There are both pros and cons to building your own system. I've gone both
routes over the years.
My first PC was a complete pre-assembled system, then I played around with
ugprades, home-assembled stuff etc. for the next 7 years. In Feb. 1997 I
bought my first Dell and never looked back.
However, recently I have been piecing systems together from Tiger Direct and
GoogleGear. For around $200 you can get a case, motherboard, AMD CPU (1.5GHz+)
and 128MB of memory. Then for an additional $150 or so, add a hard drive,
floppy drive, CDROM, keyboard and mouse. Just add operating system!
Some of Tiger's MBs have built-in video and audio, some don't. Some even have
an ISA slot for those legacy DVPs or ISA sound cards (for RITTY). Two good
ones to look at are the K7VEM-Pro and the K7VTA-Pro.
Remember, time is money. The money you save on parts may be lost in trying to
get non-compatible hardware working together, or surfing the web trying to find
the best deals. If you piece a system together yourself, generally you are on
your own if something breaks (i.e. you can't call Dell or E-mail technical
support). Only you can decide what is right for you.
73 - Jim AD1C
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Jim Reisert AD1C, 7 Charlemont Court, North Chelmsford, MA 01863
USA +978-251-9933, <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.com
PGP Fingerprint: D8E2 3D78 339F A7F1 8C13 1193 B5D1 4FB6 79D1 70DC
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