I always do a custom build my home PC or order from someone that will let you really choose what you want.
Dell Knowingly Sold 11.8 Million Computers With a 97% Failure Rate
Dell Knowingly Sold 11.8 Million Computers With a 97% Failure Rate
ditto, but most people have no clue and only know the name.
oh and ive seen good companies in the comp industry die due to bad purchasing. remember epox? very solid mobos, until they got a bad batch of caps. now they are outa business
wikipedia "capacitor plague"
This is not solely a Dell problem although they seem to have gotten caught trying to cover it up. The article very briefly says that other companies had the same problem. I've seen it in gateway and emachines computers, and lcd monitors. I've seen many more dead emachines than dells. I would buy a dell. I would not buy an emachines.
Has anyone ever heard of a recall from any company due to bad caps?
I'm not sure that building your own rig really could avoid this problem. Motherboards were built with bad caps for a few years and no one realized it until much later. Can you look at a picture online and know that the electrolyte mixture in the caps is right? I have intel, msi, and imperial boards in my cellar with this problem.
Epox motherboards were crap, just like ECS
Actually, just one disk will do them all.1)You can find the factory reinstallation xp disks cheap.