Is this a good computer deal?

http://circuitcity.com/ssm/HP-Pavilion-Desktop-PC-A1110N-/sem/rpsm/oid/126589/catOid/-12962/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

I was looking at this circuitcity ad… the deal seemed nice. Am I getting any bang for my buck? I’m terrible at seeking out deals. Heh. froogle seems to be where it’s at.

Terrible, if you plan on gaming with it at all. If you don’t plan on playing the latest games, it should be pretty decent. Plenty of hard drive space and a dvd-burner, at least, which is fairly impressive for the price.

Keep in mind that HP has a reputation for terrible tech support, so if it breaks you’re probably boned.

The first rule of computer purchasing is to buy the computer that will run the software you need.

You didn’t mention what you’d be doing with computer at all. :frowning:

If you’re just web surfing and such, it’s overkill and overpriced. If you’re doing high end games or video processing it’s crap.

Note to one and all: the following is my opinion. If you have a different opinion, just post it. There is no need to quote my post!

  1. The processor is a Celeron. Only a few Intel processors are any good and then only for specific tasks. A current Celeron is not good for anything. Go with AMD.

  2. No AGP or PCI-X graphics slot. Plus that “shared video memory” garbage. Under no circumstances buy a machine that you can’t add a decent video card to.

  3. 512Mb is what you get on a low end machine. But you aren’t paying low end prices.

  4. In my paper today is a 300Gb HD for $70, retail. (They don’t mention SATA, so it’s likely EIDE.) Why are they cheaping out on the HD???

  5. Lightscribe technology is something HP is trying to push. Are you really going to pay extra for CDRs that you can write a cheesy B&W label on? There is something less than a bandwagon being formed behind Lightscribe.

  6. It’s HP. Cheaper components, lower lifespan, hard to upgrade, probably won’t come with install CDs, etc.

HP and Compaqs for the retial consumer market are (IMO) a lot more reliable than they used to be a few years ago. Especially Compaqs. It’s an OK deal if you don’t want to be a gamer or need to crunch massive media files. In some gamer systems the video card investment alone might be close to the price of that entire PC. For run of the mill consumer stuff a Celeron processor is just fine and you would be hard put to tell the real world difference between the various flavors of CPU (Celeron/Pentium/AMD) at equivalent speeds if used for web surfing, CD burning. word prcessing and other run of the mill tasks.

When one of the seven features they feel they should mention on the website is a $10 keyboard you might want to look around more.

The Celeron D processors are no where near as terrible as the older Northwood core Celerons (I know Anand did some benches, the older 2.6ghz Celeron was routinely thrashed by a 1.6ghz Duron, while the Celeron D chips are not that bad, though the Skt 754 Semprons are a better deal for your money.)

If you are confortable with building them yourself, you could build a Sempron 64 machine with similar specs, with a much more expandable motherboard & better quality power supply in the $500 price range.

If not, this Compaq at the same site would probably be a better deal - most of the other specs are similar, its Sempron 3400 is a far bit faster than the Celery D in the HP, and it is cheaper to boot. It also has a PCI-Express slot, to add a real video card in later, and the integrated Radeon xPress graphics that it has is much better than the Intel junk in the HP Celeron machine.

remisser: You need to tell us what you are planning to use it for, and how long you expect to run it.

If for non-cutting edge game player, internet browser and Office work it should be fine.
the newer Intel Celeron’s will work fine. HP is not a great brand but they are not terrible.
If this level machine is good for you, I would at least look at some E-Machines.
Deals from Comp USA, Tigerdirect and Buy.com will all beat the price you found.

I am worried by the fact that they don’t list the DVD-R speed. I don’t have a comfortable feeling about HP rigs, Compacts were terrible.

This is quickly a competitive machine and quite a bit cheaper.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1361631&sku=e400-w3052&CMP=ILC-FPM04

Keeping looking and give us more details.

Note it doesn’t come with a monitor. To get one of those 17" LCD monitors you see in the ad, you’ll be spending at least $200.

It’d be an ok deal if it had a monitor, but it’s crap w/o one. You could build your own with better specs AND a monitor for around $500.

I don’t know what your local computer-guy situation is, but mine is a good deal better than these name brand computers. You can ask him to build you what you want, and for not much more than the retail cost of the parts, he’ll do it. You also don’t end up with these pointless things installed on your computer.

I’ve never had a pre-fab comp. Mine is a local-guy built, upgraded about 7 times in various ways. I don’t know how people stand all that extra glurge on their computer.

      • That computer costs right about what you would spend if you went and bought the pieces yourself. You may have no desire to bother with that, so it might seem an okay deal. It is certainly not the worst I’ve seen, some of the “big name” companies sell PC’s for $1000 that have a 2-year warranty but only have around $800 of parts.
  • If you just wanted it for basic web and general (non-action-game) use, there are cheaper and/or better options. In particular, I note that this model has the fastest Celeron-D CPU there is. I have found that when buying a lower-end system, it is much more “useable” if you get a slower CPU and immediately max out the possible RAM–as opposed to having a faster CPU and having a small amount RAM.
  • Also, I would say beware of cheap LCD monitors–do not buy one unless you’ve seen it in person. There’s not a lot of picture difference with CRT’s but there is with LCD’s. The expensive ones look great but some of the cheaper ones look really lousy, and you can’t see that in a print or web advertisement.
    ~

I’ve never been a fan of the Celeron processors. Strike one. Shared video memory is a problem in many situations. Strike two. No display included. Strike three.

I think you can find much better deals elsewhere…

  1. Intel processors are fine. If you’re gonna be an AMD fanboi, just say so.

  2. Because not having an PCI-X slot matters to most people why? 90% of the people that use computers will never upgrade anything in thier box; given that the OP is looking at HP boxes at Circuit City, I think we can safely conclude that he\she falls into that 90%.

  3. 512MB of RAM is just fine. If you wanna be snarky (which apparently you do), RAM is measured in megabytes (MB), not megabits (Mb).

  4. Again, 160GB is more than plenty for most folks. Of all the people I know that have computers, only myself and my best friend would come close to using 50% of that drive.

  5. Last time I checked, Lightscribe drives will burn any type of disc you want. You don’t have to use Lightscribe discs with them at all. Sheesh, that’s a weak complaint.

  6. Every complaint you have against HP could be leveled against any OEM - and in every case, it’s one of those “eye of the beholder” things, except for perhaps eMachines… which indeed suck. I’d never use a computer that I didn’t build myself, but I realize that I’m in the minority there.

Let me join the chorus of “what do you want to do with it?” calls to the OP. For Internet surfing, getting email, using an office suite, playing kid’s games, etc. the PC you linked to will be just fine. For more intensive tasks - gaming, video encoding, etc. - you could do much better (though any decent computer for those tasks is gonna cost more than $479).

MyNameIsEarl.

You might to get some more info, read posts clearly, think a bit, etc. before posting.

E.g.,

I have been in Computer Science for over 30 years. An ex-CS prof, PhD, and all that. So I know a few things, got that?

Take the Mb/MB issue. There was a serious proposal to use the capitalization issue to distinguish between “binary” and “decimal” powers. (Not bit vs. byte!) E.g, KB would refer to 1024 and Kb to 1000. (Or it may have been vice versa.) But that never took hold. So there is not and never has been anything remotely close to a standard as to Mb/MB notation. Never.

Look at buying a disk drive. They use the decimal form since it’s makes the drive sound bigger. And you’re believe that there’s standardization on bits vs. bytes and capitalization? Get serious!

I also did not say that LightScribe drives write only LightScribe discs! The issue is why buy a computer with a feature you might never use. I.e., I specifically mentioned the higher costs of the discs.

Note that I think IMHO is a poor place for debating these kind of things. Hence I strongly urged those that disagreed to just state their own, independent opinion. Replying to my post is a complete waste of time (as well as containing multiple errors in this case).

If you think that 512 Mb is fine, then just say that. There is utterly no need to try and start a debate on whether it is or not.

IMO, most computer failure, regardless of OEM brand, is due to user error. Having said that, I don’t think that you’ll have much of a problem with eMachines, particularly because it doesn’t look like you’re doing anything horribly intensive. Having said that, I just looked at one site, and if you want to go absolutely bargain-priced system, I’d look at this for 270 dollars (remember, no monitor).

If you want a marginal performance increase, and having a brand name that people will have heard of before matters to you, I’d look at this one here
for 400.