🚀 go-pugleaf

I was wondering if anybody had any advice on purchasing an obscure mail
order clone.  The most confusing thing is that the ads (such as on PC Week)
are full of such a bizarrely broad range of prices, that it is difficult
to decide what a "reasonable" price is!

I find that in the AT line, the "respectables" seem to be selling at about
$1500 (w/o monitor/card or hd dsk, of course), and the "obscures" at around
$1000.  At $1000, if you at $200 for a mono card and monitor, $560 for a
20M AT-style hard disk, $100 for multifunction card, you can get a total
system, including printer, for just over $2000!

So, one wonders, what is the catch?  Why not go out and order one of these
right away (there are several going for the $1200 range, and a few at the
$995 range)?

Basically, when you figure that even though IBM is marking their systems up
at an obscene percentage, the difference between $1000 and $4000 must be
more than just ... greed.  Does anybody have any experience/stories/advice
about going the obscure mail-order route?  What are people's feelings about
the risk of going for an unheard-of manufacturer at $995 for an AT?