Computer Replacement / Advice please
 

I currently have a really old machine (HP) at home with 433/319Ram running Wn98 with Office and Mozilla. Connection is DSL with ext firewall.

More and more I find newly loaded apps that will not / occasionally work. USB connections /devices that seem to conflict, security isses, etc, etc. I want a machine that works quickly, really good video (streaming) has the latest OS so there are no issues with backward compatibilty.

The main use is word processing, Internet, video. That's it.
I have a new flat creen and only need just the machine. I think the best $$ way is to purchase a new from one of the giant retailers with the software loaded or have one built.

There are many local retailers; Best Buy, Circuit City, etc where you can have them 'customize' a machine with the hardware and software that you want.

Advice please, thanks!

I'd get a Dell. It may sound hokey, but they are good machines that run well. On the Dell website you can pretty much choose any options that you want. I used to build my own PC's, and if I needed a no compromise machine to do a specific task I might still, but these days from the major vendors the prices can't be beat.

Sounds like you need a pretty basic PC. Nearly anything that you buy these days will come with XP and be able to do what you want.

The only question that I have is what do you mean by streaming video? That's the only thing that you may have to customize for. If you are doing something really intensive with the video then you may have a harder time getting a prebuilt with a video card that you want. In that case you may just want to buy a PC and then upgrade the card.

Get plenty of ram, 512Mb min, preferrably a Gig. Get plenty of hard drive space. Get a good video card.

Video, for example as replaying some of the road racing clips posted here.

I agree with Steve. Get a Dell. What this site for deals:

http://www.hotdealsclub.com

Dell! Sound advice. Buy as much ram and hard drive space as you can afford. You WILL use it.

What kind of budget would you like to stick with?

I guess for your purposes an intel 2.8 with 1 gb (1024mb) of memory would do the trick. The onboard video card should be a suficient for what you want to do. btw, if you find a computer, and you need to put in more memory, this is absolutely something you can do yourself.

I would avoid buying from Best Buy or Circuit City, but then again I do my own service. They are not the best deal out there. I have heard good things from folks who have went for the service guarntee at Best Buy. But be forewarned, if you ever take your machine in for service, back it all up, because the kids working on the box are prone to wiping out the hard drive to quickly solve OS problems.

I'm looking @$500-600 for just the machine. Is that doable? or am I just dreaming?

Pay for it using an AmEx card or Visa/MC with the extended benefits. AmEx will usually double the warranty for free and its a big benefit.

Dell is one of the best and the support is excellent. Am typing this out on a Dell right now...

JoeA

If you managed with a 433, the cheapest Dell with 512mb of ram, would be just fine. Don't worry about video cards. The integrated one will work just fine for what you do.

emachine - super cheap, very reliable, go direct to their website (a subsidiary of gateway).

$500-$600?

Sounds like your in the market for a Mac Mini. Will do everything that you are looking for w/out the virus/spyware worries.

Scott

My vote is for Dell also. Very pleased with them, and they will retain some resale value.

Scott

yep, for just playing some vid clips and surfing the net virtually any new PC that you buy today will work. You don't need anything special.

I have an emachine. I added a better video card so I could play some games and added a couple of fans. I think you could probably go with an emachine, but again, I'd recommend a Dell. I think there are probably a couple of Dells that you could get for $500-600 that would work just fine.

prices right now aren't the best becaus X-mas is coming up, but here's a Dell for $600 with 512mb RAM and an 80 gig Hard drive. It would work fine.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=D30CVB2&s=dhs

Here's another good one, and probably a better deal. If you go to the Dell webpage go to "small business" instead of "Home and Home Office" the small business stuff includes less crap (like a monitor) so you can add more stuff (like Office) for the same or less money.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=dim30min&s =bsd

I'd definitely recommend getting Trend Micro PC-cillin if you don't already have it. I'd not bother getting MS-Works, but Office or maybe WordPerfect suite (used to be better than office, but I don't know these days).

1 Gig of RAM is probably more than you need. 512Mb is plenty for what you say you do. I have 512mb ram, and a 2.4gHz celleron processor with about 60 gigs of HD space and I can surf the net, edit 8Mb images in photoshop, watch video full screen, pretty much anything like that. I usually have several things running at once and my PC runs fine. I can even play most games that are more than a year old. Some of the new stuff would stump my PC.

Right now what I need more than anything else is hard drive space. I have about 10 gigs of music and 25 gigs of car videos that are eating my harddrives.

I disagree, you don't need a new computer, really.

-->Get a new hard drive. The tech has come a long way and they are cheap. Check out SATA stuff.

-->Find out how much RAM your mobo chipset can handle, and upgrade to it.

-->Get a new video card.

You'll be under the cost of a new PC. Anyone who says you need a 2.4Ghz CPU with 1GB of RAM to run office and surf the internet is NUTS. You ever look at your system load while running AIM and IE?

I have a dual 300mhz PII with 512MB RAM and two 9GB 10K SCSI drives that I use everyday. It has never let me down. It's got Windows 2000, Office 2003, Photoshop 9 CS2, DreamWeaver, etc etc etc.

Before you spend $600 on a new rig, do a little research and see if what you have might just need "freshened up." Hell, just going to a clean Windows 2000 install over an old crusty Windows 98 install will make a ton of difference.

edit()

If you do get a new machine, I'd shy away from Dell. I've had nothing but problems, and so have my buddies who run em. Also, they use crappy chipsets.

Mac Mini if you like your current monitor, keyboard, mouse; low-end G5 iMac if you don't.

The good thing about brand-name systems is they're easy to buy. The bad thing about them is they're made with bottom-of-the barrel, low-budget components.

I recommended Dells because I worked at a place where everyone had 2 PC's on their desk connected to two different networks. THere was about 150 of us. All of the PC's were Dells. There were two other floors in our building for our company, all of the people on those two floors also used Dells. In 3 years we had very few issues. Actually, I had no issues, but I know that from time to time stuff must have broke. And all of these people were at least a little technical with admin rights, so there were all different kinds of software being installed and uninstalled.

I once worked someplace with Compaq computers and once worked someplace where I did some support for people with Gateway computers. Both of those were crap. That was years ago, things may have changed, but like I said. I've been around lots and lots of Dell PC's that ran like a top.

They are right though. a bunch of RAM and hard drive space will get you buy. The potential problems with the upgrade route are that a lot of times the older motherboards are limited in what sort of upgrades that you can do. The memory used by your old motherboard [i]MAY[i] be hard to find and actually more expensive than newer, faster, larger memory because it's nearly obsolete. I ran into that problem when I was ready to upgrade from my old celeron 300 that was overclocked to 450Mhz. The motherboard would only support PC100 memory and at the time that was more expensive than faster newer memory.

Good luck. Let us know what you decide and how it turns out.

I know this will start an old arguement but...I agree. I have a Mac Mini and I love it. Dumped a G4 tower and have not looked back. $499

Mac, definitely.

The *only* downsides I've seen are:
1) When people here post .wmv files, I can't watch them.
2) No games.

Beyond that, the Mac has been fantastic.

I just had to format my parent's Dell and my brother's (used to be mine) Dell. Both were P4 1.7 GHz, and we all feel lucky that it took 4 years until they needed a formatting.

My old one had a gig of Rambus ($$$) RAM, 80 GB hard drive that was more than 50% free, and until recently it ran no faster than my Powerbook, which has a slower processor and half the RAM.

Mac is the way to go if you just want video, Net, and basic word processing.

I like Dell as well. I use www.gotapex.com to watch for good deals and coupon codes. They have new ones every week, and sometimes mid-week too.

Yeah, but when you buy a MAC don't you have to get a Beetle convertible and a rainbow sticker?? j/k :D

Hardly seems worth upgrading such an old PC. By the time you add new hard drive, more DRAM, new video card, Win XP, antivirus, you'll have spent $250 or more, plenty of hours (installing hardware, setting jumpers, installing Windows, downloading patches and service packs, etc) and it'll still be an old PC. It'll also be hard to move the HDD and video card to your next machine if they are for the getting-obsolete parallel ATA and PCI buses.

Considering how cheap a new no-frills PCs are, is it worth it?

If you are on a really tight budget, or just enjoy doing things as inexpensively as possible, drop by your local used computer store and see what they have.

Or get a Mac mini. Tiny, affordable, and it's a Mac.

BTW I can see WMV files fine using Windows Media Player for Mac OS.

I guess I just got really sick of futzing with PCs. Our last home PC finally choked its (3rd?) hard drive, I'm going to toss it in the trash. I have formatted c: and reinstalled Windows for the LAST TIME.

A few months ago I was in the same situation as you. I really wanted to upgrade what I had but it just cascaded into an almost completely new machine. I was able to keep my old DVD burner and player two old harddrives and keyboard, moniter etc but added all this below.

A Dell woul have surely been cheaper but I don't know if it would be compatible to what I put together.
I never built a computer before but it really wasn't too hard at all. Most dificult was setting up BIOS for the first time. Mechanically putting it together was quite easy and even fun. Theres so much help online for this stuff.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1130788188.jpg

Yellowline - you can download windows media player for OS X to watch WMVs. I sometimes have problems, but usually it works fine. I understand not wanting MS software on your computer though. :p

I don't like Dells. They are fine for people who are on a 2 year upgrade cycle, but it sounds like asphaltgambler keeps his computers longer. The motherboard and power supply in a Dell box are proprietary. When (not if) they break, it'll basically force another updgrade. For most people that means buying another Dell, so they have no incentive to use better stuff. For people like me who stick with a 3-4 year cycle, an Apple is the way to go. Or build your own PC from parts of your choosing - but that takes a little more patience, or a nerdy friend who will do it for you.

BTW, owning a Mac doesn't make you gay! I was really worried at first, but I think the sports car and the beer produces antibodies. I just gotta be careful not accidentally drink wine coolers.

Main reason is I want win XP with office. If you try to buy the software alone; retail you are @$600.

New replacement machine with the latest OS & Office suite + firewall looks like the best and easist way to go. Dell may be the way after looking at their site, but I will wait until the xmas season to shop.

I dunno about the Mac.........................everytime I walk into a computer store their stuff is always in the back, kinda like the porn section at the video store :D

Drive into Tysons Corner and go to the Apple Store there (in the mall). Third party retail has always been a sick joke in the Apple world.

For WMV files on the Mac you can use Microsoft Media Player for the Mac or this cool little app that I just discovered.

http://www.flip4mac.com/ the app is WMV Player. Let's you run wmv files right inside of Quicktime.

A ton of pricing options, if you just want to play the files it's $9.99 All the way up to full editing capabilities for $179.99.

Factor in that you can replace Microsoft Office with OpenOffice for FREE and your a happy camper. www.openoffice.org

Scott

Sorry to go way back up the thread - is this with or without XP and Office (even OEM they are about half that budget here in NZ).

$500-600 would include XP and maybe Office depending upon what you buy.

hmmm let's compare..
 

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1130806663.jpg http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1130806695.gif

Mac Mini + NeoOffice or OpenOffice.org will solve your worries.

mini
 

and it's the size of two grilled cheese sandwiches stacked on top of each other!

Re: hmmm let's compare..
 

You are the king of disingenuous comparisons!

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5...24/omen24k.jpg[CODE]

http://voodoopc.blogspot.com/2005/10/its-24-karats-of-bling-bilng.html

The OMEN 24K is a 24 Karat Gold Plated Luxury PC, featuring only the best of breed components on the market. Starting with the liquid cooler, even the blocks are hand picked. We use the best motherboard from ASUS, AMD Athlon 64 FX or Dual Core processor, and limited edition memory. We're shipping the OMEN 24K in a metal travel box (which also has wheels to make it easy to move around).

And in 6 months you'll have the most expensive outdated PC in the world?

Don't hate the playa, hate the game...

Re: Re: hmmm let's compare..
 

i'm gonna have to look that word up.

Re: Re: hmmm let's compare..
 

dis·in·gen·u·ous
Pronunciation: "di-s&n-'jen-y&-w&s
Function: adjective
: lacking in candor; also : giving a false appearance of simple frankness : CALCULATING
- dis·in·gen·u·ous·ly adverb
- dis·in·gen·u·ous·ness noun

come here so i can slap you!