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I would -never- buy a Dell, or an IBM, or a Gateway, or an HP, or a Compaq.

They all use "not-quite-standard" chips and boards which can't be swapped out with off the shelf components in the event you want to upgrade something or have a post-warranty failure.

Freepmail me if you want some pointers on how to find a better made machine (I won't be trying to sell you anything, neither I nor my friends or family are in the PC business)

I would -never- buy a Dell, or an IBM, or a Gateway, or an HP, or a Compaq.

They all use "not-quite-standard" chips and boards which can't be swapped out with off the shelf components in the event you want to upgrade something or have a post-warranty failure.

On my Dell 4100's, the only non-standard device is the power supply connecter, not a usual thing that people ever have to touch but adapted connecters are available on the web. Everything else is replacable with off the shelf parts including the mobo.

IBM, Gateway and HP I never owned.

My older Compaqs do have a propriety mobo but I have upgraded more than one with off the shelf video (Voodoo2 to provide passthru 3D with the onboard S3 Chip and later a Voodoo3 to supplant the S3 chip) , sound (SBLive) and modem (3Com) cards, added standard show bought memory and replaced the cd (many brands) and added Zip drives (Iomega) and NICs (Linksys). If a mobo problem ever came up it would be junk time, it has non-standard mounts so you would never get one in there and buying from Compaq isn't worth it after several years.

I looked at Alienware and Falcon Northwest but couldn't justify the higher price vs. Dell at the time for the slight performance increase and I don't have the time to make assemble my own, besides when I get done tweaking my machines for gaming they BURN!

Really... I've purchased at least 10 Dell's and not had any "chip" compatibility issues to date. I'm an engineer and install all kinds of odd thing in PC's… I sometimes have to update the flash BIOS to making something work with newer hardware that comes out, but rarely. And even then it is easy. They use the standard Intel chip sets for USB, PS/2 and the like. Everything is name brand so finding updated drivers is rarely a problem even if you change the operating system.

I do agree service has gone down over the years and they're cutting corners on what software, warrantee and other services that use to be standard. In spite of that I just got my latest machine from them about three weeks ago. A Dell Workstation 530 with dual 2.0 GHz processors and all the usual cool stuff…

The Harmon/Kardon 695 speakers that came with it (best choice offered) are crap. HIGHLY not recommended…