Hey all,

I just wanted to ask everyone what they thought about the MSI barebones laptops? Does anyone know where the best place to get the part is? I know where to buy some of the things, like CPU and all, but there are others I'm unsure of. I know what most everyone will say and has told me. Just buy laptop that is already assembled. I just like to put my own computers together so I know its my computer, with my personal specs. This is one of the MSI barebone laptops I was looking at http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-MSI-163724-...ZWD1VQQ_trksidZp1638.m118.l1247QQcmdZViewItem
Any thoughts are helpful.

Thanks

So this laptop has no memory, CPU, no Hard Drive? So you spend another $400-$500 what's the advantage of doing this? You can buy a "complete" notebook for $500 total

Most $500 (if you can find them) notebooks aren't worth wasting your money on. They have much cheaper parts and will give out a lot sooner. Show me where you can get a good notebook with a dual core cpu, at least 2gigs of ram, and good solid parts for $500, and I'll buy it. And I don't want Vista home basic or home premium. The advantage is, I put my own ram, cpu, and hard drive in and I know that its quality and it costs the same as if i were to buy an assembled notebook with the same specs.

"The advantage is, I put my own ram, cpu, and hard drive in and I know that its quality and it costs the same as if i were to buy an assembled notebook with the same specs"...

Its your money... I repair and refurbish laptops often. The repair parts are expensive comparing to desktops, and I can build a dual core PC for $500 complete. You'll have to spend $300 to $500 more on the barebones laptop

RAM, CPU and HDD are not the sort of parts with variable quality. There are no CPUs that would be crap reliability wise. Same with RAM. (Yes, you would probably be better off with a 5-year warranty hard drive, but even that one can fail tomorrow.) Good solid parts are not the thing you have control over in a barebones notebook. The chassis, motherboard, cooling, LCD, keyboard and PSU (the stuff that fails most and is a PITA to replace) will be some generic crap with poor design and outrageous weight.

All cheap local-branded laptops are actually barebones and as you already said, they all suck.

Also, I don't know of any laptop maker who wouldn't customise any of their models for you. Have a decent brand-name machine customised for you and you will get a good machine with nice warranty, support and guaranteed parts availability.