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Build It Or Buy It?


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I ended up buying my last computer but I did pick out everything I wanted in it, just paid someone else to put it together. I think the days of playing on the floor with parts all around me are over. Does anyone else run into this problem as you age? I guess I have gotten out of my pack-rat mode of computer parts all over the house (now they are just in the attic stored for spares). Do you build or do you buy?

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I still build desktops, because it's gotten so much easier from the days when you had to flip the right DIP switches and shorting pins, and radically different peripherals had identical connectors (okay, I'm old). For me the main issue ends up being that usually when something breaks its easy enough to replace the part and a lot less expensive. Replacing a motherboard is still not for the faint-of-heart, but its still cheaper and in most cases less of a hassle than reinstalling everything you own.

 

The other issue is disk space seems to need to grow without bound, and it sure is easier to just have a big enclosure that you can progressively swap bigger disks in, and there's space and connectors to add the new one, transfer from the old and then remove (yes, toss in the box marked "old drives") the old one. I have a few files around that started on disks who's size was measured in megabytes....

 

Laptops obviously you just buy, as goes for Apple equipment (I have a stack of MacMinis), but that's different. I do have friends who operate on their Laptops but that's pretty crazy: I tried and failed to get a different WiFi board into my Toshiba once, and I don't recommend the experience to anyone because laptop manufacturers pretty much go out of their way to make their systems black boxes that are not "field upgradable."

 

That being said, even pulling a pre-made system out of the box is something that can test experts, and I still don't know how mere mortals deal with the problems that come in just trying to get their home wifi setup....

 

 

When we make assumptions, we contribute to the complexity rather than the simplicity of a problem, making it more difficult to solve, :phones:

Buffy

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I still build desktops, because it's gotten so much easier from the days when you had to flip the right DIP switches and shorting pins, and radically different peripherals had identical connectors , :phones:

Buffy

 

I read what you wrote, but what I understood was "vdfgews sfdbv zzcogki oqjf jsk vmk dkwkwnj" 0.o  ............... I'm old too but I was never builder type. I know what I want in a system and all that, but I'll leave the building to the pro's. 

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I read what you wrote, but what I understood was "vdfgews sfdbv zzcogki oqjf jsk vmk dkwkwnj" 0.o  ............... I'm old too but I was never builder type. I know what I want in a system and all that, but I'll leave the building to the pro's. 

 

Hahahahahaha! 

 

Yes, that's what I recommend for most people. It is not for the faint of heart....

 

 

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets, :phones:

Buffy

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