Hello Russell, Thanks for your message. My comments are inline below. Steve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell Reiter" <rreiter91@gmail.com> To: "GTALUG Talk" <talk@gtalug.org>; "Steve Petrie, P.Eng." <apetrie@aspetrie.net> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2016 3:17 PM Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Advice -- Building Debian 8 PC To Replace Win XP PC;
On Jul 28, 2016 1:48 PM, "Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk" <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
<snip>
<snip>
However, I received (26 July 2016) a very disappointing quotation from NCIX. Hugely expensive, with substitutions (and omissions). So be assured, I am still open to building myself.
Just out of curiosity, do you mind if I ask what dollar amount hugely expensive represents? While the business model has changed to single purchase with full Windows integration, there are other options depending on the budget.
It was hugely expensive because I missed the fact that it included Windows 7 (OEM) at $187.99. Here's the pricing analysis repeated from a summary email I sent to the thread, before I fetched your email: ----------------- NCIX* PC PartPicker** ----------------- -------- ------------- CPU $269.99 $249.25 CPU Cooler $92.98 $79.95 Motherboard $289.99 $228.98 Memory $44.99 $75.98 ----------------- Case $144.99 $129.99 Power Supply $214.98 $159.99 ----------------- Solid State Drive $135.70 $156.99 Hard Drive $67.99 $81.95 Optical Drive $92.98 $86.98 ----------------- Video Monitor $167.98 $167.92 Keyboard $15.98 $40.00 Mouse (incl.) $10.00 ----------------- Dialup Modem $54.58 $50.00 ----------------- ----------------- TOTAL1: $1593.13 $1517.98 ----------------- ----------------- MS Windows 7 $187.99 Assemble & Test $49.98 Environ. Fees $16.65 ----------------- ----------------- TOTAL2: $1897.73 ----------------- ----------------- My point is, if NCIX can match the component pricing I can get, as reported by PCPartPicker (and NCIX does match that pricing), and if the NCIX price for assembly and test is reasonable (I consider $49.98 very reasonable). Then why would an old guy like me, with already too many projects ongoing, want to build my own PC? Where is there any significant money to be saved? Certainly there's no time to be saved. By using NCIX, I'm not going to have to shop all over the place to source every component, order it, pay for it. I'm not going to have to enjoy the dubious pleasure of hair-pulling "logistics" receiving multiple separate deliveries by a variety of couriers from a variety of suppliers.
An off the shelf white box, given the times, is most usually able to run Linux quite well. It is the bleeding edge, with the fastest newest chipsets, and largest capacites where stumbling blocks arise, as some of the others who respond to this thread have indicated.
Yes, I expect that I could maybe shave some cost by buying something on sale (because being discontinued) from the latest Dell flyer, with Windows 7 pre-installed. I ball-parked it once at a 10% saving with a plausible Dell desktop PC comparable to my proposed configuration. But what then? The disk drive partitioning and boot setup very probably won't suit my partitioning needs or provide multi-boot capability for adding Linux. When I ordered the existing Dell Windows XP desktop in 2004, the Dell sales agent cheerfully received and acknowledged my email specifying the disk drive partitioning. But of course the Dell build assembly line grunts thought that was a joke, and I had to do a lot of messing around to re-work the partitioning). So, if I buy a white box (e.g. Dell) I'll have to wipe the HDD and start again, including a Windows 7 install. Way too much fussing around with Win 7 for me. I don't intend to get that involved with Win 7. It's just there in case I need some Win XP compatibility from a bare-metal boot of Win 7 (in case of problems with the Win 7 under KVM virtualization under Linux). Or maybe I will want to use Win 7 to play some DRM music or videos that Linux can't handle. If I wipe the Dell-installed Win 7, Dell could possibly decline to support my Dell PC with it's wierd install of Windows 7. Even the Dell hardware warranty could be dishonoured. If I can't get the white box vendor's ironclad assurance of hardware compatibility with Linux, I could wind up stuck with a PC I can't use. I agree it's a small risk. But the advent of "secure boot" and UEFI make me nervous, I understand that these are not yet supported under Linux. So my compromise is to specify precisely the components I want (having carefully researched their compatibility with Linux) and then decide how to get the PC built from those components.
Russell Sent from mobile.