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In This Section:

What is a Whitebox?

Who Sells the Most PCs? We Do!

(See our Whitebox Built-to-Order Systems Offerings Now)

Who sells more PCs than anyone else in the market? You might guess Compaq, or Dell, or HP, or even Apple, but you would be wrong. A little known fact among the general public is that the largest supplier of PCs is what the industry refers to as "white box" dealers, and the PC Support Source is one of them. The graph shows 2004 Shipments by manufacturer class.*
What is a "white box" ? As you may suspect, it is an unbranded PC made up flexible, off-the shelf components, assembled and configured to each customer's needs by professional people like ourselves. (Check here for our current offerings!)
Why do people buy white box systems? We checked Gartners Research surveys (The largest PC industry publisher) to verify our experience.

PRICE

"...price is likely a key factor. Cost differences between white boxes and branded systems can be 20 percent to 30 percent."
Depending on the options and total cost of ownership, this is often the case. Much of the marketing hype designed to sell cheap machines by the big vendors comes with a catch, often ignoring service, support and configuration issues that wind up costing unsuspecting buyers much more than the cheap come-on price advertised on TV. (see related Gateway story)

SERVICE

"What's more, white-box providers offer service that is superior to that offered by major brand vendors."
This is true. Although many major manufacturers offer on-site service in the first year, there is no guarantee you won't be out your PC for days or weeks if they choose to ship it back to the factory. Extended warranties for parts (like hard drives) which often carry them anyway can be a large additional cost. In addition, replacement costs for proprietary parts like system boards can be many multiples of what an off-the shelf part might cost.

SUPPORT

"In addition, solution providers say small-business customers are developing a greater appreciation for capable, reliable support at the desktop and server levels". The genesis of the success supporting our customer's actually comes from sizing up their needs first and then finding the right solution in advance. In addition, we research performance and compatibility of components and manufacturers support policies and warranties for them to define the best aggregate PC. The end result is a PC that virtually supports itself over time.

Why We Do It

One last question...Why do we sell white box systems to our customers? Compaq, IBM, HP, and even Gateway and Dell have programs for dealers like The PC Support Source to sell their equipment at reasonable margins, so why bother?
In truth, it's not the money we make (usually less than $200.00) selling a system.
To quote the study again, "...among resellers that sell white box systems, more than two-thirds (67 percent) cite service and support-related factors such as configuration flexibility and reliability or quality of components as primary reasons for selling white box systems."
The reality is, we depend on the good will and continuing support of our customers to stay in business, and we can't afford to sell systems with marginal components or proprietary designs we can't support outside of some distant engineering group. Our customers want one place to call for help, and that's us. We know if we build all our systems with first quality components that are the best in class for both reliability and compatibility, we won't even get that call, and everybody is happy.

* Gartners Research (Full Text)