[sclug] Comet Quad core offering - cheap high street commoditisation of computers

[Will Dickson]

Alex Butcher wrote:

> Coincidentally, I saw some potentially interesting HP and Acer models in
> Comet the other day, but was put off when I noticed some were using SiS
> chipset motherboards; [...]

I tried a SiS mobo once. I don't intend to make that mistake again.

> 
> I've priced up Dell and Aldi PCs and couldn't build equivalent machines for
> the same money, even rating Windows with zero value. :-)

Concur. I recently helped a friend, who is fond of Dull, spec up a new 
machine, and couldn't find anything close to the price elsewhere. This 
seems to be especially true of laptops; Dull seem to be about the only 
vendor who allow you to customise the configuration. (She wanted a 
cheapo laptop, but with a reasonable GPU; with everyone else I could 
find, the only way to get the GPU was to choose the high-end option, 
which was insanely overpowered in terms of the rest of the spec, and far 
too expensive.)

> That said, there'd be a few minor tweaks (e.g. DDR800 memory for a
> self-build, DDR667 for Dell or Aldi), but given today's performance levels,
> I'd be inclined to trade that off in exchange for a three year system-wide
> warranty, and a day not spent building the machine. :-)

Yep. Unless of course you already have half a computer lying around, and 
/ or still consider that putting the shiny new toy together is half the 
fun. :-)

Will.