pushing the upgrade

I've now been running my custom built PC for over a year. That was $300 well spent! I was a little leery about some of the parts that I put into it, but for the most part I have had very few problems. My heatsink fan broke when I went to install it, but aside from that replacement, all of the bargain brand parts have functioned flawlessly. One year down!

It used to be that you had to buy the top brands for computer memory. It used to be that you got what you paid for. But not so much anymore. Contrary to what my salesman said to me when I was selecting parts for my last custom built PC, my "no name" generic RAM has been functioning just fine. I didn't have to buy the top brand memory available to get reliable performance, just as I didn't have to buy authentic Dell Memory when I upgraded my sister's Dell PC. None of the errors or memory failures that he had warned me about have occurred.

It reminds me of my very first PC purchase. The salesman at the local Comp USA had the nerve to tell me that about 50% of the Packard Bell computers that they sold don't work. This was his attempt at getting me to pay another $500 for the more expensive brands. So I asked him why a computer store would be selling a product that failed 50% of the time. He didn't have an answer to that one.

Sometimes I am amazed at the underhanded sales tactics that people use to try and force us into upgrades.