If I needed to buy a PC ...

We've had far too many Dell GX270 models have bad caps on the mobo here at work. Maybe they have better PC's now as the GX270 is a few years old now.
 
I've been generally happy with my gateway. I do wish the screen weren't high-gloss, but otherwise it's been good. In direct viewing, I don't notice the glare, but at an angle I can sometimes. It shows fingerprints real well, too (not mine, but when people point at stuff on the screen they always insist on touching it and touching it hard... really pissed me off when I was using a trinitron tube monitor because it really shows the fingerprints and this screen is about as bad at that) but it makes it easier to clean fingerprints off. As for performance, it helps that I took all the trial crap off of it as soon as I took it out of the box. I also found a one-gig memory upgrade for smokin' cheap in newegg's clearance bin, so I have 1.5 gigs instead of 512 megs. It's not a Centrino or Turion laptop (it has an Athlon 64 processor) but it gets 2 hours 40 minutes or so on a battery charge and I haven't had problems with the wireless.
 
Cam's screen is glossy like that too. Dell calls it TrueLife. Sony has similar but they put an anti-glare coating that keeps it from being so reflective.

POStech said:
We've had far too many Dell GX270 models have bad caps on the mobo here at work. Maybe they have better PC's now as the GX270 is a few years old now.
Click to expand...

I think they issued a recall for the 270s.....I vaguely remember the email.
 
If you are not a gamer, and just need it for basic PC stuff (and not video editing and really high tech stuff), you should be able to get a very nice notebook which will last you a long time for under $1000. There are a lot of notebook brands that are very fine machines, so with notebooks I would look more at things like warrantees and customer service, and make sure they have a lot of USB ports. The technology is really moving so damn fast today, that the industry has most people convinced that they need a supercomputer for their everyday needs. 90% of what I do (and I am a tech guy who works on these damn things) could be done quite happily on the eight year old 400MHz laptop I just sold to a buddy. For me though that 10% and my need to be "up on the times" means I do have a pretty kickass system. The average user couild get by happily on an old machine like that lappy.

When it comes to which flavor of Windows, I strongly reccomend (especially if you are new to the PC) that you get Vista. I reccomend it to everyone except those who already have enough computer. It's buggy and I hate it, but it's the way of the future, and they are force feeding it to us, but in time and after a service pack or two it should get better. If you get a notebook you don't have XP as an option, and should you get a notebook and remove it and install XP, then you can kiss any warrantee goodbye. Probably same on any name brand desktop. We are all gonna have to get used to Vista sooner or later. If you do get Vista I STRONGLY reccomend no less than 2GB of RAM, and if the notebook you want doesn't come with it, just buy it its dirt cheap. A vista system with 512MB of Ram is like a sprinter trying to run a race with both legs in casts. Lastly, there are so many idiotic changes in the way Vista works from XP, that you might as well start unlearning any xp things you know and start learning Vista.

If you go desktop, I hear a lot of folks talk up Dells, but my personal experience is that they are junk, and when the parts break after the warrantee expires, often things are to proprietary to make fixing or upgrading economically feasable. 90% of the broken machines I fix are Dells. Ideally, if you have a techie friend, or a reputable local computer shop, I'd have them build it custom for you. If you want no hassle just buy it prefab and cheap I reccomend Gateway. HP can be OK, but I personally hate HP support (I have no experience with Dell support). Avoid Compaq (HP's budget line), eMachines, and just about anything else like the plague.

One last thing. If they give you anything with Norton Internet Security on it when you buy it, remove it post haste (if you can without downloading a special utility to remove it) and replace it with AVG Antivirus, Spybot S&D, and Lavasoft's AdAware 2007. All of them are free, and do just as good of a job of protecting you, and they don't need an expra CPU and gig of ram to run them like Norton Bloatware does.

Do a LOT of reasearch, ands especially if you have a local shop build you a custom and work on it after purchase, because this industry is like the car mechanic deal. They smell dummies coming like sharks smell blood in the water, and they feed on them more ravenously. Most repair shops (and even geek squad) aren't at all what I'd call "honest bussinesses". Good luck, but in closing, three words:

RESEARCH, RESEARCH, REASEARCH!!!
 
While we're at it....

I'm in serious need of an update. There are some games coming that just laugh at my system (AGP seems to have lost favor).

I've not done much research 'cause I wasn't planning on it soon (can't afford what I want.) This e-mail came for Tiger (I like them) & it could be affordable.

What's wrong with it?
XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard - Qty: 1
Intel PD 925 3.0GHz OEM - Qty: 1
Crucial 1024MB PC5400 DDR2 - Qty: 2
Maxtor DiamondMax 21 200GB Hard Drive - Qty: 1
Ultra Aluminum Full-Tower Case - Qty: 1
Ultra 400-Watt XVS PSU - Qty: 1
XFX GeForce 7300 GT 512MB PCIe w/DVI/TV-OUT - Qty: 2

For $399 (after MiR)

Would two 7300s, using SLI, make the video worthwhile? Or is two times crap still crap?
 
Broadway Com Corp 920SM-Black Steel MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 450W Power Supply - Retail $27.99

ASUS P5GC-VM(GREEN) LGA 775 Intel 945GC Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $66.99

MSI NX8600GT-TD512EZ GeForce 8600GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail $109.99

Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 Allendale 2.2GHz LGA 775 65W Processor Model BX80557E4500 - Retail $127.99

2x Crucial 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory Model CT12864AA667 - OEM $45.98

Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $64.99


Microsoft Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Basic for System Builders Single Pack DVD - OEM $94.99

Total cost at newegg.com $538.92

I think you would be MUCH happier for MUCH longer if you went with something like this.

The video card really needs DX10 these days for new games, and the 8600GT is a fine budget DX10 card. For DX10 of course you need Vista, and more and more faster and faster you will need Vista for new hardware that will be sold without support for XP, and software that will not run on XP. Also most games these days will laugh at a system without 1GB of memory in XP, and Vista will laugh at less than 2GB. If you went with everything but Vista you'd be very close to the original price of the system you propose, but I suggest you bite the bullet and upgrade the OS as well, and then you can keep the current computer intact, without wiping the drive or using an illegal copy to run on it.

I also think on most new games the system I propose would outperform the setup you have there. The processor and board I have allow for overclocking, and I reccomend folks buy retail whenever possible, because the warrantees are much better, and the cost is not prohibitive.

My experience with Maxtor of late is that they are really putting out poor hard drives, and I am a professional in the field. I reccomend Western Digital or Seagate, or even Samsung.

Also while tiger direct can undercut newegg in price, newegg is a class act and you would be hard pressed to find a better company, with better support and care for customer sevice. I swear by them, and rarely stray. One time they just sent me a care package with some plextor t-shits, a nice metal travel coffee mug, and some newegg ball point pens, just because I do so much business with them. I have NEVER had, nor heard of a bad experience with shopping at newegg.

Just my two cents.
 
Time to learn new tricks, building is easy . . . . things only plug into what they're supposed to. (advanced form of wooden pegs game)


I've been really happy with this rig, 30 hours from ordering it to building it (California), 16 minutes from disc to operational OS.

ROCK SOLID 1-projector, 1-monitor, with 39-IE7 multi-tabbed pages open, Vegas7, Soundforge8, photoshopCS3, Visio2007, internet radio, trillian, P2P-TORRz, Resource monitor, task monitor, and ASUS probe all running . . . . didn't even hit 100% CPU until I made it render HD-VOB-Video in Vegas, never went above 47C-temp . . . . and still didn't lag on new task. (SLACR-G0-stepping)

I'm still tweaking it to peak preformance.. its a hungry monster.

Under $1k
 
Vista is not an option. It doesn't like to many of the things I run.

In fact, the more I read, the more I believe that Vista will bcome ME revistited.
 
No, not at all. Vista will be fixed by service packs and ideally, at this time you should dual boot if possible, but Vista will be force fed to you, or you are gonna misss out on quite a slew of exciting new gams, software and hardware for the next five years. Vista is buggy at the time and the worst part is that it has many changes on how it works and handles, that weren't broke in XP, but once the user adapts, it's not nearly as bad as the anti Vista hype, and it's nothing at all like a modern day ME.

ME was merely a haphazard Win98 upgrade released pre XP to cash in a little before the real work was finished. Vista is a serious piece of work that M$ has put all their eggs into the basket of.

Doesn't anyvbody remember the couple thousand odd bugs XP was released with that were quickly adressed with SP1, and soon after SP2?

The rate of technological advance at this time, pretty much mandates three options these days. Vista, Linux, or Mac OS. Or you can take a break from reality for the next five years and have to learn an even more radically different OS in 5 years if you plan on staying with Micro$oft based systems. People fear change and fear what they don't undersand. Give it a good service pack and a little time and folks will be loving Vista as much as they did XP.

Either way, my newegg wish list kicks your tiger direct one's ass no matter what the OS if your primary focus is gameavbility. Vista for the mainstream user is an inevitabilty, and even moreso for a gamer.
 
ME was crap.

Longhorn had potential.

The only reason Vista is still available is they forced the manufacturers to use it. The manufacturers are actually forcing Microsoft to make XP available in their rmachines as the primary OS.

I've got Vista on my laptop. I can use it. It doesn't do anything better thanb XP & even fewer thigns better than 2000.
 
And BTW Gonz, I am a professional in the field and politics aside, I'd never lead you astray with computer buying advice knowingly (though there are so many options these days, the name of the game is research), and this was a sincere attempt to help you make an affordable and worthwhile upgrade, given the known needs you have stated, the Vista part is purely optional.

I wasn't going to bring politics into this, but the truth is it is a part of this. If not for Republicans, M$ would have likely been busted up and or another viable OS alternative may have arisen. I can't pretend to know exactly the effects of what would have happend if the political structure had been different during that time, but I am almost sure, M$ wouldn't be enjoying the monopoly, market dictating power they currently enjoy.

All that aside, I have worked with Vista and I still dislike it, but its no "ME all over again", not even close.
 
Gonz said:
ME was crap.

Longhorn had potential.

The only reason Vista is still available is they forced the manufacturers to use it. The manufacturers are actually forcing Microsoft to make XP available in their rmachines as the primary OS.

I've got Vista on my laptop. I can use it. It doesn't do anything better thanb XP & even fewer thigns better than 2000.
Click to expand...

Nonetheless, Vista is it for 5 more years, I can 95% guaran-fuckin-tee you that!
 
One of the reasons we've picked the new software vendor we've just picked is because they're in the process of making their package platform independent (Can you say Linux? I knew that you could). Vista is going to really slow down Windows' growth in the business market. I looked at eleven different software solutions for our company (including SAP) and they all recommend sticking with XP Pro. Seven of them wouldn't even sell to us if we switched to Vista. Every major manufacturer has had to regress to offering XP computers again after they had stopped. It's a fiasco, even ME wasn't this bad. Of course, Microsoft had a viable business alternative for ME.
 
The biggest trouble with Vista in the business world IMHO, is that it requires so damn much hardware to run it properly, and most businesses are years from even actually needing such hardware to meet their needs. It's a flop in that way, I agree. Couple that with the fact that the first time I tried it I almost felt like the first time I tried a Mac after years of learning Windows systems,looking at the realities of the business market I am not surprised, that it's poorly recieved.

The home market, however, will be force-fed Vista, like it or not, and most people have in the past, and will continue to buy 10x the computing power they actually need. Unless Linux getrs easier still, and better at running Windows software, or a viable alternative sweeps the market off it's feet, and cannot forsee any scenario where it is to the home users advantage to not try and embrace it at upgrade time.

All that said, Gonz seemed to be asking advice about a gaming machine, and IMHO that absolutely requires Vista. Some new games will perhaps for a while be DX9c compatible, but very soon they will all begin to require DX10 if they don't already. If you are a gamer, Vista and cutting edge hardware are your friend. Might as well buy at least the hardware to eventually run it now, at least for when you decide it's time to move on to Vista.

For a home user and a gamer, given the proper hardware to handle it, and someone who isn't a moron at running a PC, once you are used to it, Vista isn't half bad.
 
I don't disagree with the force-feeding part Mark. I think you're right there. I really don't think it's that bad for home use. The business problem however, is not simply the hardware issue although it certainly applies. The Microsft business model since Windows first came out has been to knock together something releasable and let the end users be the beta testers. A lot of the current software companies are much more professional than that and the business users know it. We're used to getting a product that works out of the box without all this tweaking and service packing. Now we have a brand new OS that's bloated, requires a major infrastructure overhaul (costing millions, if not billions of dollars worldwide) and that will not work with a lot of existing apps. I don't think you understand that a lot of businesses are still running 2000 because there were similar issues with XP. The business community is tired of Microsoft's arrogance. We're kind of stuck with them though. It will be interesting to see how soon they offer a major overhaul of Vista to keep their market share. I think they're going to have to either do that or offer a business only version of windows like NT used to be.

I think the major bone of contention among the home users is the whole "Big Brother" thing. Microsoft will tell you what's good for you. I don't think so.
 
Well chcr, I don't think I have even disagreed with you, but when I entered this discussion I never was speaking about business needs. And yes I realize that Windows 2000 is still a good and viable business OS in many respects. I am actually hoping that Micro$oft's arrogance royally screws them in this case and it leads to more vaible alternatives for all users, but even if it does, I still find it hard to forsee any OS on the horizon in the near future that would be a Windows replacement for the home user, most particularly the gamer.

XP love and loyalty, and outrage against Micro$oft's abilty to tell us all what OS we need to be running aside, all I am suggesting to you, and my customers (all home user cutomers anyway) is that when you upgrade, until some major thing shakes up the market, or unless another alternative is a viable solution for your, or their specific needs, is that they should not be blinded by their dislike of reality itself, and buy an OS that is on the way out. Like it or not, Vista is here, and in the home market it's either embrace it, or learn to give up the natural "American instinct" to "keep up with the Jonese's".
 
Oh and another thing. In this small town I live in I am probably the one and only "rigorously honest" repairman/builder. My boss is an honest man, but still a business man with a flair for being honest, yet only ethically. He never tells people that they don't need to upgrade when they want to, and things like that. At work I adhere to the unwritten "shop policy". But in my independent work I always advise my customers that their needs do not warrant an upgrade, or if Linux is a more viable alternative for them. Fortunately for me, most people have more greenbacks than sense, and my honesty and willingness to teach my customers to maintain their PCs the cheap and easy way, and my absolute dedication to saving them money even if it means less work for me is getting people all over town to leave all my competition and come to me. I may not cash in as hard on people and it's taking time to build my customer base, but I am finding that in the long run, I am going to prosper more than my competition, perhaps even push them out of business just by having the best reputation in the area.
 
Wasn't really disagreeing as such, Mark. Just clarifying my point re Vista and the business community at large. I think Microsoft has really blown it with the business community this time. It's merely an opinion. Comparing what you do and what I do is comparing apples and oranges. I work in the corporate arena and that entails different problems and different options than personal or small business computing. For my side customers (personal and small business) I've actually suggested (and will continue to) Vista computers for people who are looking for a new box. I always recommend against Vista (yet) for people who wonder if they should upgrade their OS. In fact, a hard and fast rule for me has always been (well, since Win95) don't upgrade a Windows OS until the second service pack. Re Linux, most personal and small business users would need their hands held too much for me to recommend it.

We will begin our company-wide upgrade the first of the year. Ours is not such a big company, but here's how it will go: We'll buy about sixty or so PCs with Windows XP Pro. We can't use Vista because we can't find a viable solution for our needs that supports it. We'll also replace our current, stone age SCO box with a Windows 2003 server. My job will be to figure out how best to do this from a cost-effectiveness versus productivity point of view. Having done all the research running up to our decision to bag our current vendor for these new guys is what leads me to say that Windows has really blown it in the business arena with Vista. Eleven vendors submitted proposals. Seven (including the one we finally chose and the one we're leaving behind) won't even really talk about Vista. The other four (including SAP, one of the industry heavyweights) will work with you on it but recommend against Vista in strong terms. The vendor we finally chose has tried to upgrade some existing customers from XP to Vista with results ranging from "too much trouble for a working business" to "christ, the whole system's gone down." Now do you see why I say that it's my opinion that Windows has blown it with the business community? They've always released OS's before they're really ready. It's a business model that's becoming less and less viable. I really think you'll see a major overhaul of Vista Business in the coming months. I think they've got too much invested in the Vista brand to actually bring out a business only OS, but I also think that's their best answer. That's just my opinion.
 
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