Cheeeeep computer deal
 

Yesterday I bought a new computer from fry's.
AMD 1.8+ gh, 40gb HD, LAN, everything except monitor for $179.
I threw in an additional 512 mb ram and installed my CD-RW drive and old HD as a slave, this thing screams compared to what I'm used to.
It came with Lindows but I installed XP pro with no problems.
It has onboard video but I'm gonig install my AGP 8x card from my old computer.
I know it's built in China, I know it is built from surplus parts, but it works great and it something dies I have a warranty and plenty of spare parts now ;)
Reminds me of my first computer, 486SX-50, 4 megs of ram, for $1700! How things have changed.

That is cheap! I put together a similar system back in March for ~$450

My first PC was a 386-33, 4Mb RAM, 100Mb drive, 14" monitor for $2300.

You guys are terrifying me. My first actual computer purchase (the computer itself was a gift, of sorts) was an 8MB SIMM for my 486DX4 100. I paid a little over $100 for it, and almost felt guilty, like I was getting away with something sneaky. My, how the times they are a-changin'!

Dan

Yeah, I saw that on the Frys ad ... surprised to see there is still stock of them...
They have had some great deals lately ....

For those that don't have a Frys store ... your missing out big-time

congrats...

Just finished paying off my IBM 286....

LOL, I remember paying $480 for a 20MB hard drive and wondering what I was going to do with all of that space...

I was reading an article in a geek magazine that quoted Bill Gates back in 1986 saying, "Sure, $10,000.00 for a 130 MB Hard Drive is a lot of money, but who's ever going to need that much space?"

Sheesh...:rolleyes:

Randy

lol, Bill Gates, the same man who said "64K [RAM addressing space] oughtta be enough for anybody!" Aargh.

Dan

I remember updating my 486 DX2 50 machine's ram from 4 to 8 MB. At the time up here in Canada it was $200 - $50 bux/meg :D

Yeah, that's how much I remember paying, too. Paid something like $400 for 8 MB, 72 pin SIMM for my 486 DX2 66. That meant I no longer had to boot with the stripped-down-DOS floppy just to get DOOM to run in 4MB :)

...good times...:cool:

I wish we had that Frys deal here. I'm looking for a very cheap machine to run MythTV on. I might just get an old XBox to run as a frontend and see if I can get the backend to run on my old Celery 300 (overclocked to 375, baby! Oh yeah, it's a powerhouse). Of course, if I did that I'd have to buy the deluxe pvr card that does it's own encoding/decoding, my CPU isn't fast enough to do it on it's own. It would definitely be cheaper to get that Fry's machine. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

Hmmm...maybe building a new (cheap) system will be good for my Linux forrays.

Wow! It may be time for a new machine!

I actually played with the Lindows OS (linux)for a while just to see what it's all about, not all that much different than MS Windows.
I was tempted to keep it in for a while but chickened out and put in XP pro.
Anyone else running lindows?

What's best for learning Linux is to delete your Windows and install Linux on your main PC. That forces you to find replacements for the software that you use normally and get comfortable with them. If Linux is on a computer off in the corner (even figuratively) there's less impetus to actually use it and learn it.

That's what I did about 8 years ago and I haven't looked back since. I found having both Windows and Linux installed I was treating Linux as a toy while doing my work in Windows. I wasn't really learning it. You have to jump off the dock into the Linux pond, immerse yourself in it :)

Either that or if you get one of those Fry's PCs get two and send me one ;)

I have been buying Dell Poweredge 400SC's. They have the following in a "basic config":

P4 2.8GHz, Intel 875P chipset, 128MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, CD, floppy, tower case, built-in sound, PCI video card (ATI), mouse and keyboard, 1 year warranty, free shipping

All of this for less than $300. I then load the operating system of my choice (it doesn't come with an OS), then add additional DDR RAM (from Crucial.com), put in more hard drives and it's ready to go. Dell doesn't sell these systems anymore (as of last week), but you can get brand-new 400SC's with a one year warranty for $200, then $50-$90 for shipping. I have 4 of these that I use as desktop PCs for the family and one that I use for a server.

I'm in the market for a new machine as we speak. Amazing what you get to day for a few bucks.

My first computer was a Apple Mac 128 in 1984. It looked exactly like Windows does today.

John

Owain - I agree with you, but it is a Windows world when dealing with some third-party software and Novell Networks. I'm still trying to find a way to get onto our office network - eventually I will. But in the meantime, I need some good Linux based screenplay software. Knoppix 3.6 has wireless capability that hooks right up as soon as the live CD disk is run - so wireless inability is a thing of the past. My other two issues shouldn't be too difficult to rectify.

azasadny - XP is a good system, it's just that Linux runs faster, is less prone to viruses, is continually evolving, contains a smaller footprint on the hard drive, and best of all is completely free.

XP costs $299.00 and can only be used three times, AFAIK.

XP needs a boatload of third party virus and spyware to keep it running well. Before you know it, with a standard brand PC (Dell, IBM, etc. and all their embedded software), you're running 45 processes at once - at least I was - which made my machine slower than molasses even with a 1.3 ghz Centrino chip and 512mb of ram.

XP still needs office (for example), which costs close to $400.00. Office is part of any Linux OS when it is downloaded from the Internet.

XP takes up, what, 300 mb of HD space, while most Linux flavors are less than 10mb.

dd74,

Alot of the programs I use in my work require Windows, so I use WinXP and 2000 at home. At work, I have Linux (Red Hat) as well as SuSE and WinXP. I see the strengths and weaknesses of each OS and haven't found a "panacea" yet. I use VMWare so I can run multiple OS on a PC, you just need disk space and RAM and both of these are cheap!!

Last week I was browsing at a local computer store that also sells surplus stuff, I was looking to build a backup server. I got a dual Pentium 3 Xeon board with 2 550 Xeons, 1 gig ECC ram and onboard SCSI for $50 out the door. Came home and installed it in an old server case I had added a U2W SCSI raid card from ebay ($50), SCSI CDrom, agp vid card, 10/100 nic, and a sound card. 6 IBM 9gig SCSI drives in Raid 5 I got these for $10 ea. Now I've got a server for like $250 that would have cost about $10,000 or more brand new.

With the prices ram has been at lately I don't have a single comp here at home with less than 1 gig or ram, my video editing rig has 2 gigs.

:eek: :eek:

Very Nice !!!!!!!!


Oh, for those that do not have a Frys Electronics ( Statium sized computer store ) They have an online store / site called Outpost.com ... Some deals are on both places

Don

now if I could just find 133mhz ram cheap.


Don