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Dells are neither terrific nor overly horrible... their lcd monitors are usually top notch (though their new 24" LCD really disappointed me in terms of image quality vs. price), and their customer service isn't half-bad either considering the competence level of outsourced techies. Most of their computers are a pain in the ass to upgrade (though are a fucking peach compared to the gateways of old) though dells are fairly cheap so that may not be a much of an issue to upgrade.
I?ll always be a fan of whiteboxed computers (i.e. diy) but if you don?t want the hassle from having to build multiple computers, it may save you some headaches just by going with dell. Keep in mind though that whatever choice you go with, you can always get a better deal by diy. An almost top-of-the-line computer (w/o monitor) will cost you about $1500 [E6600 Core 2-Duo, 1x 7900GTX, 2GB DDR2, etc] if you diy, where-as you?ll have to pay a thousand more minimum by going with a dell.
If you do decide to go with a newer diy project, rather than a dell, I would recommend waiting for a true SLI mobo for the new Core 2-Duo, preferably the mobos w/intel nvidia nforce 590 sli chipset. My reasoning on that is you can save some money now and still have a kickass computer in the future. You buy 1x 7900GTX video card now, then down the line when your computer starts getting its ass kicked, by an additional 7900GTX for around $200 and put them in SLI mode, giving you a 30-40% performance increase with no additional hardware needed to buy.
It?s all up to you I guess? if you want something quick and easy, something that you can recover if something happens with just a recovery CD, I would probably go with a dell though I would probably wait just a bit until Vista comes out so you get a ?free? copy of vista with the dell. I personally wouldn?t, just because I enjoy assembling puters and stressing them to their limits. Most dells don?t have a whole lot of room for overclocking because of their case designs? which is very shitty for me.
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