I am in the market for a home computer. I used to know all sorts of things about computers and what I would look for when (if) I ever took the leap and bought one. This was some time ago, however, and I just haven’t bothered keeping up with all the advances and the lingo. (As a point of illustration, the last time I really researched the idea all the computer mags were high on the idea of the new Pentium chip, which was a leap forward from the 486s we were all using at the time. So go easy on me).
I would be using the computer primarily for work-realted stuff at home, so I would be running Microsoft Office 2000, and crankin’ on big ol’ Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint stuff in particular. I and my wife would also be using it to surf the net and (of course) spend time at the SDMB (well, me anyway). I’d like it be able to handle some of the fun stuff one does on the net these days – downloading music, viewing short films, maybe making a dopey family web page, etc. – but I’m not planning on playing any graphic-intensive games (my Playstation may be old, but I likes it fine).
Here is my list of demands/questions for said computer:[ul][li]It must be cheap. This point cannot be stressed enough. I am not looking for the latest zillion Mhz pentium 15 Ferrari model. I am looking for something reasonbly fast with decent memory and HD storage, etc. I don’t have a lot to spend and I don’t need a lot of gee-whiz stuff.[/li]
[li]What are the minimum requirements for a decent PC these days? What kind of processor speed, RAM, etc would be best for my situation? By way of comparison, I use a HP Vectra at work that has a Pentium 3 and 128 megs of RAM and it seems to get the job done fine (though I would want something a little more powerful for my home – I won’t have the luxury of calling the IT guys for a free upgrade a year down the road).[/li]
[li]What kind of CD drive should I get? Are plain ol’ CD-ROM drives dinosaurs now? Do I need a CD RW drive? Am I even using the right acronyms?[/li]
[li]What are good/reliable brands now? We have a Gateway store in Madison that I was thinking of patronizing. I don’t really want to go to Best Buy and have to dig through all sorts of ISP service rebate offers to figure out how much the thing will actually cost while listening to Jimmy the slacker’s monologue about how it sucks now that Napster is dead.[/li]
[li]Modem recommendations? I’m not prepared at this point to shell out 50 bucks a month on a cable modem, so I’m looking at the ol’ dial-up. What are the speeds/standards I should look for?[/li]
[li]Anything in particular you would suggest I get? Do not say “Get a Mac.” If you do, I won’t be held responsible for the direction this thread will take. I really mean to ask if there are features or gadgets I should look on as essential for today’s computers.[/ul][/li]Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
Get a Dell Dimension L–I can vouch for the business-intended setup. I buy them all the time for my company at work and in the two years since we’ve had them, we’ve had zero hardware related problems. None. Fantastic machines. You can pick one up with a monitor for less than $1000.
It won’t help you play the latest games or render a huge 3d scene for you, but it doesn’t really sound like you give a crap about that–they’re reasonably fast, very reliable and very cheap.
In my opinion, I would go to a Ma and Pa computer store and say ask what kind of system they can through together in your price range. If you don’t need a speed demon, you can probably still get a 650-700+ MHz Athlon or p3 for damn cheap.
I would tend to stay away from mass produced machines… the ma and pa stores seem to be better for 1-1 support too in my experiences.
The Dell Dimension L series is a good recommendation. I’m pretty sure that’s what I picked out for my fiancee a little while back, and she’s happy with it.
The key to buying a reasonably-priced system is not buying the latest, fastest processor. You’ll never, ever notice the difference between a 1.7 GHz machine and a 1.2 GHz. I’d recommend something like:
1.0-1.2 GHz Athlon (better CPU than Intel, at a better price), or a 1.2 GHz Pentium III.
512 megs of SDRAM (should cost only around $100)
or
256 megs if the ram is DDR or something else more expensive
40 gig hard drive
GeForce2 GTS video card with 32 megs of ram. Even if you don’t play games, having a decent video card is a good idea (think of it as a secondary video CPU), and this is a good value right now.
Unless you want to burn CDs, a plain CD-ROM drive is fine. I’d avoid a DVD drive – almost no one actually watches movies on their computer, and you can easily add one later if you need to.
Get a plain 56k modem. Should cost around $30.
Avoid Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. like the plague. Their service is abysmal and their salespeople rarely know anything, and will always try to steer you toward an over-priced system with a rip-off extended warranty. Dell is good. I’ve heard Gateway is good.
Thanks for the responses so far guys. Good info in there, especially from Giraffe. I’m probably leaning towards a Dell or Gateway, but bernse’s idea of a Ma & Pa store build-to-order machine sounds good too.
And hey there Tygr and rjung – I don’t mean to give the impression that I dislike Macs. I have nothing at all against them. The company I work for used to be a completely Mac-filled place a while back, and I liked 'em fine.
My issue is compatibility. I need to dial into work to download spreadsheets, take disks home with me, etc. and I don’t want the hassle of dealing with Mac vs PC conversion.
(Oh, and thanks for the welcome back, Tygr. But “dig out that album?” Hmpf. That album should be on the top of your stack always!)
Keep the opinions comin’ if you got 'em. The more I know, the better.
I’m with bernse on this. An even better suggestion would be to build your own model. It’s not very hard now-a-days. Basically you just slap everything together. Just make sure that all the components are compatible.
Amp is right – building your own is the best route. However, if you don’t know anything you probably really want some form of technical support. You don’t have to know that much to build your own system, but you do have to know something.
(Even aside from the price and quality issues, building your own system is a lot of fun. Plus you learn a lot. So I’m very much in favor of it, but it’s not for the faint of heart.)
I most definetly agree, building would be the #1 way to go, but I doubt very much bottle of smoke wants to attempt that right off the bat.
The nice thing about getting a small computer store to build one is that you can customize almost anything.
Want a LS120 superfloppy instead of a 1.44? No sweat. How about a DVD player instead of a 50x CD-ROM? Sure! Burner? No problem. 256Megs? Now you’re talking.
They usually don’t BS you with some extended warranty shit either.
Totally customizable and generally the labor charges when you buy a system from them is negligible. If you priced out the seperate parts and added them up chances are they might be charging you $10-$50 bucks (if that) to assemble.
I got me a cordless screwdriver, a staple gun, and some duct tape. How hard could it be?
I actually did think about building my own (for the same reason Giraffe suggested – I think it would be fun and I would learn a lot). I just don’t think Mrs. Bottle would go along with this idea. Geeze, you screw up one appliance repair 3 years ago, and you’re somehow branded for life…
What hassle? If you’ve got MS Office at work and the Mac version of MS Office at home, everything is transparent. The Mac OS reads PC-formatted disks and CDs just fine, and the Mac version of MS Office reads and writes Windows-format files. The only cross-platform compatability problems I get nowadays are from *Microsoft-*exclusive formats, like Windows Media Player…
They are an OK company. But Dell beats them on price, reliability, support, quality, etc. I’m a sys-admin for a medium sized company. We have a whole lot of Dells, and 3 gateways… guess which three I spend the most of my time shelling into to fix random crap.
My 2.5 year old Dell (home machine) is still churning along perfectly happily (but since it runs windows most of the time for games etc, it does need it’s weekly/monthly reboot *) for the entire time, no problems, zero.
now for some advice… since people are saying get a custom built system, you don’t need a mom-n-pop place to get that, http://www.dell.com and you can build exactly what you want… here’s an example.
their STOCK Dimension 8100, costs $1517.00… comes with a 1.3 Ghz Intel chip, 128 megs of ram, 40 gig HDD, 17" monitor, 32meg GeForce2 vid card, sound blaster live audio card… and a whole lot of other stuff
if $1517 is too much, drop the chip down a bit, drop the hard disk down a bit, keep the ram at 128 minimum.
if you have more than $1517, up the ram, up the monitor, and up the CPU… then you have a kick-ass $2000 computer.
(* author’s note: it does have 384 megs of PC100 ram… so it takes windows a long time to leak all of that… Linux has run on it for 6 months straight with zero reboots/problems)
actually… strike the “up the ram part”… Dell is charging $100 per 128 megs of ram… ramjet.com is charging about $70 for 256 meg DIMMs… get the computer with the smallest amount of ram possible from dell and then order as much as you can from ramjet.com
Yesterday I turned my PIII 500 into a 1.2Gig athlon for only $340! This included a new motherboard, CPU and 256 MB of 2400 speed DDR ram. How you ask? Well I’ll tell you, just go to this web site and poke around a little. Depending on what you already have in your box on your desk, you could spend very little and walk out with a great machine.
Now you may say to yourself, “but I don’t know how to build a computer, I’ve never even opened the case!”
To that I say, “where do you live? If you’re close enough I’ll come to you and help you set it up because it’s really not that challenging.”
So you say, “but if I do this than there is no tech support for me to call.”
And I say “That’s what the SDMB is for. We are your tech support.”
If you’re interested drop me an e-mail and we can talk some more.
Here’s what I’d recommend – reguardless of where you plan to either buy the system (dosent have to be the company I do tech support for) or the parts to build it.
Processor: P3 1000 or an AMD 1000
HDD: biggest you can afford (40MB is a good starting place)
CD/DVD: Get a DVD drive – soon all software will be coming on DVD because of the larger storage area. Also get a CDRW. You’ll appericate it at some point. If you can’t afford it now, you’ll be adding it later
RAM: All you can afford. This is the workhorse of your system. The industry standard seems to be at 64mb, but I wouldn’t settle for less than 128, and 256 would be better
Video card: A card made with the Nvidia Geforce chipset, 32MB is a good midrange card
Sound card: SoundBlaster live card
Modem: if you can swing a hardware modem instead of a win modem, then go for it. with that said, good luck. 56K is the current standard
Monitor: even if you have a monitor from your existing system, I’d get a new one. IIRC yours is getting old and may fail soon. A new one will have a new warranty. 17" seems to be pretty default industry wide
Floppy drive: you still have to have one
Zip drive: if you’d like. a good toss up vs a CDRW
I would caution against “custom configured” name brands too, as they tend to put in OEM weird-ass motherboards and weird-ass cards. If you can spec out EXACTLY what you want at a computer shop, you know exactly whats in it and where to go for driver updates, etc.
“HDD: biggest you can afford (40MB is a good starting place)”
He is pretty on the money except I think he means 40 GB Hard Drive.
Otherwise stick with those.
Brands: Dell is your best bet. Pretty cheap, good service, quality product.
All I need to chime in is to STILL not buy anything with the word “Celeron” on it. They still suck ass.
and
BUY MEMORY NOW! A big influx of product from Tiawan (main Ram chip makers) has flooded the market and driven down product NICELY. I upgraded to 512 from 256 and it only set me back 100. Take advantage of this
