Mark Rogers wrote:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164667 Looking at the reviews, I found this one:
Ordered this last evening, and it arrived at 9:45 am today. By 10:30am had Ubuntu linux OS (free!)up and running and was surfing the internet.At this price it is unbeatable for use as a kids machine, for surfing and homework. True, the fan is not silent, but would recommend this as a second PC for anyone
My experience is that the fan noise issue is somewhat overstated..also not helped by the auto fan speed control in the bios being turned off by default. It's not silent but no hairdryer either.
There are of-course other suppliers than eBuyer, and indeed eBuyer are not the cheapest for most things any more. But the principle of buying a box without an O/S (or pre-installed Linux) makes a lot of sense in my experience, and it's rare that I subject myself to building a PC from scratch any more.
Yes as a business we only build from components when the requested specification is either hard to come by or very expensive (things like ruggedised rack mount machines to be flight cased or something else exotic) Otherwise we find it uneconomic to deal with the build time + potential warranty headaches when it won't POST. That said I think it is a good healthy thing for any self respecting geek to assemble their own machine at least once. :)