Suggest an online computer retailer

In My Humble Opinion
1

I and Mrs. RickJay are in need of new computers. As funds are limited I haven’t yet decided for sure if I’m going to buy, but I want to sniff around and see what deals are out there. Mainly I’m looking to buy a couple of Wintel boxes with decent processors, and least 1 GB of memory and reasonably good video cards, primarily for gaming and entertainment. If it will smoothly run EQ2 I’ll be thrilled. I probably won’t even buy monitors, as we have a couple of perfectly functional 17" monitors.

I have looked at the usual suspects (Dell and, this being Canada, MDG) but was unimpressed with the available video cards. Both seems to concentrate primarily on integrated Intel graphics in their mid-range lines, which is totally unsuitable. Now, naturally I plan to visit local retailers, I’m not committed to online retailers, but I wanted to ask some questions of the SDMB;

  1. What other online retailers might you have used or heard about?

  2. What did you think, or what have you heard?

Before anyone suggests it; no, I am not going to assemble my own. In my experience it always costs more than you plan and works worse than you hoped. Thanks for thinking of it, but unless you live in Toronto and will do it for me, ain’t gonna happen.

2

I’m not by any means computer savvy so my experience is very limited but when my husband and I were looking into getting some new PCs that would support our heavy gaming addiction (upgrading from a standard HP package), a good friend recommended Alienware. I know that some are of the opinion that they’re overpriced and perhaps they are but we decided to splurge, as gaming is our primary source of entertainment (as apposed to television). And while we’ve only have them four months or so, we’ve been very pleased. Alienware’s service and support was fine, not great but not poor either. We did have a minor problem with our shipping taking longer than scheduled but that was due to a backlog from the vendor who manufactures the video cards we requested (so we were told).

Overall, we’re tickled pink to be able to push the massive graphics of these new games. I can’t speak for EQ2 but World of Warcraft, which was unplayable on our old systems, runs very smoothly for us with our new systems.

3

The website I go to first, for my hardware needs, is www.newegg.com. Great prices, customer reviews, and easily navigable website.

Occasionally I check up on www.tigerdirect.com and www.zipzoomfly.com, because they have some pretty good deals (… occasionally).

All of the above websites sell entire systems too, IIRC (so you wouldn’t have to “build your own”).

Also, I should probably go ahead and mention www.pricewatch.com– a web searcher that’s great for finding miscellanous online retailers.

Good luck!
LilShieste

4

http://www.ibuypower.com/mall/lobby.htm and http://www.gamepc.com/index.asp?cookie_test=1 seem to have some nice prebuilt systems, with as much or as little customization as you want.

5

:smack:

I should have checked up on some of my suggestions, before offering them to you. Newegg is currently sold out of its desktop PCs; and I can’t seem to find basic desktop systems on ZipZoomFly (only servers/barebones/etc.).

TigerDirect (and searching for others via Pricewatch) still looks like it could be promising, though.
LilShieste

6

Here’s one I’ve heard lots of good things about.
Monarch Computer Systems
I ordered from there a few days ago, so I don’t quite have the first hand experience yet. Hopefully I will know more soon.