What do I get?

What do I get? (Full Version)

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Tailslide -> What do I get? (11/6/2005 5:03:49)
You know when you thought you were going to have one of those nice quiet Sundays with nothing to do but read the papers etc? Well I thought I was going to have one of those. I'm not. My desktop started making death rattle noises last night - didn't actually die but it's going to... Sitting next to it is a nice shiny harddrive with one touch back-up facility etc... which I haven't yet connected to the damn thing (yes I know it's stupid but I've been busy). Thankfully all my current work files are online so I can get at them and I use freebie software for website designing so I'm not too worried about that. I'm going to try to start the PC up and get the harddrive connected and copy over all my graphics files and e-mails later on this morning - hopefully I can get it all set up and copied before the PC dies for good. Anyway - on to the point of the post. I'm going to have to replace it and I'd like some advice as to what I should be looking for. AMD or Pentium? What's the basic memory I should be looking for these days and what about processor speed etc etc. I don't use it for games, I don't use it for music, I do store lots of graphics and photos. I do need windows (sorry Bobby) for the moment. What would you all suggest? Edit: I should add that I already have a nice flat 19 inch screen so I don't need that. I don't really want to spend more than Ł1000 (about $1600 US?)

jaybee -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 5:28:11)
Go to the Dell site and pick up the best you can afford. They have an outlet store on there which gives you bigger savings but the machines are refurbished and can come with problems. The ordinary home section has some good deals though. Processor I tend to stick with Intel but I've had AMD in the past with no probs. Go big on the HDD and plenty of memory. The new graphics apps really hammer RAM. The only warning I would give is that they have 2 types of machine. HT (Hyperthreading) and Dual Core. My machine has HT and I had no end of problems with it blue screening. Took me ages to work out that graphics software conflicts with HT technology so I've now turned HT off in the BIOS and it runs OK. Oh and if you buy one, Dell always deliver with the machine set up and ready to go. If you have a huge HDD it's formatted as a single partition which is all very well but takes ages to defrag and virus check. It also comes with stuff like NIS and AOL installed but not activated. My advice? 1. When ordering make sure you don't pay for an engineer to come and install it for you. An idiot friend of mine paid for that option. She'd bought a laptop! The engineer arrived, took it out of the box, placed it on the desk and switched on! [sm=rolleyes.gif] 2. Before you do anything else, reformat the HDD and partition it

jaybee -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 5:35:08)
quote: Edit: I should add that I already have a nice flat 17 inch screen so I don't need that. I don't really want to spend more than Ł1000 (about $1600 US?) You can choose not to have the monitor

Tailslide -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 10:19:04)
All done! Better get some more work to pay for it now!

dpf -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 10:46:29)
there are many opinions - here is mine. the power of pcs has gone up so much that I buy "low- end" - I dont play games so I dont need that power. low end today means $800 - $1000 w monitor for me. My last one last winter was a gateway with flat lcd monitor for $750. i have had good results with both pentium and amd. i buy from well known - gateway, compaq or dell. I DO NOT buy the extended warranties - Ive been burned and find I can get repairs locally pretty cheap. hard drives as soo big now that 40G to 80G is fairly low end - beyond that, I would rather put $150 into an external drive fro safe backup dont skimp on RAM - 512MB is starting to become standard (my first pc was 1 mb) but I would go for 1 gig of RAM. 3 1/2 flopy drives are disappearing but I bought an external usb one for $15. of course get a cd burner - dvd player is nice - dvd burner? if you think you need it. anyway......

jaybee -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 11:11:11)
Gateway went bust over here and shut everything down. Don't know whether they continued in the US but I've heard recently that they're starting up again. Compaq wouldn't touch with a bargepole these days. Harv used to be a Compaq engineer and they had some very strange break fix procedures farmed out to competitor companies which really didn't do much on the customer care front. Dell have their good and bad days but on the whole I've been pleased. (and I'm not saying that because H works for them) [:D]

Tailslide -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 12:14:19)
In the end, having compared similar Dell and Mesh PCs I went with Mesh - "design your own" option and got as much memory and the best processor I could afford - AMD dual core... something or other (yeah I'm a real expert!). Don't need a new monitor or fancy speakers or a printer etc. Only thing is I have to wait 2 weeks to get my hands on it! Managed to do a full copy of everything on my dying pc so I'm covered if it falls over in the interim.

jaybee -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 14:46:02)
GASP! MESH! Ooooh dear. Never mind. I have a spare Dell so phone me as soon as the Mesh blows up! [;)][;)][;)][;)][;)][;)]

BobbyDouglas -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 14:55:41)
Everything will depend on what you can get where you live, and what price you pay for that. For $1600, you can build a VERY fast computer in the US. Parts are pretty cheap here, we have places like NewEgg and ZipZoomFly to thank for that. Looks like you decided on Mesh (no clue who they are). If you know how to put ram into a computer, you might want to think about building it yourself, and getting some high end parts. I've seen the dual core AMD Athlon X2 3800+ for around $240, which is a tad more than a single core P4 3.2 Ghz. I think you're in the UK, where Taz lives. Taz went the Intel route since it was the best performance for the price. Here int he US, AMD (in most situations) will always be the best price/performance by a longshot. I'll put together a simple 5 min list of what I would get if I was spending $1600.

BobbyDouglas -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 15:07:49)
K8N NEO4 Platinum - $130 2x1gb ram sticks - VS2GBKIT400C3 - $210 7800 GT Video Card w/ dual dvi - NX7800GT-VT2D256E L - $329 2 x 74gb raptor 10k rpm drives - WD740GD - $143 X 2 2 x 250gb WD 7200 rpm drives - WD2500JS - $90 x 2 AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - ADA3800BVBOX - $320 SeaSonic S12-600 ATX12V 600W - S12-600 - $159.00 Then pick out a $100 case & it brings you to $1700. Decide if you want to pay another $100 and have the raptors, or shave off that extraa almost $300, and put yourself at a $1400 machine.

jaybee -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 15:48:43)
For the UK please double all prices. [:@]

BobbyDouglas -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 15:55:49)
lol, it might be better to just pay someone in the states to build it, then pay the $200 or so to ship it. You can go the $1400 route and see if you can get it shipped for $200.

Taz -> RE: What do I get? (11/6/2005 16:37:10)
For a grand I could have put together a beast of a PC with some nice stuff inside to keep you going for a long time and it would be easily upgradeable. I wouldn't have touched Dell or gone near a PC World, I just don't think you get your monies worth from them. Especially if you how much stuff costs on it's own and you have more choise in what you can get if you know where to look. Me and a friend often sit down and beat Dell's prices for a "full" system by window shopping the parts of the same spec or above for their machines and we pretty much always beat their price. Then even with having to pay a builder to build the rig we still would come out on top.

Tailslide -> RE: What do I get? (11/7/2005 6:51:18)
One of these days I'll have to sit down and figure out how the innards of the damn grey box works! I can plug in memory upgrades and clean out the fans but that's about the size of it! I've got a Mesh currently (big UK supplier) and I've had a couple of problems with it over the last 4 years - but because it had a good onsite warranty they came along and fixed it for me. The problem with these big suppliers (apart from mark-up obviously) is that we've all heard horror stories about them. My neighbour's got a Dell and has had a nightmare with it. I wouldn't touch PC world with a barge-pole. Jaybee's got Mesh horror stories.... Plus you've got all the horror stories about trying to find a local pc "expert" if you don't have a warranty, who will come along and fix your computer for a reasonable cost. Oh well, we'll see... Edit: oooh look - I got Microsoft Works free! I'm so happy now.[8\|]

bobby -> RE: What do I get? (11/9/2005 14:15:36)
quote: Edit: oooh look - I got Microsoft Works free! I'm so happy now.:) I saw that on sale at Best Buy this week, LOL. Who would pay for that? You're going to love your AMD dual core... if you have at least 1GB of RAM it will never break a sweat. Go ahead... just try to overload the processor. I would say "just try and crash it" but since it's Windows that would be too easy [;)]

dpf -> RE: What do I get? (11/9/2005 14:31:27)
quote: I would say "just try and crash it" but since it's Windows that would be too easy ..lol..actually, in 18 months of XP, I have never had a crash. but i get it..[:D]

Tailslide -> RE: What do I get? (11/9/2005 14:40:50)
2gb [:)]

Giomanach -> RE: What do I get? (11/9/2005 14:42:57)
Gios Rule in buying PCs: DONT BUY A PREMADE ONE. Far too overpriced, and your tied to a warranty blah blah moan moan grumble grumble. As for spend Ł1k on a new machine, you mad? My PC: Intel P4 3.6Ghz 1GB RAM 1x 200GB HDD 1x 80GB HDD D/L DVD Burner CD Burner 128MB Radeon 9200SE Sapphire FDD Gamin Case (sexeh) Logitech Media Play Mouse Logitech Media Keyboard 17" TFT Monitor Total Cost: about Ł600 I already had the software...so no need to buy that. I'm just a g33k....:P

bobby -> RE: What do I get? (11/9/2005 15:50:20)
quote: in 18 months of XP, I have never had a crash. I'm going on 11 months now without a BSOD on newest machine. We've had to hard-kill it a few times because it seized up and Explorer crashes weekly. At least it can recover itself within a minute or two... [8\|] 2GB RAM... yummy

dpf -> RE: What do I get? (11/9/2005 17:38:43)
quote: 2GB RAM... yummy I remember thinking 64Kb <edit> MB of Ram was amazing...then 128 - wow

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