What's the best deal on a PC you've seen?

unless you're buying last year's good models, the cut-rate machines are never a great value. they just use the cheapest possible components, which are of predictable quality and performance

i saw a deal where you get a nice machine for about 600 bucks, plenty of ram and storage space, sexy monitor, and the girl who is in the ad will come and suck your thang

runSE wrote:

unless you're buying last year's good models, the cut-rate machines are never a great value. they just use the cheapest possible components, which are of predictable quality and performance

I agree. When you place the order by phone or online they always try to "upsell" you a different video card, sound card, monitor, more RAM, etc. In the end to get a decent machine your cost goes up. Watch out for that when placing your order.

Just talkin' new. I'm looking now and have come up with:

Dell Vostro 200-$319

HP a6200t-$300

If anyone has a recommendation for a laptop, please post.

Runner Z wrote:

runSE wrote:

unless you're buying last year's good models, the cut-rate machines are never a great value. they just use the cheapest possible components, which are of predictable quality and performance

I agree. When you place the order by phone or online they always try to "upsell" you a different video card, sound card, monitor, more RAM, etc. In the end to get a decent machine your cost goes up. Watch out for that when placing your order.

Yeah, you're right. NO monitor, speakers, little memory, etc.

runSE wrote:

unless you're buying last year's good models, the cut-rate machines are never a great value. they just use the cheapest possible components, which are of predictable quality and performance

That may have been true before, but if you look around, some of these machines $600 and less are excellent, excellent machines -- definitely way better than my 5-year-old machine. If you're a serious gamer (which I'm not) then you might need a higher end graphics or video card, but from what I've read, much of the onboard stuff is pretty good for the average user. My current computer has 128 MB RAM for Christ's sake and is only expandable to 512. The hard drive is only 40 Gigs. No video or graphics card. Hard to not do better than that.

pcs are commodities. just surf. they are all the same, assembled at cheap screwdriver plants by low cost labor. motherboard is from china, software from america. buy from the billion dollar companies since laptops break many times per year and vista corrupts itself no matter how many virus, adware, etc. programs you inject into the piece of shit s/w from microsoft. pcs are the cheapest alternative nonethe less.

so the new computer will have all the parts you're looking for, but what i'm saying is the quality isn't even worth the price. the only thing they'll be telling you the brand of is probably the processor and maybe video card, the rest they're giving you the cheapest possible instance of. would you buy a large supreme pizza for much cheaper than you think it should cost and the only ingredient they're willing to guarantee the quality of is the olives? if any of the other ingredients (and who knows where they got them) make you sick, you're SOL

Commodore 64 at a garage sale last week. Price: $0.64 I believe that's 4 cents a bit.

runSE wrote:

so the new computer will have all the parts you're looking for, but what i'm saying is the quality isn't even worth the price. the only thing they'll be telling you the brand of is probably the processor and maybe video card, the rest they're giving you the cheapest possible instance of. would you buy a large supreme pizza for much cheaper than you think it should cost and the only ingredient they're willing to guarantee the quality of is the olives? if any of the other ingredients (and who knows where they got them) make you sick, you're SOL

Well, the Dell I have now was on the lower end when I got it 5 years ago, and it's done pretty well. I don't fear the problems you mention.

the only computer that ever punked out on me early was one with a lower grade processor...I think it was a celeron

littlenecks wrote:

Just talkin' new. I'm looking now and have come up with:

Dell Vostro 200-$319

HP a6200t-$300

If anyone has a recommendation for a laptop, please post.

bumping this request.

looking for an inexpensive one for myself for christmas if anyone has a good suggestion. i'm not a gamer, do little video work (and can do that at work afterhours). a little music on there is my only requirement and that seems to be a minimal request.

It seems that, right now, the computer companies, and Microsoft, are pushing anything with Vista very cheaply. I got a great deal on my Toshiba lap top with Vista. The same thing with XP would have been ~$300.00-400.00 more.

Flagpole Willy wrote:

runSE wrote:

so the new computer will have all the parts you're looking for, but what i'm saying is the quality isn't even worth the price. the only thing they'll be telling you the brand of is probably the processor and maybe video card, the rest they're giving you the cheapest possible instance of. would you buy a large supreme pizza for much cheaper than you think it should cost and the only ingredient they're willing to guarantee the quality of is the olives? if any of the other ingredients (and who knows where they got them) make you sick, you're SOL

Well, the Dell I have now was on the lower end when I got it 5 years ago, and it's done pretty well. I don't fear the problems you mention.

Similar story with me - a four year old Dell and the only issues with it have been software rather than hardware based (thankyou Mr Gates). All hardware is still operating well. If you look after them properly they are excellent for most users. If you are using them for gaming or specialist software then it makes sense to spend more. The adverts in GB are ridiculous marketing ridiculously high spec machines as being suitable for email, internet and a bit of word processing only!

warning....New and Dell don't really belong in the same sentence. i am always iffy with Dell becuase they are still trying to sell Celeron Processors AKA GENUINE POS processors. Compare Specs.

Are there any drawbacks to Vista?

not sure wrote:Are there any drawbacks to Vista?

yes, it's from microsoft

I bought a new Dell Inspiron for $675 about 6 months ago, here are a few of the specs:

Pentium Core Duo, 1.86 MHz

2 GB RAM

256 MB GeForce video card

9-hr battery

Six months ago, nothing beat this deal. Even now, it's hard to find a package like that.

not sure wrote:

Are there any drawbacks to Vista?

None that I've seen yet, but I haven't asked a whole lot of it yet. It does take a bit of getting used to where some things are hidden.