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When was the last time you bought an off-the-shelf computer?

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My Dad bought an apple 2 E in 1984 when I was a small child. At some point he bought an "IBM Compatible" 486 DX 33, maybe 1990 or 1991. This was a storebought PC, but it was not from a national OEM.

I have never purchased a PC other than one time I bought a server from Dell because it came with a pair of 120GB drives, and the total price of the server + the 2 drives was about the same as the price of just the 2 drives.

It was a kinda crappy celeron based server, but it proved reliable.
 
I bought a Zotec Zbox Nano last year to use as an HTPC. Though it was a bare bones system. No hard drive, memory, or OS. Guess it's nano-ITX. There's not really any Atom or Brazos mobos that small to build a custom rig and I liked the size. I've never bought an entire proper desktop all in one go.

My parents bought me my first system in 1998. I got it upgraded it a shop a couple of times then began doing my own stuff around 2003/2004.
 
I bought a Dell in the late 90's on a deal that was cheaper prebuilt than I could order parts. Other than that I had a couple custom prebuilts- 386-sx16, 8088 XT. Then a c64 as a box.
 
1997, bought an IBM something-or-other 166mhz Pentium when I started college. Paid about $2,400 for it then. It was a bad idea, as even then I knew about building your own computers. But I haven't even built a computer since maybe 2006 or 2007, I still use the last machine I built on a regular basis.
 
Mixolydian said:
Yesterday at work I loaded half a dozen HP PC's that were being delivered to a local business. Made me think - I haven't bought an off the shelf PC in years!

So when was the last time you bought an off-the-shelf, name brand computer (non-laptop of course)?
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1993 - 94 or something. Amiga 1200.
 
Dell PowerEdge SC300 Server back in 2003ish? They had a system with the the 3.2GHz P4EE CPU that was $700, and the whole system was only $500.

I sold that for a mild profit on ebay. It didn't help that it was my first ebay'ed item so I had no rating.
 
My last Dell desktop in 2006, I built it's replacement in 2011, and an HTPC in January this year. Dell laptops in 2005 and 2007, don't ever really plan to get another laptop... no need to.

In their defense, all 3 Dells are still going strong. I upgraded them in 2012 with better processors and/or drives and/or RAM, and fresh XP installs, that should carry them to the end of their useable life. I'm actually surprised at the desktop... I was assuming it would die after about 4-5 years (every computer previously did, including a custom-built HP that died in less than a year,) that was the whole motivation to building my new desktop, I figured after 6 years it was living on borrowed time.
 
Trying to remember the name of the company (found it in Computer Shopper magazine). Something "wave" I think... Directwave was the company maybe? This would've been in 1996 or so.
 
If we're not including laptops, which are hard to DIY build, then I've never bought one off the shelf. All the desktops I've had are purchased by part and self-assembled.
 
nutxo said:
it takes like 30 minutes to build a computer...
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I'm not that fast... It takes me about an hour to build the PC, an hour (of mostly waiting) to install the OS, and then about four more hours to update the drivers, install patches, and install all of the software I need.

It's those last four hours that are always the biggest pain in the ass. It's usually the video card and the printer that put up the biggest fight.
 
Packard Bell 486 DX2 in the mid 1993 or 94. Actually, my dad bought that one for me for school, I was a teenager living at home at the time. I've built my own since that one.

Though I did buy a laptop from Best Buy about 1.5 years ago.
 
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