Want to Buy Desktops ?

What kind of desktop?

Most manufacturers offer several lines at different prices.Think budget for basic needs, including photo editing. For general computing such as word-processing, e-mail, and Web browsing, a budget computer should be more than sufficient. Budget models also have the speed and storage capacity needed for routine photo editing and light video editing.

Think workhorse for games, graphics, and video. If you expect to edit video frequently or run complex games with 3D graphics, your better bet is a costlier workhorse computer. It’s likely to come with a 180-gigabyte or larger hard-drive and 256

Desktops: Buy preconfigured or DIY?

TO CONFIGURE OR NOT After you make that decision, you’ll know where to shop.
You can buy a PC off the shelf in a store or via the Web, configured with features and options the manufacture pitches to average consumers. Or consider purchasing a desktop that you configure to order, either online or in a store. When you configure a computer to order online, onscreen menus typically show you all the options and let you see how a change in one option affects the overall price. Customizing is a strategy we recommend for getting optimal features at the lowest cost.

Shopping for an off-the-shelf package deal isn't as easy as it sounds. Deciding between a computer that has, say more memory or a faster hard drive can give you a headache. And retailers aren't always clear about what's really included. Our readers report higher PC-shopping satisfaction with online purchases.


If you buy off the shelf

• Look at our recommended configuration for the type of desktop you want as a starting point. Decide which additional features you want so that you can hunt for packages that approximate your needs.

• Use a shopping bot. Both Shopping.com and Bizrate.com allow you to compare prices at stores and Web sites. We shopped for a preconfigured HP computer with many of our workhorse features. On Shopping.com prices ranged from $785 to $900. The bots also calculate tax and shipping costs, which in our case ranged from zero to $88.

• When prices are close, consider a retailer on other important attributes.


If you customize

• Buy directly from the manufacturer. Retail Web site/mail-order operations in our Ratings (available to subscribers) scored well as a whole, but they don't customize the brand-name computers in our Ratings. Several brick-and-mortar retailers do let you customize some brands, but didn't rate as well overall as manufacturers. We can't say whether customer satisfaction with manufacturers extends to direct-sell kiosks, which makers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard have in some retail locations.

• Unbundle. Even computers that you configure yourself may come with a cheap monitor or a printer selected by default. If you already have one, you may save by not taking the new one. On the day we shopped the Dell site, eliminating the monitor saved about $40. On the other hand, if you need one, a monitor offered as part of a bundle is often less expensive than one separately purchased. Check each screen as you order to make sure you get only what you want.

• Track prices. They bounce around as promotional offers come and go. Recently we compared identically configured models from Dell; the same model that cost $1,736 in July cost just $1,299 two months later. Two days later, however, the price rose to $1,325.