Looking at computer prices, I notice huge price differences from $400 to $2000, what could account for such differences considering they all have similar hard-drive storage and RAM memory?

McGruff

I just bought a new Dell for my sister. She works from her home as a medical transcriptionist and her old computer started to give her problems, and it was time to replace it anyway with something faster. I bought the next-to-the-bottom of the line Dimension B110 (512mb, 160 GB) desktop for about $460. She's on the computer 8 to 10 hours a day working and doesn't use it for anything else much except email, so she didn't need a lot of extras and I concentrated on getting her as much speed as possible. It came with a CRT monitor, the basic flat screen was $100 more, has a CD/DVD burner, Dell offered a printer in the deal for only $19 more, so I got that, it has a 1 year warranty, and basically that's it. Other than Corel WordPerfect, it doesn't have any office software such as MS Word, but she really doesn't need any of that. Her transcription software was taken off the old computer and installed on the new one. So you really just have to think first about what you use your computer for and what you want it to be able to do. People using it as an entertainment center, music and DVDs would not be happy with just the basics. I'm not recommending Dell or anything, but as an example you can go to http://dell.com and click on "Home and Home Office" and then "Desk Tops" and look over the differences in the models. Mostly they have the same memory and harddrive, but some come with lots of software, bigger screens and other extras, and then you can also customize something to fit your exact needs. Apr 22 06, 6:13 AM

soonappear

Software. The youngster's are happy: but there's no way I've played that many quizzes. Apr 22 06, 6:35 AM

xfacilitatorx

Desire for the latest, latest bells whistles and buzzers. It is marketing. Yes there is alot of feature upgrades and greater memory capacity but in three to six months the price of an expensive unit falls to a level of acceptability and the units that were cheapos can no longer be found and have been replaced by the what once were unaffordable ones. Apr 22 06, 7:55 AM

McGruff

Yeah, if cost is an issue, all the bells and whistles are why you really have to sit down and decide what you are going to use your computer for. I think a lot of people make the mistake of buying too much computer because "it does everything" and they're just wasting their money on things they won't ever use. Apr 22 06, 7:58 AM

researcher

One major affect on price is what CPU you have. You will pay a lot more for a Pentium than it's AMD counterpart. Apr 22 06, 2:46 PM

mementoflash

Does it come with a CD/DVD burner? That is an important feature that effects price. Apr 22 06, 6:12 PM