DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Locally, I've seen at least 5 attempts to do this fail... If you're going to do this as a hobby, that's one thing... If you're going to do this as a business, you may be able to work out of your garage or basement UNTIL someone notices you're running a business out of your house and your house isn't zoned for commercial business. Not that this is definitely the case, or that someone will complain, but be prepared if this happens. In which case, in addition to your profits covering gas money, they'll also have to cover rent and utilities for a shop.
I see no reason against doing this as A HOBBY and making a few bucks off other people... if people respect your skills with computers, it's not hard to convince them that they may be better off selecting the components they want.
As far as getting parts cheap... take advantage of cheap prices after rebate... But, most rebates have limits of 1 or 2 per person/household. In these cases, you can probably undercut Dell and others, but if you're just paying regular retail, or slightly less than regular retail for most of the components, you're not going to be able to make much (if any) of a profit. Plus, check out the price of Windows XP. And, most users use some sort of office or word processing program... add in the price for these two categories, and it's difficult to make gas money. As an example, look for the thread on the computer Aldi's had (medion)... someone in the deals forum on anandtech figured out the cost to build that system from scratch, using components purchased at the *best* deal price found in a while for each component, and Aldi's was *cheaper* than the do it yourselfer could do. Her post was criticized for underestimating the cost to build the system.
Good luck.
I see no reason against doing this as A HOBBY and making a few bucks off other people... if people respect your skills with computers, it's not hard to convince them that they may be better off selecting the components they want.
As far as getting parts cheap... take advantage of cheap prices after rebate... But, most rebates have limits of 1 or 2 per person/household. In these cases, you can probably undercut Dell and others, but if you're just paying regular retail, or slightly less than regular retail for most of the components, you're not going to be able to make much (if any) of a profit. Plus, check out the price of Windows XP. And, most users use some sort of office or word processing program... add in the price for these two categories, and it's difficult to make gas money. As an example, look for the thread on the computer Aldi's had (medion)... someone in the deals forum on anandtech figured out the cost to build that system from scratch, using components purchased at the *best* deal price found in a while for each component, and Aldi's was *cheaper* than the do it yourselfer could do. Her post was criticized for underestimating the cost to build the system.
Good luck.
I may have a few words of advice for you Brian. First, these guys are wrong in that you cannot compete against Dell, AlienWare, ect. Tell me fellas, how do you think these companies got started? You think they started out as some hulking beheamoth of a company with purchasing power out the wazoo?? No, they probably all started in someone's garage (or dorm room in Michael Dell's case). Brian, you can compete! In fact, I know you can offer things that these larger companies cannot. Mainly, customer service. This is one area in which you can always raise the bar above the next guy. Do yourself a favor and read Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. It shows how the little guy can compete and is an amazing read.
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