What would be some of the best places online to pick up a PC? Laptop or desktop. I would think as far a normal stores Frys would be on top of the lists to get the best deal and maybe costco or sams somewhere in there.
From what I hear, Dell and HP have the cheapest PC's/laptops on the market. They can buy there components at cheaper prices than anyone else. If you already have an OS, I think you can order one without an OS.
I've said this before, buy the best emachine available, biggest bang for the buck you can get. Just look at the cost of the components on new-egg and you'll see it's just a better decision to go down to best-buy and get it. And before anyone starts talking smack about how emachines are built badly, think of how much better him building it himself would be. And if you ever built a computer yourself, you realize you really can't f*ck a PC up that badly. Especially since most of the errors will be incompatabillity between devices.. The key however is buy the best emachine available. If you go for their bargain PCs, that's when you get the real crap (mostly becuase the components themselves suck). Just look at this one: http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=T5224 You'll probably want to buy a PCI slotted video card off new egg if you do any gaming (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127270 low end http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130073 mid range http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130071 PS3 graphics suxors ^^ though to be fair you might have to get a different power supply to run this guy if you buy an emachine), but just do a price check on the other parts on new-egg or pricewatch.com and you'll see the value in this.
If you don't want to go build one and don't want to shop online. Frys, and Compusa. Check your local ads, CompUSA will have some killer deals every now and then. I got a nice PC for my little sister from there for about $200 after MIR. It came with color printer, monitor, decent AMD cpu, and I just added some more ram for very little $$$ and it's a charm. If you don't mind building one Newegg.com and Tigerdirect.com are the best spots to go to for parts. (cheapest/quickest) Dell.com or HP.com will have real cheap systems for online buying.
