Is this a joke?
- Thread starter TheCenturion
- Start date
I was speccing up a pair of workstations for work today (forced to use Dell 
) and as soon as you go over the basic spec they start to hike the price like no tomorrow, the graphics card upgrades were just stupid and they don't offer anything that's actually much good!
) and as soon as you go over the basic spec they start to hike the price like no tomorrow, the graphics card upgrades were just stupid and they don't offer anything that's actually much good!
Nice link
I always guessed alienware were going to be overpriced compared to building a similar spec one yourself but twice the price? I didn't expect their mark up to be that high. Since Dell and Alienware being one company I would suspect that Alinware would get parts cheaper as they can use Dell for bulk buying, meaning their mark up is over 2 x.Dell makes me really angry, especially when all these innocent consumers go there thinking Dell is a good brand. PC World makes me cry! Everything is so overpriced. I think us guys at OCUK should get together and go into these shops giving proper advice, nothing wrong with helping other people out, right? Me would need some form of epic T-shirt though...
Then there are the other form of customer that goes to them shops. They walk in talking on their BlackBerrys as loud as possibe 'Yes, buy me 1000 shares in that, take it out of my business account. Look at me, I am important!' I went in there once to try out some headsets and there was this rather irritating couple talking about getting two of these £2K touchscreen monitors (30-something inch it looked like) to put in the kitchen and living room. Wish they would just talk to each other about it rather than basically telling everyone in the shop! Grrr...
Then there are the other form of customer that goes to them shops. They walk in talking on their BlackBerrys as loud as possibe 'Yes, buy me 1000 shares in that, take it out of my business account. Look at me, I am important!' I went in there once to try out some headsets and there was this rather irritating couple talking about getting two of these £2K touchscreen monitors (30-something inch it looked like) to put in the kitchen and living room. Wish they would just talk to each other about it rather than basically telling everyone in the shop! Grrr...
Same. They are very impressed with the price I can build a high-end PC for. I don't charge them for building it as I personally enjoy it, so I don't care. I also stopped my friend paying about £150 to Sony to get his YLOD PS3 replaced with some dodgey Sony refurbished one with a short 3-month warranty and fixed it myself. I would like to say I did something amazingly clever but I simply removed the motherboard and put it in the oven (like the old graphics card trick)!
Aye, I don't charge either.
It's great because they don't realise how overpriced the computers they are buying are. And even if they can't build their own in the future, they will probably get someone to do it that may charge a bit but still be so much cheaper than a shop. And I know who I would rather give my money to anyway!
They always ask what if it goes wrong. And I tell them that a shop bought computer is much more likely to 'die' than one that has been build properly and checked by hand. Also, as long as you choose strong core components, they can upgrade the rest as and when. Unlike Dell PCs that make it almost impossible to upgrade.
Hey guys,
I couldn't agree more about Dell's ludicrous pricing. In fact, I did a write-up on Igniq.com about how much money you can save building the PC yourself.
http://www.igniq.com/2010/08/25/alienbeware-why-you-should-build-your-own-gaming-pc/
maybe it cost £1,494.21 for the fancy alienware case? lol
Funny story.. (well i laugh at it)
I went into PC world for thermal paste... couldn't find and so decided to ask one of their "pc specialists" who didn't know what i was talking about and pointed me in the direction of a cashier who thought it was a video game :/
I went into PC world for thermal paste... couldn't find and so decided to ask one of their "pc specialists" who didn't know what i was talking about and pointed me in the direction of a cashier who thought it was a video game :/
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it. Companies have thousands of employees and other expenses and the money has to come from somewhere. Its not just with computers, its the same everywhere. Materials for building houses cost £50k tops and they get sold for £300K+ builders need to get paid and profit needs to be made. Same with cars and most other things.
Heck I bet even the cpu which £250 only costs like £50 for intel to make. If people dont know the inner workings of a PC, let them shell out and get someone else to do it for them. Its like a bricklayer going off and shouting how much of a rip-off buying houses are when you can buy the materials much cheaper, everybody knows that, but not everybody has the skill to build a house so end up paying shed loads more for one.
Aluminium costs £1.40 per kg and steel costs £0.4 per kg. So by your logic, a 10kg PC case made out of aluminium should only cost £14 and a steel equivalent £4
Heck I bet even the cpu which £250 only costs like £50 for intel to make. If people dont know the inner workings of a PC, let them shell out and get someone else to do it for them. Its like a bricklayer going off and shouting how much of a rip-off buying houses are when you can buy the materials much cheaper, everybody knows that, but not everybody has the skill to build a house so end up paying shed loads more for one.
Aluminium costs £1.40 per kg and steel costs £0.4 per kg. So by your logic, a 10kg PC case made out of aluminium should only cost £14 and a steel equivalent £4
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- 23 Aug 2010
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To be honest it hardly suprises me. What DID suprise me and shouldn't have was the phenomenal markup that Apple gives when you choose to build your own computer.
Top spec system comes back at just tipping over £17,000.
I challenge anyone to do it on their site and then give a rough cost of how much it would cost to do it yourself.
Me and a friend managed it for under £9000.
Top spec system comes back at just tipping over £17,000.
I challenge anyone to do it on their site and then give a rough cost of how much it would cost to do it yourself.
Me and a friend managed it for under £9000.