My wife needs a new computer for her office and I have been tasked with finding it. I have been looking around to see what I can find but I wanted some opinions on some places I am not familiar with.
I found some PCs on Overstock.com which look to be very cheap. Has anyobe bought anything from there and what was the experience like?
Are there any other places like this?
My wife needs a PC with XP Pro, Office 2k3 and an internet connected. She is only going to be doing reports etc, but it must be pretty secure (not like Fort Knox or anything, but enough to keep anyone who is in the office from prying). If anyone has any advice one where I could find something like that, I would be most grateful.
You’re going to get a bunch of home enthusiaths (like me) telling you, “Build your own; it’s easy”. I’m going to be different, though. If you’ve never built a computer, even it you have the desire to learn, don’t start with the Mrs. office PC.
Rather, look at the SOHO offerings at the major PC vendors. Comparison shop similarly equipped PCs, and depending on your skill with PCs, consider extended tech support. Most of these vendors will also sell refurbished PCs and you should still be able to get the extended tech support (not sure about that, though). Important specs for a work PC that won’t be playing any games more intense than Bejeweled are RAM (at least 512MB) and hard drive space (no less than 40 GB). I would also suggest no smaller than a 17" flat panel model, and a DVD-burner (they’re very inexpensive, and also burn CDs). The way sites like Dell work, I’d stick with the lowest processor offering, get 512mb RAM, the DVD burner, and the maximum HD space I could within my budget.
[Actually, if it was me, I’d be looking at price/performance comparisons in my price range and building it from component parts. But you understand what I meant, I hope ;)]
I don’t know anything about them, but the Compaq Presario looks to be a very reasonably priced notebook. If she’s looking for that sort of thing, you might consider it.
If the Missus uses nothing more than standard Office apps (Word, Excel, etc.) and probably browse the internet and e-mail then most any new PC on the market will suffice just fine. Only if you are going to get in the realm of gaming, serious video/audio editing, CAD or have a need/desire to run 10 programs at once would you need to seriously consider the overall power of your PC.
As mentioned by D_Odds forget building one yourself unless you know what you are doing. I did this and my wife (now ex but this wasn’t the reason) gave me endless dirty looks about it (and I did know what I was doing). That it ran like a charm and never broke or had any issues was of course never commented on. The specs mentioned previously are good. 512MB RAM, 40GB+ harddrive and the rest who cares…DVD burner is nice but does not seem necessary (although provides a good backup media). I will say while the processor does not make much difference to you I personally have always hated Celeron processors. As a matter of course I recommend regular Pentium processors to people like you (AMD to the enthusiasts).
Windows XP Home Edition (if not meant to be a part of a larger network)
Microsoft Office Suite
Security is fine in plain, vanilla Windows XP. Just set a login password and you should be good (be sure to apply a password for administrator and make sure no one else has administrator rights). That should stop casual snooping just fine.
So, you can go cheap and get away with it fine but I would recommend not going bargain basement. Generally the sweetspot for PCs these days are the ones that cost around $1,000. This generally gives you enough headroom in the PC to give it legs for several years before needing to replace it. That said if you want to go as cheap as possible.
Actually…a quick check shows Dell is running a pretty nice special “this weekend only” http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DE310WKND&s=dhs for $499 with no Office programs (includes 17" flat panel display). This thing will do all you need just great. It also has the value of being a reputable merchant should you have any troubles rather than who knows what bargain deal internet PC would get you.
Forgot…be sure all saved files are in the “My Documents” folder (or sub folders within there) as this is covered by Windows security. If you save a file to some random folder it is possible for someone to find those more easily.
