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I am convinced that buying on-line is better. I think that Dell having an exclusivity, and a better over-all choice of what you are getting, makes it the most popular brand, so perhaps I should trust public opinion on this. I haven't researched this completely, but I imagine you could buy any computer custom made.

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I'm not convinced that buying a computer online makes any more sense than buying a suit online. I prefer to go directly with the manufacturer in person by going to a small local shop. If there's a problem, they have to look you in the eye and tell you what it is, not guess from a call center in India. I can bring it in in the morning and have a part replaced same day. They all have the same parts anyway.

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But they don't have the same prices. I understand the desire to have a PHYSICAL PERSON responsible to make problems right, but IMO a warranty from a major computer assembler is worth a lot more than a local shop who has seen their profits plummet over the last 10 years.

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Yeah, but a warranty that requires 3 hours of effort to get anything to happen, isn't really that good.

The problem with local shops is that even if you get a warranty you can't really be sure they'll be around in two years.

One thing to remember with Dell is that they make the vast majority of their money off of corporate customers. I've heard from numerous first hand sources that the customer service they provide to corporations is amazing. Including flying people out same day to deal with problems. This is where their business is focused, the support they provide individuals is a very distant second.

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Generally when you provide a warranty on a server it's not a traditional warranty. There's no 'next day service', it's usually 5x24 or 7x24 w/ a 4hr SLA or something like htat. So if you buy an HP server and a HDD goes out they are there within 4 hours to install the new one and get you running again. Home users don't want to pay for that.

That being said, I haven't had any problems with dell when it comes to hardware failure replacements. I had a dvdrom that went bad and one was on my doorstep the next morning. A motherboard went bad in a laptop and there was a guy there within 2 days to replace it in my home.

When I worked at a computer store our average turnaround time for a customer machine w/ warranty was probably around 2 days at best.

And my point about plummeting profits for B&M stores was your point exactly--what use is a warranty when the company is out of business?