My last store-bought computer: the VPR Matrix 2020
Best Buy's house-brand Pentium 4 desktop was the second computer I ever bought, and the last pre-built one. After this, I built my own.
The second computer I ever bought with my own money was a VPR Matrix 2020. VPR Matrix was Best Buy’s own house brand, which they launched in early 2002, and the 2020 was the Pentium 4 2.0 GHz model. I still have the case for it to this day.
What makes it worth a post is that it was the last pre-built desktop I ever bought. Something clicked with this machine. I started opening it up, swapping parts, and upgrading little pieces of it, and at some point I realized I did not actually need anyone to build a computer for me anymore. After the VPR Matrix, I only ever bought parts and assembled my own, choosing exactly what went in and learning how all of it fit together.
Eventually even that gave way. These days I am mostly on macOS and Apple machines, which is a funny place to land for someone who spent years with a screwdriver and a pile of components. But the VPR Matrix is the line in the sand: the last computer I ever let someone else build for me.