Yeah, I am complaining about it, that is why I was saying she might have to purchase separately/ do a lot of sweet talking the vendor to get proper Office, not Open. I had to fork out for full Microsoft Office, not even student version, because of this.
If you work in translation, Open will not cut it.
Glad you do, as what I wrote is controversial and obviously seems counter-intuitive. Yet it’s based on the intimate inside knowledge of both own developed systems and ODM (Taiwanese designed) ones. I’m happy to share, but also happy to learn or be proven wrong. The latter would make shopping for a new one much less of a pain in the ass - just go to Guanghua and be done with it ^^
Very true - if you compare buying high-end consumer components to buying a standard consumer built PC. That’s why I stressed the “good ones” and “commercial/professional” part so much. In the context of this thread, I’d suggest looking at building a cost-efficient system. So you wouldn’t be using all high-end components to DIY build, but something from low end to lower mid range.
So, how would that compare to a similarly low end or lower mid range commercial PC?
Think about it like this: a consumer components vendor has many customers buying single pieces or very low numbers. If some design or manufacturing flaw causes issues, they face replacing or repairing a few thousand components, and a few thousand unhappy customers. Unless they are consistently crappy, their reputation would not take a huge hit. A commercial/professional PC vendor has mostly big corporate customers. If they fuck up something, including low lifetime (regardless of in or out if warranty), they lose tons of business. And in case of in warranty: if they don’t fix the flaw in all PCs at the customer site, regardless of failed yet or not, they get all the tens of thousands of PCs from that deal dumped back into their yard, maybe together with a few high-end high margin workstations as well as servers that were all part of that deal.
Put simply: the stakes for such professional PC vendors are extremely much higher than for consumer component vendors. Thus, they put much more effort into the design quality, resulting in generally much higher stability as well as generally very good durability.
The commercial PCs I’m suggesting generally seem to come with 3 years, and typically can be extended to 5 or more.
Likely true for comparing good off the shelf with standard consumer prebuilt PCs, not so much when comparing commercial PCs with cheap DIY. Commercial PCs drop all the bells and whistles, but go to great lengths to ensure durability and stability.
Especially regarding PSUs you actually find lots of crap on the shelves. Hell, virtually all low range and even most mid range off the shelf ATX PSUs don’t even fulfill the minimum load requirements that Intel specified many years ago with Haswell CPUs (0.05A @ 12V). The data sheets will lie in your face though, either hiding this info or sneakily obfuscating it by specifying separate loads for separate connectors. You pretty much need to actively look for higher cost DC-DC topology PSUs, or have to use 12V single rail (like the big boys in the commercial PC market use for a long time already) to really support this.
Thing is, most DIY builders won’t ever notice, unless they go for high efficiency builds. Because most consumer mainboards are built to work with those crappy design PSUs, by simply sacrificing power efficiency for compatibility.
No idea about laws in Taiwan, but Europe for example this is not legal. You are allowed to open and upgrade without losing warranty, since upgradability is part of what defines a PC system.
Yes, most commercial systems use non-standard parts and firm factors. Not fornefarious reasons, but because going all ATX standards adds limitations and costs to achieve kinds of upgradability and DIY-Servicability that are completely unnecessary for the given target customers. Of course an enthusiast that wants to upgrade, customize or repair everything would never be happy with such a system. Someone that wants their PC to work as stable and reliable as possible, also after fixing some broken parts (replacing with original manufacturer spare parts), will very likely accept custom form factor for parts.
While I’m not aware of any cases where the PC products I know do this, I can imagine some vendors might do. Likely it’s again not for nefarious reasons, but to avoid known issues. Typically even corporate customers want to plug their own PCIe cards into PCs, so vendors would not completely lock out everything not sold by them. Note: for workstations or even severs it’s a whole other story.
Yes, especially if someone wants to upgrade the CPU later, this might be an issue. However, at least with Intel, upgrading the CPU is not a very likely scenario for most customers, since significantly faster new generation CPUs most likely need new mainboards anyway.
Absolutely. See the custom form factor comments above. But again, most people won’t be affected, and again, such commercial PCs are not for enthusiasts that want to be able to tweak, modify and fix everything by themselves.
Consumer ones for sure, and I would hate that. Not so much the commercial ones.
True for both consumer and commercial prebuilt PCs I think. Due to support costs strongly influencing commercial PC vendors’ profits, the corners being cut ate chosen very carefully though, and mostly boil down to bells and whistles. They would never intentionally sacrifice stability or durability.
Absolutely: if you know exactly what you want, and especially if you enjoy modifying, fixing etc. by yourself, then go for DIY. You can keep the same PC for ages, upgrading parts once in a while. You learn tons of stuff and get a better understanding of PC technology.
What you will never get by DIY, though, is a PC with components that are guaranteed to work well together. A system that is optimized for stability, compatibility, and just simply works fine without much need for support. A system that has been extensively tested and proven to be working OK in exactly this configuration.
The DIYer’s problem is: The PC ecosystem has so many components available that the DIY mix and match approach, even with lots of experience, will lead to troubles. The component manufacturers simply can’t test all combinations, and unfortunately simply sticking to the design specifications doesn’t guarantee a stable combination.
So: in case…
You want a computer that just works, where you don’t need to spend much time to figure out hardware quirks and problems
You don’t want to go high-end
You don’t have the urge to tweak, modify, upgrade, play around etc.
You don’t have the need for re-using much pre-existing hardware or wanting to use very special components
Then I very strongly suggest taking a rock stable commercial PC platform, adding a mid range graphics card if you want better gaming performance, and maybe a PCIe sound card if you want to do competitive 3D shooter gaming or the like.
I completely agree. But I’d also like to add…
The first time you try something, it will not go nearly as smoothly as expected.
It’s a little too easy to break computer components if you’re not experienced with handling them. In the process of practicing how to carefully install a motherboard, it’s possible to accidentally zap it.
This alone could mean that building a computer ends up costing more than buying pre-made.
Buy coolpc prebuilt. Got all kinds of good components at very good prices.
If you have an .edu email account you can get office365 for free. You just have to check a box that says you’re not using it for commercial purposes.
You’re not advising the OP to lie and steal from Microsoft are you? 
It doesn’t matter as I no longer have an edu email. In any case, I’ve got to have the real deal Microsoft Word program as I regularly use some of its more complex functions in my work.
Did you get your new compewpew? 
That’s my made up word for a computer used for gaming purposes (and of course some office stuff). 
If your parents are in the US, maybe they can purchase the Microsoft 365 Family subscription and then you can use 1 of the 6 licenses?
Not yet. I’m think it’s smarter to lie low and avoid shopping for a bit, at least until this fiasco with the sailors blows over. In the meantime, I can think on it a bit longer, do some more research, and get a few more opinions.