My biggest problem with Dell is their case,psu, and motherboards. Everything else like cpu, hd, dvd, etc, is standard and can be purchased in retail stores. When I start out building a new rig, the most importance pieces to me are the case, then the mobo, and then the psu, in that order. So Dell is a no-no as far as I'm concerned. Unless the computer only has one specific purpose. A good example would be the rig I'm using right now. It's a compaq and all i use it for is browsing and playing some older games like TFC (yeah, I still play it). I only paid like $50 for it when it was just 2 years old, came with everything originally included (monitor,kb/mouse,os/restore disk,etc), it was worth at least $800 still when I got it, but I would never pay for a new pre-built by any of the biggies....dell/hp/etc.