Brian,

I'm not so sure that's true anymore. The last couple of boxes I bought from Dell, I couldn't have built for the same price. On top of that I got a machine with a single warrenty point of contact and a lot quieter and more stable machine than the homegrown ones I had done before. I think if you go for a bunch of the upgrades (tons of memory, fastest video card, biggest harddrive, etc., DVD burner) you end up paying a premium, but for a basic machine it's hard to beat the package deals unless you've already got parts or you're stealing your OS.

The 8250 mentioned above, I purchased back in November. It was 2.4 ghz, 256meg of 1066 RDram, 30gig, Geforce 4MX, DVD, XP Home for $1032 shipped. Not a particularly good deal, until you count the $510 in rebates!! :) I still can't beat that price with parts 4 months later.

Best regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
3D extensions for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins