Comment Unless my time is worthless... (Score 1) 391
Up until about 2000, I'd built my own systems, usually from parts bought at the frequent "computer fairs" that came to town. A coworker at the company I was working for at the time turned me on to the "Dell Outlet". Since we were a Dell shop, I was very familiar with the Dell corporate line of systems, but since I wasn't in the market at that time for a new system, I filed the info away. By 2005, my current system was crying out to be replaced, so I checked out the Dell Outlet. At the time, we were buying Dell Optiplex GX620 systems (2.8Ghz P4D, 4GB ram), and paying $985 per system (company policy did not allow leasing computer systems). I watched the Outlet for about a week, and scored a scratch&dent GX620 with same specs as the work systems for $419. I've since discovered an even better resource for good quality Dell systems, the Dell financial services off-lease website. There I recently picked up a Dell Precision T3500 workstation (Xeon quad-core, 4GB of ram, with a max of 24GB, Nvidia Quadro FX570 video card) for $300, and later, a Precision M4400 mobile workstation (Core2Quad, 2GB ram, max of 8GB, discrete Nvidia Quadro mobile video) for $200. These systems are about 3 years old, and are off-lease systems, reconditioned by Dell and resold at great prices.. Bottom line: I can't build an equivalent system for these prices, even IF my time is worthless (which its not, even though I *am* retired now)
