Your computer: buy or build?

[Svengoolie 3]

I assume. Most of you have computers.  Did you buy them preboxed and pre configured,  or did you 'roll your own'?

I built Victory,  my truly personal computer.

[Pacman000]

Which computer? Obviously I didn't build a TRS-80 Laptop, but I did open it up to fix it. (Cleaned corrosion.)

Other computers I've owned were gifts, so I've never built my own PC.

Victory's a great name tho.

[LilCerberus]

Up until January, I was using an Acer laptop I bought brand new some time in the '00s, then it crashed.
While I was at the repair place, I decided to get a second hand Lenovo T530 ThinkPad withe win 10 & a 110gb solid state drive.
Pretty excited about this one, because the upgrades are pretty easy & reasonable.
Just this week, I replaced the Intel Core i5-3320m with a 3380m, & I'm looking  at a couple of reasonably priced i7s....
Next paycheck, I hope to get a larger solid state drive, & eventually give it more ram.

It's been incredibly handy for recording podcasts & sending out livestreams when I'm at theworkfm.org

[Trevor]

I stole mine

[The Burgomaster]

Buy. Because I'm too much of a lazy suck to do anything else. 

[bob]

Buy because I have no idea how to build one

[Trevor]

This is what I stole 

[sprite75]

My main laptop is a MacBook Pro.

I also have a tower machine that I use to store photos and other stuff.  I had that one custom built by a local store.  I had them put together the machine but not put an OS on the machine.  When I got it home I put Ubuntu on it. 

[Bushma]

My system is a general use system. Mostly net surfing and minor gaming. I bought mine rebuilt and did some modifications to it after that.

[Trevor]

My system is a general use system. Mostly net surfing and minor gaming. I bought mine rebuilt and did some modifications to it after that.

Welcome back

[RCMerchant]

Mine's an eMachine. The place I bought it said it would only last about a year- but I've had it since 2013!

[beat_truck]

I'm not into gaming and only do some occasional light audio and video capturing / editing, so I never bothered building a machine. 

I've only actually bought two machines that were brand new.  My first "real" computer in 2001, which was well over $1000 and was always a slow, problematic, piece of crap.   I gave to away many years ago.  And in around 2009, we bought a $298 Walmart special Compaq laptop, which actually performed flawlessly until I broke the screen like an idiot.  I still have it and am going to replace the screen.  The other machines I have were bought used. 

Because of the intrusive, abomination that Windows 10 is , my next major move is going to be ditching M$ and moving to Linux.  I already put Linux Mint on my little $20 Acer Netbook and am liking it so far.  My only concern is a few pieces of hardware and software that I'd like to retain.