the thing is that you can create the image of your custom computer and just store it on dvd or another computer. i have 9 computers at home and i have a server which has images of all my computers. this is what i do on my client computers, i build it, i install all the apps and updates and then i just create an image and store it on the server, in case smth went wrong i just boot from the cd, reimage my computer and i'm back in businnes. as simple as 123. as to the price, more $ doenst necesserily means better computer. take a look at the dell notebooks, they are ugly and big and expensive while if you check the link in my previous posts you can see that you can build the same notebook 2 times cheaper. i custom build my computers since i know which parts and models and brands are the best and i can combine them the way i like while i cant do the same with dell.at work i got a dell xps workstaion for 7k while it would cost me only around 3k if i would custom build it myself. big difference huh?:)