Best place to buy a desktop PC?

Hi
Best deal on Dells at the moment,

http://www.hotukdeals.com/?merchant_filter=28&category_filter=All&type_filter=All&availability_filter=All&status_filter=Active&order_by=Newest

Yep I concur, have built loads of systems and many people slate Dell, but for value they arent that bad at all...

Well having just bought a new pc i can say that http://www.gladiatorcomputers.com/ has fantastic customer service.

Dell's kit is usually solid and good value.

BUT

Pray nothing goes wrong before or after delivery.

You might think that Dell's online ordering system looks very slick, and integrates to their back end systems. Not so. If you call their sales lines you'll find they use a *different* system to assemble quotes - different models, different accessories, different configuration possibilities.

If your order goes wrong, woe betide you trying to sort it out. You'll then find that Dell order processing system isn't actually linked to their sales systems; essentially, sales orders are printed out then re-typed into the order processing system.

Once you've got it, if your computer goes wrong woe betide you. Dell's customer service is shocking. Their procedures appear to have been designed deliberately to deny any possibility of actually solving customer problems.

Once I ordered £10,000 of Dell kit. Dell mucked up the order. I calculated it cost me £3,000 to sort the mess out.

Once, when front line support were refusing to rectify a basic problem, I asked that the problem be escalated. I was told "Our Customer Service Department deal with such issues. But you can't contact them because they're not customer facing".

Avoid ordering in the lead-up to Christmas. They make far more mistakes then, and January is their busiest time for support problems.

If ordering a laptop buy three years' on site maintenance. Nothing more annoying than a laptop dying in month 13, whereupon all too often it's "uneconomic to repair".

Of course maybe it's just me. (Well actually no; Google for Dell customer service and you'll find it's been the subject of growing opprobrium for some time).

I've had happier times with Acer and HP.

But again: provided you get what you ordered and it doesn't fail, Dell kit is generally good. Great if you're buying five PCs cos with the money you save you can buy a sixth as insulation / insurance. Fat lot of use to the average home user of course.

I also dealt with Mesh for many years. Not impressed. Competent compared to Dell, but kit not so good; assembled batches from apparently random parts bins so you couldn't be sure of consistency. Shaved too much off vital components such as fans and disk drives and even case fixings.

How often have Eveshan gone bust?

Good luck!

I would say that PC World seem to have some very good deals from time to time, if you check their website, you can get their web prices in-store.

One thing to bear in mind is don't pay for more than you need, but do pay for what you need! Many people feel the need to buy the fastest PC they can, and simply won't use the power so it's not good value. It's like buying a ferarri to drive down to the local shops!

Also, don't be persuaded by headline specs, like shoving in a fast processor but putting in less memory to keep costs down. You need a big hard drive, so your best bet may be to buy a cheaper PC and then buy an external hard drive to store you music files on, then they are portable if you need them on another PC etc.

Joe