Alternative reality segment is a stroke of pure genius! For people inside those organizations to implement change, they need an "easy win strategy" to show to their bosses, and you provide that! 👌💪

I am not a dell fan and have never owned one in my life, but it was truly hilarious that it won and Pluth's(?) comments about the power supply were just 😂😂

Linus' collar gap is noticeable..

Linus, I know you hate how companies have been changing their naming schemes to be less intuitive, what do you think about apple renaming iOS19 to iOS26 to be more intuitive? Is this a step in the right direction?

If I can make a suggestion for the next secret shopper use one of your employees who actually knows pc but have them play dumb like they don’t know pc’s at all and then that way you can really test the support, because like Linus said in one of the episodes the employee they use gets better with ever call and ask for less instruction from the support line

4:57 A bunch of know-it-alls confidently wrong about something in the comment section? Surely not. I bet they'll all come and retract their comments. Right?

Lmao, the prank they did on Elijah in the end

10:52 Shows 22H2 released at 2024? And then complains 11:03 complains about updates on the "latter half of 2022"?
Something feels odd here

If I'm not mistaken this should had been released around August and October of 2022, not 2024
And that would validate the comment about the latter half. But that means the OS is like 2 and a half years old.

I have a pretty new maingear build in a north XL thats 100% amazing, with every goodie option in it and absolutely love it – but Completely agree that while ghe GPU bracket is a super nice dependable piece of gpu and mobo protection, it is a MASSIVE PITA and unecessarily so. (I gotta say it seems dumbAF to use a low quality, low hardness, long as shit phillips head fully threaded bolt through a very high friction 3d printed part And a washer And a lock nut)

Idea: Also make a short 12 minute round up that is to be posted later. Mainly because I feel this full series (Which I love) is for tech people and our family/friends. However if a non tech guy is looking to find which brand to trust when buying a pc, I seriously doubt they are going to watch four 30-40 minute videos

Cyberpower cable management looked the same as others to me I'm not sure what is mediocre about it.

Wait.. hp didn't have propietary bull ish in it? What?!

For next time, On top of the higher budgets, I feel like there should be some extra discretional spending/buffer budget for the shopper to allow the upsell. I have worked in Laptop/Computer sales in the past, and from my personal experience this better reflects how most make major purchases when dealing with customers who need the advice on what to buy.

I used to provide 2 or 3 options. One that fits their requirments within the budget, one that's slightly above their budget, but better value and sometimes a hail Mary one (if there was one) that would be the best option. (Good, Better, Best sales technique). While I dont have exact figures, It was one of my favourites, and I had great success with this technique. I feel like more than half of the customers chose the better or best options and spent more than what they had mentioned.

e.g.Budget $2000 USD, $250 discretional. Only mention the $2000 budget to the sales reps, maybe mention it's not a hard budget, or say "around $2000", that way you arent just getting the system that is just under the budget, and potentially get an option that is better value, but a bit higher priced. This could also work against their favour if the sales rep just picks a pricier one with no increase in performance. If they suggest something thats $2250 or less, go with that one.

I don't know if out of date drivers really matter. As long as everything runs, it's all good. You'll need to update all the main drivers anyway, so who cares if it's 3 months vs 6 months old?

Id kind of like a 5th episode, or an end part of this one, that has comments from the SIs if they are willing to officially comment. Like after the other videos have already come out. Maybe just the winners, since th losers might just make empty statements of "we will fix these issues" nonsense.

Best sponsor segment

Everyone just suddenly don't know how to build a computer!

Dell definitely knows how to build a proper computer and great hardwares, they just don't want to give you anything more than necessary

I can feel Dell's smug watching this right now 😂
Bro… the Dennis ad at the end was 👌👌🤣

I wouldn't buy a Dell even if I got paid for it. Then again I can build my own pc so I luckily don't have to. But man I have dell PC's at work and I hate them with passion.

Computer market is cooked if Dell is winning things.

I think that an important caveat for the less tech minded people would be that this ranking isn't necessarily about which company is best. While most LTT viewers know this, the takeaway here should NOT be that Dell sells the best performing computers OR that Dell sells the best value computers.

The ONLY thing we can glean from this is that in THIS particular instance, Dell came out on top.

If YOU were to attempt the same challenge today, you might find results that are completely different, especially given how many mistakes were made, but also because you WILL get a different customer service rep that will most likely provide you with a different machine. You would think it should be standard, but if you watch the video where they ordered the computers, given the lack of questions at almost every company, you will almost definitely get something different.

The thing that I take away from here the most is how absolutely HORRIBLE the selection process experience is over the phone. For nearly every company.
If you were to walk into a microcenter and tell a salesman you have $1500 and want a gaming PC, they are going to spend time with you to figure it out so you get exactly what you are looking for. (And I choose microcenter here because most of their sales guys are geeks/nerds too, and really know their stuff and seem to want people to genuinely be pleased with their purchases. (Long time customer of the MN store, not affiliated with them).
It seems like the phone reps could be just a little better about it. But it is clear many of them are just following a flow chart, and not particularly well either.

If you're going to spend a good chunk of cash on a computer, do your research. Do NOT rely on the guy that answers the phone at a system integrater. They seem to be the weak link here. Even a trip to (dare I say it) Best Buy might be more helpful.