"It is no longer a matter of competition with superior products or services in the industry for your dollar," wrote one reader in reference to the major manufacturers. "It is about who can provide the least and get away with the most without being sued for raping Joe Customer. I quit buying Gateway products years ago, and I am surprised to see people still haven't learned. Support your local economy and community! You can get better products and service for about the same or less from your local neighborhood white box/clone computer store. This is my way of giving the finger to those long distance usurer corporate bastards and showing them there are other alternatives!"

White box aficionados say the real advantage is the support you get from a local supplier. "The IBMs and HPs claim they are now in the service business, but the neighborhood resellers are the ones who are really service oriented," another reader wrote. "They don't survive if they don't build a loyal following of repeat customers ... And while their service technicians may still speak with an accent, at least you know they're not trying to diagnose your machine from India."

But not all have found local vendor support to be exemplary. "About six years ago, I bought a computer from a local white box store," wrote another reader. "Several friends had purchased from them in the proceeding six months and were highly enthused about the results. Well, not only did they screw up the computer, but it took about five times of going through wipe/reinstall routines for me to realize that they were installing Zip disk drivers on a Win98SE box -- which did not need the drivers. Once I saw this and convinced them to stop installing the drivers, the computer purred. After that, I started building my own computers. I realize this is not an option for everyone, but at least if it is totally screwed up, I know who to blame and who will fix it."

In some localities, at least, the white box breed looks to be threatened with extinction. "Almost all of our local white box stores are gone," wrote another reader. "That's why I would hesitate even if I would get one from them; if they fold in six or twelve months because they couldn't take the heat from BestBuy, who's going to pick up the service? Fortunately the best one here contracted with a company out of town to provide some service to machines, although it wasn't nearly up to the level of before. Others just disappeared, one with a lot of clients' money, hardware, and data. But I heard the owner of that place was cooking the books for a long time. Making them from scratch is a frustrating endeavor sometimes, and not worth the money savings with the time it takes. I guess it's just not a winning situation right now."

But some suspect that another reason the local resellers days are numbered is that Microsoft's "Genuine Windows" activation and validation programs are designed to eliminate them. "In order for effective DRM to be implemented, it will have to have motherboard/BIOS support," theorized one reader. "If you want everyone to use compliant motherboards, you force them to the big OEM'S who are quietly installing whatever Microsoft tells them to. Then you get rid of the white box guys. You fix it so XP eats the registry every so often on the white box, and the customer has to reload the OS. The white box is a real pain because of product registration. The whole time the Microsoft employee is asking the customer if they bought from a legit dealer, insinuating that the dealer must be a crook, look at the junk machine and pirated OS he sold you. So, the world buys HP/DELL and ... the only people running non-compliant motherboards will be Linux folks, those evil un-American GPL'ers."

There's a certain irony to that, since one factor motivating some of us in the past to buy from white box vendors was to get a genuine, full-fledged Windows CD rather than just recovery files. "HP does not provide Windows CDs but some form of 'recovery disk' that blindly re-images your hard drive, thus erasing all programs added since the machine was purchased, and all documents, pictures, music, etc.," wrote another reader. "By the way, HP has been sued for this and has agreed to remedies. I keep finding out new ways that I have been screwed by this approach: no value-add directory, no recovery console, questionable licensing, etc. I will not buy another PC without a real Windows CD. If that means I need to buy a white box PC instead of the brand name provider, so be it."

So how viable an alternative do you think white box PCs are going to be in the future? Post your comments below or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.