My StealthMachines Review - Part 1

When shopping for electronics of any kind, considerable time is often spent researching the various products and the companies that make them.

The critical points that inevitably make the decision to buy one product over another are:

• the reputation of the company
  
• reputation of the product line
• the quality of the parts
  
• the overall specs
  
• price of the product
  
• the warranty

I was recently going through the process of buying a new computer and had narrowed down my decision to one of five companies:

1. StealthMachines
2. Falcon Northwest
3. Puget Systems
4. Alienware (now owned by Dell)
5. Apple
   

After spending close to 6 months researching build ideas and various companies, I decided to go with StealthMachines because of the company's stellar reputation with the Better Business Bureau and past and current customers, competitive pricing, high quality parts, inexpensive 3 year warranty and free trade in program.

“StealthMachines rewards return customers and is a participate in renewable business practices. For this reason, trade-in your old StealthMachines or other electronic equipment and we'll give you credit towards a new StealthMachine.”

BBB Accreditation

“StealthMachines LLC has been a BBB Accredited business since January 2009. This means it supports BBB's services to the public and meets our BBB Accreditation standards.

Based on BBB files, StealthMachines LLC has a BBB Rating of A

Customer Complaint History for StealthMachines LLC

BBB processed a total of 0 complaints about StealthMachines LLC in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period.

BBB Program Participation

This company has agreed to use special procedures including arbitration, if necessary, to resolve disputes through their participation in the following programs: BBB Identification, BBBOnLine.” ( http://www.bbb.org/northern-colorado/business-reviews/computer-stores/stealthmachines-in-fort-collins-co-46015931 )”

I read reviews about StealthMachines on the company website, competing websites and various forums and the consensus was that the owner, Josef Kulovany, consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty in regards to customer service.

When I went to the StealthMachines website to use their system to configure a build, I played around with a few ideas and then saved a build I liked and emailed it to myself. The next day, Josef emailed me asking if I had any questions or would I like any advice on parts.

When I replied with a few questions, he emailed me back within 20 minutes and had several money saving suggestions, as well as suggesting a different case that would be easy to clean and maintain and included more options for future upgrades.

Every question I asked Josef was answered quickly and concisely, his prices are competitive with shopping at NewEgg and building it yourself. (I'm taking into account the individual shipping and handling charges for the parts that had shipping charges, as well as the cost of smaller items such as thermal paste and custom cabling.)

I'm expecting to receive my new computer Oct 2 and will post a review of the packaging, the condition it was received, the set up and my first impressions, as well as some basic benchmarks.