I'm thinking of buying a new PC. Till now, i have bought only built-to-order PCs, but now i have found many good PC models from well-known companies, which suit my needs. What are the advantages and disadvantages of buying a ready-built PC? I find annoying, that the specifications of many parts are not described (for example the manufacturer, speed, etc of DVD-RWs and HDs).
Does anybody also know anything about Fujitsu-Siemens PCs?
(If the one answering is from Germany by chance, can he introduce me to a good PC store? I have found many in idealo.de)

as you pointed out the bigger brands are usually very sketchy about the exact specs of their machines. if you want to run linux and want to make sure everything works built-to-order would be the way to go imho. you can check each and every part with the hardware compatibility lists for any known issues and steer clear of those. i don't like those brand name computers anyway, lots of crappy onboard stuff and you pay way too much because of the "free" software they pack with it.

You can't beat the stability of a custom-built machine. When I put together my last PC, I checked every component first to make sure it was both top-quality hardware, and fully linux-compatible.

The result was a computer that's absolutely rock solid, which made a hell of a change from the crappy hardware it replaced.

I disagree. You don't have the R & D Department that DELL, IBM, or COMPAQ have. I have put Linux on many Brand Name computers and have never had problems. I'm running SuSE on a Gateway right now.

But they're aimed at being stable for Windows, not Linux. Installing an unstable third-party driver to make it work for Linux negates all the R&D

Suit yourself.

I tell ya....you people who have stability problems are in a league all your own. I have successfully installed and used Slackware, Redhat, Fedora, Peanut Linux, Smoothwall, Xandros, and FreeBSD on Dell, IBM, Compaq, Gateway, and Micron Servers and Desktops. Never had one stability problem.

I think some people need to do a bit more before they go throwing stuff together.

So who's got stability problems?

Who said that ready-builts were unstable?

A machine custom-made to do exactly what you want it to do will be better than a generic "one size fits all" model. If it isn't, you've done a lousy job of custom building. That's the point I'm making.

Feel free to congratulate yourself on not having any problems with generic builds, but don't try and create an argument where there isn't one.