What's a fair price

[Yggsdrasil]

I need help determining a fair price for a system I am putting together for a friend. Most of the parts are from my previous computer, having just upgraded quite a bit of it.

Here's what he's getting:

MSI KT266A mobo
Athlon T-bird 1.2Ghz
1024mb crucial pc2100 cl2.5
Generic case w/ 300w codegen ps
MSI GF2 Ti Pro 64mb
SB Audigy 1
3com NIC
Lucent winmodem
pioneer 16x DVD
Artec 52-24-52 CD-RW
20gb WD 5400rpm HDD
Internet keyboars & mouse
17" monitor
WinXP Home

Plus - the Sims deluxe, ghost recon, Sacrifice & Giant: citizen kabuto

All of this set up and ready to go so he doesn't have to touch it.

I am having trouble deciding a price because he is a friend... I need help.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Just total up the prices for what the parts would cost new today, to give yourself a ball park figure of what your stuff is actualy worth and then charge your friend what you think is fair. Hope this helps....

 

[Chobits]

you gotta find a sweet stop though. Don't go too high because then he'll be mad when someone rips him off, but don't go to low to where he decides to try to take advantage of you

I would say like 400 dollars for that IMO

 

[Dallascisco]

400 sounds like a good price

 

[Yggsdrasil]

Thats kind of where my problem is. I did that and came up with around $400 before the monitor, OS and programs. I actually bought the CD-RW new so he would have a fast one. So after the monitor and OS I settled on 500. Granted, the monitor isn't new, but it works great. I ran some cinematics from warcraft3 and they looked good.

My real dilema is that I saw an eMachines setup at costco for only $650. I personally hate those kind of machines, but he just wants something for his kids and he doesn't really care about it. This was an athlon xp 2200, 80gb HDD, a nice looking compact case and 15" monitor. I know what I am giving him is much higher quality, but he doesn't know anything about computers and I don't want him thinking I'm ripping him off. I guess it would be different if it was someone that knew what they were doing, so I could have the pieceof mind that he also thinks its fair. But he is just trusting me.

 

[brianp34]

My real dilema is that I saw an eMachines setup at costco for only $650. I personally hate those kind of machines, but he just wants something for his kids and he doesn't really care about it. This was an athlon xp 2200, 80gb HDD, a nice looking compact case and 15" monitor. I know what I am giving him is much higher quality, but he doesn't know anything about computers and I don't want him thinking I'm ripping him off. I guess it would be different if it was someone that knew what they were doing, so I could have the pieceof mind that he also thinks its fair. But he is just trusting me.

That makes it kind of touchy. You'll have a hard time convincing him why an emachine would suck so much unless he really trusts that you know what you're doing. It sounds like to me that you're being more than fair; just try to explain to him some of the features that you're machine will give him that the emachine wouldn't, maybe it will spark his interest enough to start him learning about hardware. Also remember, you're putting yourself on the line for tech support unless you and your buddy have an understanding that he's on his own if something were to happen to fail.

good luck!

brian