. One being distance. I have bought two computers from large retail stores, and when I've had problems, they don't want to know.

So it's a service call to Sydney or India, or Jupiter, who knows?. I made fifteen calls to Compaq in Sydney, who very reluctantly agreed for a local service agent to call round and fix the problem, after they decided they couldn't fix it.

I had problems with a Packard Bell computer and I did get good service from the call centre which did fix my problem. But the websites for help from PB were useless, I thought I had a totally different brand of computer, as the websites would not recognise my computer serial number. And to cap it all, none of my emails were answered. It was only when I threatened to write to the CEO of the company, did I get a reply, which still didn't answer my question.

The problems I had were not caused by my fiddling, they were problems with the actual hardware/software.

So support you local computer store. You will get value for money and good customer service.

As a sideline, I had a friend visit from England in October. He could not believe the high prices we pay for computers and software. He pays about a third of what we do in Australia.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I entirely agree with Help Station, support your local computer store.

Brian Margison

On the other hand, corporates and Government agencies that buy in bulk can do a better deal with brand names than the small business office as well.

Another issue with brand name desktops, they often have proprietary hardware tweaks in the name of superior integration. They might require more expensive memory and generally have compatibility issues with 3rd party hardware replacements.

When it comes to notebooks, there's often a parts integration issue. Getting spare parts and replacement displays may not be so easy with no name brands.

Most of the pain in PC User consumer reports often came with buying a cheaper no-name laptop for which parts were hard to get, when a service issue came up.

So I'd be inclined to stay with the top five brands for notebooks.

regards
Graham

Regards Robert

John lives in Ballarat, so he probably won't be buying from that dodgy-as-hell computer shop chain in Perth that is still running.

The computer shops vary greatly in support. I have always gone with my gut instinct in that, if something doesn't feel right, just back out of the store. That is something which the guys from HelpStation recommend in their articles and I have been doing from the start. Spending $1700 is better than spending $2000 for a system, but when they use crappy parts and they don't wanna know you after the sale, not losing $1700 is better than saving $300.

Darren is also right, I've had a hard drive go on me within two weeks of my 12-month warranty expiring, and they wouldn't give me another one, even though my computer was in Sydney for three months having a USB port fixed which they didn't even fix! This was a brand-name computer too. Mind you it was a Creative computer and they haven't got a clue WHERE they are in the computer market!

First they decide to make computers, then they stop making them, they make optical drives, then they stop making them..(which is a damn shame because six years down the track theyre still working!) You can't even find any evidence of those products existing on the website when you try and download drivers!

It used to be that for business, you went with a brand-name computer, because as Darren said, it used to mean great support. Apparently, they now use standard industry parts (which hopefully Darren can confirm or deny as I heard this from a Harvey Norman sales assistant), which means it would be a lot more useful after the warranty period expires. The one worth going to in my opinion is HP, however having experience with their customer support (as Darren says..I'm sorry I laugh at Darren's columns cos I can picture him saying it...it's a right-royal pain in the you-know-what!) I wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole.

My opinion: Go with a reputable white-box company which you've had continuous pleasureable experience (I know theyre hard to find...there's only one in WA that I've found!) and have some strategies in place for when everything goes down.

It all goes back to research - note the internet is vast in terms of available information for so called no "name brand components" that go into a white box. Perhaps putting together an Asus mainboard, Asus video card and so on, assembled in a white box may be called a no name brand. But most techs know that Asus is one of the best mainboard manufacturers around.

For support - learn about your system, use the internet for support and the local shop is more than happy to speak to you for a fraction of the cost or none at all.

With the white box, I only get what I want, and only pay for what I want. No crappy package with 3000 "free" shareware programs, a printer that's only good for printing newsletters without graphics......

At work, we have no choice - multi-national name brand (rhymes with "Hell"). The specs are ordinary, and configuring for power uses is almost impossible.

Build quality might be better on the brand-names (I've seen some real shockers from Yum-Cha PC shops but there have also been some gems).

Brand-name machines will also probably have all the software you are likely to use already installed (along with a recovery disk if you need to reinstall) but you are generally on your own with the others.