Dell vs HP vs Gateway vs ??, what is the best value?

[Racer47]

I'm getting a new pc for home use and am looking for any advice or recommendations as far as which brand to go with. At work I currently use a HP, before that a Dell and before that a Gateway. None had any problems and I'd buy any of them.

But I'll probably go with Dell unless there is some compelling reason not to. This is just a plain home pc for about $700, with cd-rw, maybe a dvd writer, 40 gig hard drive, 256 meg ram, 17" crt, ethernet card and running XP home.

I don't follow pc stuff much. Is there anything else out there that would be a better value?

Thanks

[StarvingForHDTV]

I have had luck shopping at the Dell Outlet store:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/Desktops?c=us&l=en&s=dfh&DGVCode=IR

[Racer47]

Thanks for the tip. Its looks like they have some good deals on refurbs. I may end up getting one of them.

[Tom Snyder]

The last several machines (servers, desktops and laptops) we've bought at my company have been Dell refurbs... great value. The fact that Dell hit their Q2 numbers and heads are rolling at HP should tell us something.  

Can't say much about Gateway these days. We used to buy nothing but Gateway back in the mid 90's because they had a good leasing program.

[Gregg Lengling]

You can get refurbs or warranty returns from any manufacturer.  Companies like HP when they get a warranty return they usually just ship out a new computer and then put the returned unit into a reprocess shop.  What they do is debug the problem and then reload the HardDrive so it's basically brand new.  I use all HP's and they are all refurbs from HP on-line.  However there is a caveat, if you like to upgrade and change hardware inside the box remember that HP is not a pure generic like Dell.  If you are a tinkerer go with Dell, if not HP can be a real kicker.  I've got 4, my sister has 2 and my mom has 1.  All of these I bought for them.  The latest one is a 3gig P4, with 512ram and 160 gig drive with CD R/W and DVD, all for $504.00.  This is the computer, keyboard and speakers.  The rest is up to you when you buy refurbs normally.

[tazman]

I've been real happy with my Medion I got at Aldi's about a year and a half ago.  Paid $699 for it not including the monitor.  It's a full 2.66 ghz P4 not a Celeron, with 256 meg of ram, 120 gig hdd DVD rom CDRW and a GeForce 4 ti4200 video with 128 meg of ram.  It has all the bells and whistles you can think of, even a complete set of front panel connections including slots for smart media, compact flash, memory stick and so on.  The down side is that Aldi's appears to be the only distributor in the States right now and their only avialable twice a year and in limited quantities.  The last time they had them they were 3.0 ghz, 512 meg. ram, digital TV tuner with remote , and so on and so on, for $799.

[rpine]

They are all good machines.   If you go to http://www.techbargains.com  they keep a good eye on deals, rebates, and coupons.  The left side of the screen (near the top) has the top "System Deals".