I agree that the best computer for the price you can get is a home-built system with name-brand parts. But, any decent homebuilt system is going to cost you a minimum of $750 including OS(assuming XP) but not counting monitor/keyboard/mouse. When you are piecing together a system costs just add up. If you are on a tight budget a Dell box is not a bad option.
For a budget box you really cannot beat a Dell. My el-cheapo place of work buys Dells. We have Dells here as old as 8 or 9 years. Pentium 60's, 90's, 120's, 133's. We also have Dells as new as <1 year to 4 years. All of the Desktop Dells that are in the 1-4 year range have had ZERO problems. We have had to send back one of the newer laptops because the mainboard fried, but that was under warranty and we didn't pay a cent for it. We also have several Dell laptops under 4 years old that are running fine, including the centrino badass that we had to send back for warranty work. We also have several compaq's that are around 5 years old, we have never had a problem with.
The worst thing that our ancient Dells have ever had a problem with is hard drives. Those older Quantum drives were crap, they started dying after only 6 or 7 years of humid and dusty use. Sheesh. I think we had a video card die once a couple of years ago.
So there you go, I've probably been around 100 Dell's with relatively minor problems. Not a huge number, but a decent sampling and we put those computers through the ringer. (environment wise, it is dirty and dusty as hell here, no climate control in part of the building...midwest weather)
YMMV, but seriously Dell puts out a good product, one that I recommend to the people whom I don't want to work on their stuff. (If something goes wrong, they have a 3year warranty to fall back on...I still haven't heard of any friends or family having a problem with their Dells....well...the soon-to-be-wifes Dell lost a hard drive a few months ago, but I've lost a half dozen hard drives myself on machines that I bought all the parts for. The shit just breaks sometimes...even my favorite western digital hard drives don't last forever.)
If you have the cash to do it, build your own, or buy a custom machine from one of the companies suggested in this thread. But if you are on a budget, a Dell is a good option for you. If they would just put an AGP slot or a nice PCI-Express slot on one of those cheap Dell systems I'd buy one of those for a backup computer.
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