cM :: MORLEY|DIGITAL

Jim, good to hear from you! And yes, you make some good points.

About VM's [H] machine - they were always clueless about marketing to the enthusiast on there, and the H5 just solidifies that for me...

I have built one media center and I have purchased one media center and based on my experience I will certainly purchase from a specialist boutique again. It is well worth the money to have someone who I can explain the problem I having to and get a direct answer without having to play the Indian tech support script game.

Unfortunately, it has been my observation that I am in the minority in what the PC community wants. You have one of four types, but the two largest group of users are either.

1.) The price is all that matters crowd UNTIL they have a problem. These are the clowns who buy Dell XPS 420s to use as Media Centers because the specialists are "too expensive" but bitch all over the web when they have a problem with a very specialized product and the generalist tech support at Dell can't support.

2.) The self proclaimed l33t gamer types that can build a l33t piece of kit from Newegg much cheaper than those con artists boutique integrators or at least that is what they claim...

3.) Hobbyists that are actually pretty good at building machines themselves and that can be a good resource for advice.

4.) People like myself who have a good bit of PC/IT background but really don't want to spend all that time figuring out how best to integrate a system and would gladly pay somebody to at least build me a good system that I can start with and grow as needed and provide good on-shore support when I have a problem or question.

Now if you have been following HardOCP you know that Velocity Micro has been trying to generate some interest in a HardOCP "barebones" system. Well the response from the HardOCP folks has been predictable.

1.) A bunch of posts complaining about the price.
2.) A bunch of posts complaining about the case, motherboard, etc.
3.) A post or two on how this isn't a bad system or price if you place some value on having on-shore tech support and a 90 day warranty.

I recognize what VM is attempting to accomplish and if I was a Windows user I might consider it. Heck, this is the way I purchase my Mac towers. I just buy the cheapest Mac Pro Apple has at the retail store and migrate all the parts I can from the old one (like the hard disks and optical drives) and just purchase anything additional I need Over the Counter (this also puts me in the minority of Mac users too, a good many just order what they need from Apple and have them put it in at a fairly heavy markup.)

To use another example, this is very similar to what goes on in the automotive tuner market where everyone purchases the same Civic Si or Scion Xa and then adds their own options to make it unique.

Again, unfortunately I don't think there is much of a market for this. Those who know (or think they know) enough and have the time to modify would probably just take the extra step and build it completely themselves. Those without the skills and/or the time would buy completely preassembled. And most users are simply happy to order from Dell or buy a HP at Costco and bitch about the poor service later.

It all comes down to how each individual vendor feels that they can best serve the boutique vendor market - people who don't want to build their own rigs not because they can't, but because they want something better than they can do themselves.

I could build my own rig - and have - pretty quick. But I'd go with someplace like Maingear if I wanted something designed for something I wasn't familiar with - say, a watercooled system. (I really should look into that - my self-built media PC is a F1 funny car.)

Interesting ponts Chris and Ed, but I don't know how a boutique integrator could literally test every motherboard against every video card against every hard drive against every optical drive, etc. Not to mention all the other options such as RAID vs Non-RAID, SLI vs Non-SLI, etc. That would seem to be a full-time job for a group of people to even hope to keep up. Plus what constitutes "testing" just powering everything up and getting Vista to install isn't going to cut it. You are going to need to run that machine against a lot of applications for a non-trivial amount of time to make sure everything is stable. You could possibly do it, but you would have to charge a lot more than $50 a machine to do it and the customer would have to somehow agree that it could take a few weeks or even a month or two to get everything working just right. In other words, don't expect to order it on Monday and have it ship by the end of the week.

I run mostly Mac's here but my one Windows Media Center machine was (as Chris knows) was built by a boutique. It is obvious that since Apple doesn't have a lot of different configurations it is much easier for them to come up and produce stable configurations. Heck even running Windows on an Intel Mac seems to be easier than some of the mass-produced Windows machines I have seen.

It would seem that the best solution would be for the boutique integrator would be a six to twelve month cycle where you would pick the hot components at the time, spend the next six months getting everything tested and working together, then push that config for production for the next six months, then repeat the process.

I'll give you the OC Chopper analogy :), however I also think looking at the SERVICE being "luxury-level" is the niche of a boutique as well. So, that wouldn't match up with Newegg/ABS. Sure, you can go anywhere to get a computer built with any random parts, but what I said was the service is being able to know whether any random parts would be a good idea and/or work, plus be able to support that machine just as well as if it built out of picked components.

I totally agree - however then you're merely a parts supplier that charges an integration fee. Newegg should just have a $50 option when you check out that's then serviced by ABS...

You're really not a boutique then.

When I think of a boutique I think of Orange County Choppers. They build a wild bunch of bikes that look nothing like each other. However, at the core they use much of the same components. They use some of the same engines, brands of tires, etc. Because you CAN get fancy and unique while still being responsible to the customer.

THAT is the real value and core of a boutique - being able to sort through the myriad of choices out there and build the best damn systems you know will rock your customers in both performance AND reliability.

If I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here, I'd say there's a definite demand in the market for integrators who will build machines with whatever components the customer wants. If I can walk up to a guy and say, I REALLY want a system with this this this and this, EXACTLY - that's a pretty cool service.

However, the company that can do that has to be soooooo on top of their game, that any configuration that is put in front of them, they DO need to know everything about the products -- enough to tell me BEFORE they take my money if it's going to work or not. If you can't do that up front, then I agree that it's bad business and you're setting customers up to be disappointed.

And from what I've seen, the company that made that remark isn't to that point yet.