Since the early 2000s, the Ars System Guides have been helping DIYers to become system-building tweakmeisters. This series is a resource for building computers to match any combination of budget and purpose.
The Bargain Box (formerly the Ultimate Budget Box) is the most basic box we cover in the System Guides. It's neither top of the line nor extremely cutting edge, but as the lowest-price box in the guides, it has a lot of competition today. Originally, the bargain box just went up against OEM pre-builts, then netbooks vied for the same market, and now tablets compete for the dollars of bargain desktop users.
Still, there is room for basic desktop systems in an office setting, where employees work spreadsheets and stream training videos, and at home, where users might need to store more movies, photos, and music than they could on the (relatively) limited storage of the average tablet or cell phone. 64GB or even 128GB of flash storage can get filled up quickly, meaning a place for a few hundred gigabytes of cheap storage is handy. Despite similarly priced alternative form factors, bargain desktops still belong in a home office, or even as the core of a low-budget HTPC.
Read 61 remaining paragraphs | Comments
via http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/ars-technica-system-guide-bargain-box-february-2013/
