My current PC conked out on me this evening. The HDD started thrashing and was eating away at itself. I shut it off and slaved it to recover my stuff before it completly died.
Im still running a 900MHZ presario and I want a new toy.
I think this barebones kit is good deal. If you know of something better tell me.
I've always been partial to computer show and sales. . .as long as you're pretty careful you can get solid equipment for really great prices (assembly required, though. . . )
If you think it'll do the trick, and you're willing to pay that price, I'd say go for it. Gotta love the Athlon.
Chris Luva Luva wrote:I'd like to get an Apple....
Im trying to be cheap though. I have so much money tied up right now.
Im saving for a sport bike and a house for the winter/spring.
I can't really kick out $1.5k for a PC.
If you are interested in an apple, check out the refurbished models here. You can get a refurbed Mac mini for $399.
I've never been to a computer show and sale, but honestly it sounds skeevy to me. Maybe it's just that I hate the commercials.
I built a computer a while back, and got all the parts (case, momo, processor, etc.) from here.
I used to say that the problem with building your own is that you couldn't match the price of a Dell, and that you really had to know what you were doing to match the quality (a poorly built system is quite unstable); however, I really think Dell cuts too many corners these days. My Dell doesn't even have an AGP slot which I would think any computer that didn't have PCI Express would.
1. 80 gb is a bit small for a drive these days, considering how cheap they are. Even though you won't fill the 80 gig, even running XP and other Microsoft bloat-ware, it seems small. Call that my non-rational warning.
RAM was cheap enough, last year, that it was worth getting a gig. My serious warning is that software always wants to stay resident, and always gets bigger.
2. Getting barebones is handy. I always have trouble getting the motherboard to line up perfectly when I haven't built a machine for a few years. It would be much easier if I built a machine each week.
But, if you are patient enough to build your own, then you will get a machine at about the same price as a Dell, or better, but with much better quality components. I like ASUS motherboards, Enlight cases, and Western Digital hard drives. Or I did two years ago...
3. However, another giant irritation is that the latest-and-greatest standard hardware changes every year or so. When I built a pair of machines a couple of years ago, I had to learn about the difference between DDR and RDR RAM, and then guess which would win out, and decide if I wanted the just-out faster DDR. Etc. Tom's Hardware was a good site for catching up. The fat hardware books are usually about a year behind the industry.
So, get the bigger drive, get a gig of ram, and have fun putting it together.
Yea, I told my father my sob story after I got home from work and he happened to have a PC that he wasn't using. He's literally hoarding PC's in his little area in the basement.
I made out like a bandit. Its a HP Pavalion with a 2.6GHZ P4, 1.5GB RAM, 100+GB HDD. It has integrated video but I'll be picking this up really soon.
Yea, I told my father my sob story after I got home from work and he happened to have a PC that he wasn't using. He's literally hoarding PC's in his little area in the basement.
I made out like a bandit. Its a HP Pavalion with a 2.6GHZ P4, 1.5GB RAM, 100+GB HDD. It has integrated video but I'll be picking this up really soon.
Congratulations, CLL. The thin-screen monitors are superb. Worth it if you have $550; a 17 inch will do well also. For a CRT with the equivalent screen, you'll need somebody like Chris Samuels of the rookie McCune just to unpack the thing and put ot on a desk. Then you'll need nost of the desk just for the monitor.
welch wrote:Congratulations, CLL. The thin-screen monitors are superb. Worth it if you have $550; a 17 inch will do well also. For a CRT with the equivalent screen, you'll need somebody like Chris Samuels of the rookie McCune just to unpack the thing and put ot on a desk. Then you'll need nost of the desk just for the monitor.
This is exactly the reason why my "desk" in my house here at school is actually an old (and rather nice) table from the Salvation Army. I even pulled it off from the wall about 8 inches to give the back of the monitor some extra space.
Now, when I push my keyboard and mouse out of the way, I can fit one and a half pieces of paper in front of me. I can read, take notes, keep other material in front of me, all at the same time.
If I had one of those flat screens, I can't even imagine how much space I'd have to do work. I could probably solve the world's problems from right here in my room. (Well. . .I could probably tackle my own, for starters. . .okay, okay, maybe not. . .)
I shut it off and slaved it to recover my stuff before it completly died.
)
Maybe it's just that I hate the commercials. 
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