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HP ENVY Phoenix 800-000a Desktop PC (ENERGY STAR)
(H5Z21AA)
$909
Features
Windows 8 64
Intel® Core™ i5-4570 (3.2 GHz, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)
2 TB 7200 rpm SATA
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (1 x 8 GB)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 (4 GB DDR3 dedicated)
SuperMulti DVD Burner
Integrated Azalia 7.1 channel Audio; BEATS audio support
HP Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Kit
This deal may not be a huge bargain, but it looks better than a previous one Phoenix 800-001a which was too pricy. And it doesn't cost much less if you go to MSY for customized PC.
OEM PC's are never a deal.
Virtually any custom-built PC for $900 would be orders of magnitude more powerful than this junk.
In the case of making a warranty claim, you would be dealing with a local PC hardware retailer, the majority of whom offer a minimum 1 to 2 year, return-to-base warranty on all pre-built rigs. As opposed to dealing with HP, who are notoriously unreliable and slow in processing warranty claims.
Unlike OEM PC's, you don't get an included 70GB of pre-installed bloatware, trial software, adware, games, tutorials and needless crap you have no use for and you own a legitimate copy of Windows, not an image file of your factory hard drive partition. (These days most of them just chuck it on a separate hidden partition and screw you out of the recovery disk even).
Freedom; to do whatever the fudge you want with your components, your BIOS and hardware configuration without instantly voiding warranties and dealing with OEM vendor-lock-in.
No proprietary parts & components like Dell's or HP's which cannot be used on any other PSU/Motherboard (more lock-in).
Far, far, FAR better range of higher quality components. No Yum Cha PSUs, el-cheapo motherboards, horrible USB host controllers that move files at 4.7Kb/s and funky OEM firmware you can't update for your optical drives/hard drives. OEM's tend to skimp on most components aside from the CPU/GPU.
Upgradeability & resale value. If you're lucky you can change about 2 or 3 parts in an OEM PC before it's worthless (typically HDD, Video Card, Soundcard).
The learning experience and better understanding of information technology that comes with building and maintaining your own PC.