Buying a computer

[ciphergoth]

My desktop isn't fast enough to play DVDs. I think I want to buy a computer. Whole. I'll dual boot between XP and Linux; I guess I want about half a gig of memory and a nice big hard drive (120Gb or more). It doesn't have to be fast, you can't buy one that isn't way fast enough these days. I don't need a monitor; I already owe conflux £50 for a very nice one (or did I ever pay you? If not, are you at Bisexual Underground tomorrow?)

Who do you prefer to buy from? Recommendations so far include

http://www.scan.co.uk/
and of course http://www.dell.co.uk/ (but they insist on throwing in a monitor and speakers and suchlike)

UPDATE: Two people so far have suggested I buy an Apple. No further discussion of this possibility is needed. Thank you. Update to the update - the same goes for PS2s, thanks...

(PS I didn't do what I said I'd do - I went to Alternator. Blame goth peer pressure. Had a damn fine night though!)

Comments

[djm4]

We went through a phase at Sibelius of custom-building stuff from Scan. It mostly worked, but they were very poor on the occasions when it didn't - quibbling like mad and refusing to replace stuff that didn't work claiming that we must have broken it when we put it together. And the computers just don't seem to last as well as anything we've got from Dell.

I'd regard this as 'anecdotal' rather than 'significant data', though.

[lovingboth]

Yes. Avoid Scan. If it works, it's cheap. If it doesn't, it's very expensive because they don't give a shit.