Help with computer: Gateway v. Dell (specific models)

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, my old computer is really starting to give me the shits.

Firstly, it’s an old PIII 733MHz with 256Mb RAM and a 20Gig hard drive. When i bought it three and a half years ago, i could not envision ever needing more processing power or storage space than that. Now, however, it’s really not fast enough, and the hard drive isn’t big enough, to cope with processing and storing my digital photographs. Graphics-intensive software like Photoshop and FlashMX don’t run particularly quickly on my computer, and storing digital photos can take up lots of hard drive space. Also, i’d like to get into digital video a bit, and maybe run Adobe Premier, and i’ve heard that this requires some pretty good processing power.

Secondly, speed and power issues aside, the computer has been a bit temperamental for the past year. Now, sometimes when i’m browsing the internet or just using a program, it will freeze, or even simply restart for no reason. It’s not a spyware or trojan or virus problem, as i’m pretty conscientious about using Norton, Spybot, AdAware, Sygate Firewall, and SpywareBlaster. I’ve even tried erasing the HD altogether and starting again, but the problem persists, suggesting that it may be a hardware issue.

Anyway, adding up all these issues and a good chunk of consumerist rationalization, i’ve decided that i need a new computer. I’m going to go with an out-of-the-box system, because i really don’t want the hassle of building it myself. I’m contemplating talking to the guys at the local independent computer store, but right now i’m leaning towards a Dell or a Gateway. Andd here’s where i need advice.

The two systems i’m comparing right now are:

System 1: Dell Dimension 8300 Desktop

[ul]
[li]P4 3.0 Ghz with 800MHz Front Side Bus[/li][li]Windows XP Home[/li][li]512Mb RAM @ 400MHz[/li][li]160Gb HDD[/li][li]16x DVD-ROM and 8x DVD+RW drives[/li][li]17" Flat Panel Display[/li][li] Price: $1,039, including shipping (after using $100 online coupon)[/li][/ul]System 2: Gateway 610X Special Media Center PC

[ul]
[li]P4 2.6 Ghz with Hyperthreading Technology and 800MHz Front Side Bus[/li][li]Windows XP Media Center Edition[/li][li]512Mb RAM[/li][li]120Gb HDD[/li][li]DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive[/li][li]17" TFT Wide Screen (16x9) Active Display Matrix[/li][li]Price: $1,139 including shipping[/li][/ul] So, i’m initially leaning towards the Dell. It has a faster processor, a larger hard drive, and a DVD+RW drive. It’s also $100 cheaper. The only real advantage i can see with the Gateway is the ability to watch it as a regular TV, and the fact that it has a nice 16:9 screen ratio for watching DVDs etc. Also, its design would take up less room, and cause less clutter, than the Dell’s more traditional tower setup.

A question about processor speed: both computers have P4 processors with 800MHz FSB and 512Mb RAM. The Dell has 3.0GHz and the Gateway has 2.6GHz. In everyday situations, using programs like Photoshop or Flash or Premier, how much difference would there be in performance between these two computers? And does the Gateway’s “Hyperthreading Technology” make any noticeable difference to its performance?

Also, what does Windows XP Media Center Edition have that the garden variety XP Home doesn’t?

So, there are my choices. Any advice would be most welcome. If you think that i should be pursuing a completely different option than Dell or Gateway, plpease feel free to weigh in with advice. But remember, i’m really not interested in building it myself.

2

First of all, speaking from years of experience fixing computers, both Dell and Gateway computers just plain suck. The componets like the motherboard & powersupply tend to be the shoddiest POSs you can get in a computer. That and they always come with a down of useless junk on the machine. Also, both of those machines come with budget video cards; a $1000 computer these days should have a mid-range card at the very least.

Since you do not want to build your own computer, I reccomend going to your local computer store, and seeing what a $1000 machine there will get you. At that price you should be able to get a machine without the crappy componets, and probably will be able to get an Athlon64 for a processor, along with at least a Radeon 9600 vid card, and similar sized drives.

If you do have to chose between them, I would go with the Dell, due to the cheaper price, bigger drive, better video card, easier to upgrade, and somewhat faster processor. Both processors have hyper-threading, which can be helpful in some situations.

Note though the Dell uses a 3.0ghz Prescott core processor, while the Gateway uses an older Northwood core processor. But the older Northwood cores actually run faster, clock for clock, than the newer cores, and the Northwoods put out less heat to boot. I don’t know why anyone would buy a Prescott if they could get a similary clocked Northwood. The speed difference between the two would be hard to notice.

3

I don’t know about the motherboard in my Dimension 8100, but I am still pissed at Dell about the power supply. Hey, I understand that power supplies fail at times. I have seen two or three fail with computers I or my family have owned. But there is no excuse, other than greedy bastardness, to use a $90 propriatary power supply. That little thing right there is enough to make me shy away from buying another Dell.

4

Thanks for the advice. I think i will have a chat to them. That’s where i got my current computer, and i’ve generally been happy with it (despite my grumbling above).

On the issue of price, however, it’s worth remembering that for my $1,000 with Dell i get not only the computer, but a 17" flat panel monitor. I don’t think that i’d be able to get a similar setup from the local guys, with a flat panel monitor, for anything approaching the same price.

I definitely need a new monitor as well, as i’m currently running an old 17" CRT with 800x600 resolution, and i’d really like a flat monitor both for space issues and because they don’t flicker the way that CRTs do.

5

Aside from the issue of using a proptieary system, was there actually any problem with the power supply.

Did your Dell power supply fail? If so, did it happen within the warranty period, and was Dell good about fixing the problem. Finally, when it’s working, is the power supply adequate to run the computer?

I’m asking because i don’t know much about this sort of thing. Hell, until recently all i knew about computer power supply was that you plug them into the wall! :slight_smile:

6

The supply failed. Dells (at least my Dell) use a four-LED system on the back of the computer where if all four leds are green, everything is good. If some of the LEDs aren’t green, but yellow or out, you’ve got a problem. Unfortunately, nowhere in the user documentation is there an explanation of what it could mean other than “call tech support.”

It failed about 15 months after I bought it, so it was out of warranty. I didn’t buy the extended warranty because, in my experience, either computer components either fail well within a year or they keep on going for years, even possibly past the useful end of life, so this failure was a surprise to me. The tech support wasn’t very helpful; they had me strip the entire computer before deciding that it had to be the power supply. So I didn’t send the computer to Dell. Instead, I went to a local computer place where they confirmed the power supply failure (I took it out of the computer and just brought them the supply) and had them replace the supply. Well, I thought we had taken care of that, but they didn’t know and I didn’t know that it was propetiary, so it took an extra week to finally get the supply from Dell. There was an extra pin or something on the motherboard.

The supply appears to have enough power. I’m running two optical drives and two hard drives, plus the floppy. I don’t know what would happen if I add the load of the Zip drive that I currently have installed but unplugged due to a lack of IDEE slots.

I’ve said before that Dell has some of the best case design I’ve seen. Easy to get into and easy to move stuff, like the supply, up and out of the way to work in. However, I think when I upgrade I’m going to build it myself, as I have a lot of what I already want and would just be replacing the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and power supply. I might stick with the Dell case, though, if Dell conformed properly to the ATX form factor.

7

I would agree with the other posters here – Dell and Gateway suck. I assume that you don’t want to build your own system. Fortunately, there are mail-order outfits that will build a computer for you for a reasonable price – often to your specifications. Here are a couple of the ones I found:

CyberPower – I bought a computer from them two years ago, no complaints

iBuyPower

You may also want to get a copy of Computer Shopper magazine for more leads, but check the prices on their website first to see what changes have happened between press time and now.

If you had to choose between the two, get the Dell. Their tech support, while waning, is still fairly good. However, I would recommend upgrading the OS to Windows XP Professional, as it provides some useful functionality, like backups, Remote desktop, and advanced networking.

And to answer your other question:
Windows XP Media Center Edition is a superset of XP Professional that has more features catered toward the recording, storage, and playback of digital media. Here’s a complete feature list. To be honest, you could find most of the stuff bundled with XP Media Center Edition in other programs.

8

I don’t know what kind of DRM that OS has, either, but I bet it’s substantial. I agree that there are lots of programs, both free and commerical, that will probably do better than what MS put in.

9

Thanks for the links, Andros. I wasn’t aware of those companies, and their prices are certainly comparable to Dell and Gateway for similar systems.

Now a couple more questions, because i’ve never had the opportunity to actually select my own components before–Dell and Gateway don’t allow it. If i went with a computer from Cyberpower or iBuyPower:

  1. Which is the best processor: Intel P4 or Athlon 64?

  2. Is the standard 350W power supply OK for the job?

  3. Is it worth spending $50 to upgrade from a 2.8 to a 3.0Ghz processor?

  4. Is the standard motherboard OK, or should i upgrade?

  5. Is the ATI RADEON 9200 SE 8X AGP 128MB DDR W/ TV-OUT & DVI a decent video card?

Sorry for all the questions, but i guess if i’m going to think about staying away from the big-box companies, i should do it right.

10

You’ll probably want to upgrade that power supply and motherboard (the more expansion slots the better, imho). I have an Athlon at work and a Pentium at home and I honestly couldn’t tell you the difference between the two (though I’m not a power media user). The video card isn’t top of the line - you might want to go with the ATI Radeon 9600 series, or if your willing to spend top dollar, their X800 series.

11

I heartily endorse the previous posters. You need to choose the third system. The first two will disappoint.

12

Is the Athlon 64 their new 64-bit processor? There is nothing out on the market at the moment to take advantage of 64-bit processing, so if the Athlon is much more than the P4, I’d probably stick with the P4. However, you can get an Athlon 32-bit processor for less than the P4 and it’ll be just as good (you’ll have to make sure to get the correct motherboard) if not better. Personally, I’ve used both Athlon and Intel processors over the years and I’ve never seen anything to make me automatically choose one over the other.

Also, honestly, I don’t know what you’d do with a 3 GHz processor. For years, the driving factor behind hardware improvements was the gaming market. Still is, to a large degree, but the development and interest of home video and phot editing has helped too. I’ll admit that I don’t do Photoshop or the like, but I’m still running my old 1.3 GHz P4 with 256 megs of RDRAM (stay far far away from RDRAM; this was a mistake I am not happy I made) and a NVidia GeForce 2 32 MB video card and it handles almost all the current FPS and other high-resource games just fine. Don’t let me stop you buying whatever you want, especially if there’s not much of a price difference, but don’t let someone talk you into upgrades that you really won’t need.

13

You’re probably right that i don’t need the 3.0Ghz. Of course, when i first bought my 733MHz system three and a half years ago, i never thought i’d need all that power either. :slight_smile: I guess i just wanted to get the fastest machine that’s within my price range.

On the CyberPower issue, i’ve been doing a bit of reading on various review websites, and i must say that i’m a little put off by the high percentage of extremely negative customer reviews of this company. The most common complaints seems to be that the computers fail to operate in a satisfactory manner, and that customer service sucks dogs’ balls. Those CyberPower systems seem pretty good on paper, but that’s not much good to me if the thing doesn’t even work out of the box, as quite a few customer reviews allege.

I think i’m now even more confused than when i started. :slight_smile:

14

I believe my roommate got a CyberPower. I don’t know much about his system, other than the fan is incredibly loud. I also have heard that their systems have a higher tendency to arrive DOA. Honestly, I still would suggest looking into a local place. You’ll probably get the computer quicker, you’ll save on shipping costs, might save some money, are supporting a local business, and if anything goes wrong with it they’ll know what they put in it and instead of getting on tech support with someone in India (who will tell you to strip the entire motherboard for no good reason–TWICE!), you can take it down there sometime and have them actually look at it.

15

I also agree with the above posters concerning looking for a local builder. You are likely to pay more up front but you will have a easier upgrade path in the future should you need it. You will save money if you buy a CPU which is a generation behind the latest but get a motherboard that is capable of running them. Later when prices fall again you can easily have the processor changed. The speed of a computer is not just CPU power. Consider type of hard drive, RAM amount and speed and the motherboard chipset. They all play a factor in the speed. I have the same case and power supply now and have upgraded twice. You should get nicer components as well. As for the monitor I always prefered CRT’s for digital photos, games and movies. Have you ever run Photoshop from 2 monitors? Its neat as one screen can have all the tools handy and the other is just for the project you are working on. Good Luck

16

I thought i’d give this a bump in case any of the weekday Dopers who haven’t seen it care to weigh in on the issue.

I’m about to go and have a chat to the people at my local independent computer store (“The Little Shop of Hardware”) and see what sort of system they can build that’s within my price range. As i suggested earlier, i think the real difficulty will be in getting a comparable system with a decent monitor.

Toddly: after reading your post, i did a bit of online reading about CRTs and LCDs, and it does seem that most graphic designers and digital image people still prefer CRTs due to their better contrast levels and color purity. This had never even occurred to me before; i always assumed that LCDs must be better for everything. More expensive = better! Right? :slight_smile:

I have indeed used Photoshop with two monitors. My university’s Digital Media Center has such a setup, and once i got used to it i really thought it was cool. Maybe i should think about using two CRTs; my desk space is large enough to permit such an extravagance.

17

Another Dell and especially Gateway blow chunks person here. In the past few months I’ve built a dream system piece by piece and I did some intense research for my girlfriend, who declined a custom computer, and wanted something off the shelf.

I’ll assume we’re going for the whole tamale in one shot, and not a custom job.

This one is up there with Windows Vs. Linux, Tastes great or less filling, etc

When I was looking for a CPU, after I factored performance, reliability and value together, the P4 came out on top. IIRC the P5 will be available around Jan, so the P4 will prbably be priced to move.

Check here for the full lowdown on power.

No, not really.

Make sure you get one that will support your new fangled P4. The board should support HyperThreading, and if the CPU is 800fsb, the board should support that too.

Decent enough. When I was putting together my super comp, I bought that very card as a temp, until I could save up for 9700 or 9800. Now my roommate has it, and he loves it. He does a lot of intensive graphic design, is a avid gamer, and the thing has done him right.

No problem, we want to make sure you’re straight before you plunk down some serious coin.

Btw I recommend checking this site out, it’s a wealth of info.

http://www.tomshardware.com

Ironically the best deal for my girlfriend’s off the shelve box, after months of comparison, was an HP Pavillion from CompUSA. :smiley:

18

Thanks, World Eater.

I guess the main reason that i started my search by looking at Dell is that there are Dell computers all over the place on my university campus, including the grad student lounge in my own department, and they all seem to work fine. Also, i know a few people who have purchased Dells for home use, and are happy with them.

Of course, i’ve heard all the horror stories, especially regarding service and customer support. But i’ve also, on these very message boards, seen quite a few people (who actually know computers) say that, if you’re not likely to upgrade your copmponents, then Dell can be a good way to go.

I’m certainly open to other suggestions, though.

Yeah, i think so. I just don’t have the energy to learn everything i would need to know in order to go piece by piece, or to build it myself. I just want to buy something that works.

I assume that if i buy a complete system (whether from Dell or HP or whoever), they will have installed a board that can cope with the processor, etc.?

I should add that i’m not a computer gamer at all, so perhaps a really high-end video card is not necessary, although i would like to play around with Adobe Premier at some stage. Most of my graphics-related work is with digital pictures in Photoshop, and with digital pictures and basic vector graphics in FlashMX.

That leads me to my next question, i guess.

I had initially assumed that places like CompUSA and BestBuy would probably be the worst places to get a computer, but after checking their websites it seems that a decent-spec system can be had for a reasonable price. The question is, which system?

Now, i’ve heard from many people that one should avoid e-Machines computers like the plague. I’ve heard mixed reports about Compaq PCs. And i don’t really know very much about HP.

I went and visited my local computer store today. It’s one of those places with old hard drive towers piled almost to the ceiling, and a bunch of guys in the back working on computers. Their prices seemed quite a bit higher than equivalent systems elsewhere. For example, they had the following system:

P4 2.8GHz
2x120Gb SATA HDDs
1024Mb RAM
4x DVD-RW/CD-RW drove
256Mb GeForce FX5200 video
leyboard, mouse, speakers
WinXP Home
No monitor

$1699

Now i know that this system has 240Gb of HD space, and 1Gb of RAM, but that still seems pretty expensive to me. I was initially hoping to keep my outlay under $1200. Maybe i’m expecting too much?

19

Let me correct myself, Dells are not bad computers at all, I just personally don’t like the value.

Specifically, what I don’t like…

The power, the memory, and the case are proprietary. Power supply goes? You can only get a replacement from Dell, and it ain’t cheap. Ditto for memory, their stuff can only work on your comp, and it’s more expensive. Next, the case, which can have a very strange internal form factor, making upgrades difficult. My roommate has a Dell and he couldn’t upgrade his motherboard unless he bought a new case, it simply didn’t fit right on the inside. Lastly, when looking for my girlfriend’s computer, we found a decent price and then were quietly socked in the fine print with a $100 shipping. From then on, we noticed every “phantom purchase” we configured, had some sneaky things in the fine print. Not a company I want to give me money to. As always, YMMV.

Not a bad way to go under certain circumstances, but there are better ways.

Fair enough, there are some great off the shelve deals around. There is certainly something to be said for opening the box and plugging it in.

Yes, everything should be matched up internally. Do keep in mind that the parts will work together fine, but they won’t necessarily be top level. So the video card will work, but it can still be a cheaply or a good one. That will be left up to you, the informed consumer to determine if it’s a good value or not. Usually the comp companies will cheap you out on things they can slip under the radar. Sound cards, motherboards, and video cards are usually where they’ll get you.

Well a Radion 9200 actually is more of an entry-level card, but it boosts some nice performance. Most of the systems you’re looking at should have a ATI 9200 or a 9600, or a Nvidia 5200FX, any of which will serve you well.

Yeah, I was loathe to deal with them as well. I wouldn’t give best buy a dime, so for me it was up to CompUSA. I don’t have time now, but I’ll look around a little later tonight and see if I can find anything.

Yes, don’t even think about an Emachine. I’ve had good experience with HP, that’s what my girlfriend ended up buying. Keep in mind that these boxes mostly have more in common then they do differences. The trick is looking at the little details, which one gives you a 8X CD drive instead of a 4X, but they are the same price. Memory is a good one too, some identically priced systems will give you 512, while some will be 256.

Yep that’s way too much. We’ll have you buy the parts and ship it to a Dopergeek’s house for assembly before I’d let you buy that thing.

20

I had a power supply fail one, and got a guy in a mom and pop outfit to fix it for $25. The computer’s still going strong.

Between Gateway and Dell, I’d get an abacus. In brand name boxes, HP is better. I’m more of a white box guy, myself, but my wife and two children all love their HPs (2 desktops and 1 portable).