I've never heard of Multiwave, but I trust some of the guys that suggested it. (Maybe I'm crazy, but I think that Animal knows his way around a computer.
)
I would NEVER EVER buy a name brand computer for myself. I would not suggest that all but the most computer ignorant people do so either.
HP -> cheap power supplies, no windows disk, poor (pay) techsupport
Gateway -> CHEAP components (didn't used to be that way), some have cheap power supplies, average tech support. (Though they actually did send a friend of mine a new monitor when his old one died, even though it was a month out of warranty. I do think their quality has suffered since then though. That computer (P2 233, actually used a real genuine Intel board.)
Dell -> Expensive, pretty good tech support, Intel only (
), quality is fair, though not good enough for me. Recently I've seen some pretty lousy cooling setups on Dells.
Compaq -> Non standard components, poor quality drives, poor (very poor) cooling, poor to fair tech support, non standard motherboard layout on some models, no AGP slot on many models (AGP bus dedicated for onboard video), no windows disk, power supply often in midmounted position (which makes working on them hard). In short, pretty looking boxes of junk.
My suggestion would be to find someone in his area who can recommend a good local computer store or check out Animal's recommendation.
