customs are good if you have the knowledge and time to do it AND troubleshoot it when things go wrong.

prebuilts are great if you lack the knowledge or time to buy things, or if you want a little more piece of mind around warranties.

I've built my last 3, and that's what I plan on for now. But lots of people prefer prebuilt and that's cool too.

The site I recommend is custom built with warrentee service.

My dell was a "custom" built computer. I chose the processor, HD, memory, video card and so on. Personally, I dont see the big advantage in building one, but if thats your thing thats cool. For what I do on a computer, I dont need anything to spectacular. Just need the internet, word processing and be able to do light gaming.

Often times it comes down to if you already have an O/S to install on the computer. Its extremely hard to build a custom PC including full version of windows with a price that rival's a big brand.