In a message dated 08/19/1999 11:37:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, edick(a)idcomm.com writes: > ... and what, exactly, is wrong with the "barebone thing" pray tell?

You were very lucky. What is wrong is that many cutthroat operators put these "barebones"

together with faulty cpus/motherboards . . . since you're going to take it home and add some other components, if you have a problem with the system it's easy for the seller to blame any problems on components you didn't buy from him or her: "The barebones system you sold me crashes all the time." "Let me see it . . . oh, you have these other parts in it . . . that's the problem." "But they're standard parts, and if you check them out you'll see they're properly installed." "Sorry, those parts are not compatible with the high-quality components in the system you bought from us. And that crummy software you installed is bound to cause problems. But we'll be glad to check it out for $$$ per

This is one of the oldest cons in the world: Sell something the buyer has

modify in order to use, then shift responsibility onto the buyer by blaming problems on buyer modifications. Then charge them out the ass. Glen Goodwin 0/0