I don't know if this is the right place to post but I was wondering...

If you order a desktop directly from Dell, HP, etc could you special order one without Windows and get some kind of discount (seeing that Windows goes into the price of it).

Thanks a lot

- Rob.

I know Dell does/did allow you to order pc's without Windows, that's how I bought my Studio 15, with Ubuntu preinstalled. But I read somewhere they stopped offering it. Not sure on the others.

Not anymore, at least to my knowledge. You could always buy from someone like System76 at http://www.system76.com/

Even better, save some real money and build your own machine. You'll wind up with higher quality components in general, as well as easier and more complete expandability, resulting in a longer service life for your system.

Building PCs is a lot easier than it sounds . . . the parts are modular and generally only fit together one way.

I think tigerdirect also sells custom made systems.

The big guys are locked into a deal with MS. If they break their deal they risk paying full price for MS products. Trust me, they don't pay anywhere near it now.

Before I bought my Dell XPS Gen5, I wanted to build my own bad ass. But when I did the calculations:

-Need time to shop for the right combination of parts and pick from thousands the combination that suits my needs/wants. Hard to find the time when working out of town all the time, need to take time off..$$$$$.
-Need to run all over the city, city driving adds wear and tear to a vehicle fast, the cost of fuel was also high at the time (July 2005).
-Warranty, when you buy from OEM like Dell who has/had "in house warranty" for all the parts in the box including the box, your up and running within a couple days. For a custom built box, having to run all over the city again when a power surge gives you the blue screen of death, and because retailers don't hold onto outdated hardware (6 months after you built it), you're probably going to go without for a while, and you are likely going to end up buying a few replacement parts you didn't need before you figure out which part is actually shot...$$$$$.

These are just a few of the many disadvantages of building your own box. I'm using the same Dell XPS to write this five years later. It has a P4 3.4Ghz processor with 4GB of ram and 750GB of drive space, running every configuration you all run. It will stand up to no less than 65% of the units all of you are using today, because most people are too cheap to buy high end. To this day I only had to replace the video card, went from Nvidia 6800 to Nvidia 8600. And I've had many friends/co-workers whom built their own, more often than not the words coming out of their mouths were, "I can't, I'm waiting for parts". And best of all, I was making money and lots of it while Dell built my computer. And those friends of mine also disclosed the cost of the parts alone the first time around, (not counting replacements because of bad configuration), a little more than what I paid for something comparable, add their time and expenses to that.

In retrospect:

As we get aged, we look back and shake our heads at some of the stupid things we did when we were younger and not as wise, the thought I had over five years ago, "to build my own computer", was definitely one of those stupid things that make me shake my head today. Many of you may not agree, because you don't know what it's like to own a well designed high end home computer. Yup!, I paid big bucks for it, but only once in over five years, and still a few years to go, it was far cheaper than "building" a high end machine according to my comrades.
Very stupid!

Sorry if you feel offended foodown, but hindsight is more accurate than foresight.

I have built several computers from parts and I never even considered the possibility of driving around to multiple computer stores. I live in a high tech area, but I still don't think there is more than one computer parts store with decent prices, and even that one I haven't been to in many years.

Computer parts stores are for emergencies, when you need that replacement part now. When you plan to buy a part, you order it over the internet.

I guess most people have had better luck with Dell than I have. I'm sure most Dell systems arrive working, and like almost all of what I have built from parts, it just works so you don't even find out what would happen if it doesn't.

I have had disasters with Dell at home (just once by my choice, but more than one additional time as relatives rejected my judgment on the purchase but dumped the resulting problem on me). Also at work, where we buy Dell always and unconditionally despite their terrible prices and worse service.

If you get a system from Dell with any DOA new parts, you're screwed. You spend hours on the phone to convince them to send replacements. Then even though the DOA parts were new, they will only send "refurbished". But "refurbished" means it was broken when they shipped it to someone else, was sent back, they couldn't find the problem, so they cleaned it, if necessary, and called it "refurbished". The refurbished parts I have gotten have almost all been defective, so you go through the hours of arguing for a replacement again. At home I kept at it until they finally sent non defective replacement parts. At work, we gave up after a few rounds and my employer simply lost the cost of the new equipment we never got to use plus all the man hours wasted trying.

I've had very good luck with building my own systems.

The failures that I recall were:

1) I bought a cheap case from NewEgg. It had been smashed, obviously on shipment from the manufacturer to NewEgg, then some bozo at NewEgg just fixed the package and reshipped it. I complained, and they sent another case to replace it (didn't even want the first case back). That one also arrived smashed, but I couldn't tell whether it was during shipment to NewEgg or from them. So I bent all the metal parts of the second case back into shape and super glued the broken plastic parts and used the case (it is still in use). Later I did all the bending and gluing on the first case and it is also in use now. Almost everything I ever bought from NewEgg was perfect. I had foolishly ignored reviews (on the NewEgg site) on the cheap cases saying they often arrive with shipping damage. So I'm not buying any more cheap cases from NewEgg, but they are still my first choice for computer parts.

2) I built a computer for my oldest son with integrated graphics. It worked great. Later, against my advice, he bought an add in graphics card that took a lot of current on +12. The power supply spec and all the info on that and other parts said it was still in range. After that worked for a week, the power supply died. I had a spare supply with the same specs, so we assumed the old supply was the problem and put the spare one in. That also blew after a week. My wife bought an expensive supply with much higher specs from a computer store. That one is still running. (So I think the add in graphics card might take even more +12 than its spec says). Even including two replacement power supplies and overpaying for one of those, the total system cost remained well below the cost of the same spec system from Dell or other full system vendors.

For time and aggravation, the worst system I ever put together from parts was better than the best system I ever got from Dell. (I also got a lemon full system from Micron years ago and lemons from Compaq at my last employer. So it isn't just Dell).

I'd say your friends are useless at building computers. When I built my base workstation, it cost around £500, from Dell, or any other 3rd party supplier, it would of been around £1500. In 8 years I've had to replace...... 1 motherboard. If I had dell repair it, it would of involved sending it back to them (they don't trust you to install it yourself) and a wait of at least a week, more like 3 weeks.


Instead I walked the 10 minutes into town, brought a new one and was up and running that same day.


Costs? Around £40.


Of course, if your dell has never failed you, then you'd never have to "RTM" with anything, and so you'd not know the pain it involves.

But whatever works for you

Why did God create the Goyem?

Somebody has to pay retail!

I noticed that Dell/HP/whomever will usually have a pretty crappy model available without windows. For example dell had one imspiron model but no latitudes. I've had to just buy mine all with windows then not use it.

Another vote here for "build your own".

BTW, what's a 'Goyem' ? Are you gonna make me look that up??

On slashdot about a week ago it said they now only offer via phone. Appently it was "too confusing for customers".

Your question should be "What are Goyem?" because "Goyem" (more often spelled Goyim) is the plural of "Goy". A "Goy" is anyone who isn't Jewish.

foodown's joke is an old one that I heard many times long ago, but I personally would consider inappropriate.

On the original topic: The cost of the bundled MS software is a major advantage of buying a full system compared to parts. When buying a Windows system, I don't think that is enough to make a full system better than assemble from parts. But it comes close. For a Linux system, there is no software price to include on a parts system so there is even more reason to buy parts rather than full.

Even if the full system vendor offers a system without MS, they won't price it to completely eliminate the cost of the MS software.

and another vote for DIY.

I apologize if anyone was offended by my joke.

Even if you were, I won't call you stupid three times, nor will I imply that your choices stem from being short-sighted and poor.

Technically, according to the Microsoft Windows EULA, if you don't agree to the license, then you can get a refund from the company that sold you the computer with Windows on it. Check out this article: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7040.