I need some advice on a new computer

[krispos42]

Okay, my parent's computer bit the dust, I think in a permanent fashion. I had noticed a few months ago when cleaning and vacuuming it out that some of the capacitors on the motherboard were bulging, but the parental units were not interested in making a purchase at that time.


Well, now it won't boot at all, so their interest level has substantially increased. ;-)


My mom and I went to the local wholesale club to scout out what they had. Please keep in mind that my brother bought them a nice widescreen monitor a year ago, and I bought them a compatible video card shortly thereafter so they could actually use the widescreen feature. So we just need the tower.


Here are the four options available:

Option 1 (below) is a Dell. It comes with a 20" hi-def wide-screen monitor. The only think left is the floor display. Now, the floor display tower wasn't plugged in... it was just there, chained to the shelf. But the monitor was on and hooked up to a DVD player or something, running marketing shit. Off-the-shelf price is $515, and I would take the monitor for my own computer to replace my CRT (yay!).







Option 2 (below) is a Hewlett-Packard. It's basically the same situation as the Dell... a floor model. Comes with a larger 23" monitor. Price is $559.







Option 3 (below) is a Gateway. This one is just a tower, and they are new-in-box. It's a lot smaller than a regular tower... shorter and narrower. It also has a buttload of USB ports... six in back, 5 in front.

















My parents use their computer mainly for Internet, with some medical claims filing by my mom. They're not really computer-heavy users.


So which one do you guys think this is best bargain? Are the prices decent? What do you think of the risks of taking the floor models? What would something like the floor models usually retail for?


All help is appreciated! :-)

[ohheckyeah]

1. Well, with the

3.2 GHz processor and 6 GB of ram I'd go for the Dell myself. 750GB of hard drive is all most people will ever need and I've been told the hardest thing to upgrade is the processor. Every computer I've owned but one has been a Dell and it's just what I personally prefer. The only thing I know about HP's is what I heard in complaints from a niece about her HP. She had a lot of trouble with it. As for Gateways, I used them at one of my jobs and I though it was a piece of junk. I'm sure there will be a lot of other opinions.

As for the floor model, I have no experience with that but I don't think it would be a problem. The prices look good especially compared to what I just spent on a new computer. Of course I did overkill. :-)

[krispos42]

5. I was hoping they'd pick the HP myself...

...I'd give them a hundred bucks for the screen, and "liberate" the video card from their old tower into mine. :evilgrin:


Do you think your nieces problems were with the hardware of the HP or just problems with the software? I use an HP at work (maybe 5 years old) and it works okay, if a bit slow.

[Warpy]

10. I've long been impressed by the sturdiness of HP products over Dell

Gateway, and others. In fact, the only think I've had that was hardier is an old NEC Win95 machine I keep around in case of disaster because it refuses to die.

The box I'm on now is an HP XP box I got used because I need an XP box for a lot of the financial stuff I do. I also have an HP laptop that has been bounced off the floor a couple of times and has gotten some pretty hard use over the last 2 years that is working fine. I have a 10 year old HP printer on the backup box that is also working fine.

Still, for people who give a box such light use, you could even consider an E Machine, a Gateway Lite.

[krispos42]

12. My HP laptop died a few months ago...

...although in all fairness I did get it used from a college, so lord knows what happened to it before I got it.

But the video card went all funny, then the keyboard. I would type "q" and get "e", that sort of thing.


Weird. I'm just glad I was able to get all my files off of it before I shut it down... otherwise I couldn't enter my password and get into it!

I was looking at this one for them... only $300.

:shrug:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/eMachines+-+Small+Form+Factor+Desktop+/+AMD+Athlon%26%23153%3B+II+Processor+/+2GB+Memory+/+500GB+Hard+Drive/2882742.p?id=1218361271100&skuId=2882742

[Warpy]

15. You're going to want more RAM than that

because 2 GB is barely enough to run Win7. They'd find a minimal machine like this one unbearably slow, especially with an antivirus.

Double the RAM and you'd have a decent machine.

[ohheckyeah]

14. She had to send it back twice so I don't think it was the software.

Now that I think about it, it was a laptop, not a desktop.

[struggle4progress]

2. If they're mainly doing web-browsing and maybe a bit of word processing, I wouldn't drop a big

chunk of change on the machine, and I personally wouldn't drop $500 on a floor model

Two cores might be better than one but you don't need four or six; you don't a really fast processor; and you don't need fast memory

DainBramaged recommended this in a thread of mine earlier this year:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220067
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=242&topic_id=33989&mesg_id=34005

<edit:> of course you couldn't drop your graphics card into that

It's also possible to build pretty cheap: I built this earlier this year for under $275

$52 Sentey Slim 2421 Slim Flex CASE w/PSU
$60 Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-S2 AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX MOBO
$60 AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core CPU
$47 G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit RAM
$50 SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal HDD
$-- Operating system LINUX
With a CD/DVD drive and a few SATA cables, it probably won't go much beyond $300

<edit:> that has a small PSU and so whether you could drop your graphics card into it might depend on the card

It's actually possible to build usable systems for less: I built another earlier this year for under $200
which works just fine for web-browsing

[krispos42]

4. Oh, the video card isn't too important...

...I was probably giving too much non-relevant info. My point was that they already have a nice 24" Samsung widescreen, so as long at the built-in video card is able to do the widescreen format we're good to go.


I've done a lot of tinkering with PCs (my computer has 3 hard drives and a new DVD writer) but I've never built one from scratch. I'm really hesitant to do so just because I don't know how to do any initial setup stuff with the motherboard settings or whatever. I mean, it probably isn't hard; I've just never done it.

Do you think I could use the case that they already have? The old computer is going to be tossed anyway after I save the good parts.

And they'd probably want to stick with Windows. Hell, it was a struggle to get them to use Firefox instead of MSIE! Only when they realized it worked faster on their old computer did they become converts. :-) If I can find the Windows XP disc for their old computer, I can probably re-install it.

That ASUS looks interesting. I'll mention it to the parents and see if they're interested. It looks like what they need, as long as my mom can install her medical-claims software.

Thanks!

[struggle4progress]

7. I think the main issue with reusing the case would be making sure your new mobo had the

right form factor

There might be other issues, like whether you could easily replace a bum psu: eg, is it screwed in or riveted in

[struggle4progress]

8. I'd never built anything until last summer; since then I've built seven machines

Mostly it's a matter of making sure you get compatible stuff, not getting in a hurry, following the mobo manual, and taking appropriate static precautions

Manufacturers usually tell you what cpus and ram they've tested in the mobo. Extensive websearch can be a good idea: I once was planning a build and was going to use cpu A and ram B -- until I discovered that, although cpu A and ram B were both compatible with mobo C, they weren't compatible with each other: I think this is rare, but one should look a bit for such oddities

The mobos may have jumpers on them: just check that they're where they should be, which the manual will tell you. In fact, carefully double-checking everything is a good idea: eg, psus with voltage switches sometimes don't ship with the voltage switch set for your locale

Be careful inserting the cpu into the socket; for ordinary use, the stock thermal paste that comes preapplied on many heatsinks will be entirely adequate

It's my impression that a surprising number of psus are bad: this seems to be a rather common complaint

Several of my machines didn't boot on my first try: it was usually that I didn't have a connector seated correctly; once, I might have had to adjust a BIOS setting

[krispos42]

9. Yeah, it's this kind of stuff that worries me

:shrug:

I haven't been keeping up with the changes with PC innards for several years now. Things like SATA and SCCI hard drives worry me because I've never seen or used one... mine have all ben IDE or EIDE. And by "worry" I mean "compulsively worry"... I have this weird paranoid aversion to returning things.

:dunce:

I'll take what you and others have said to my parents. I spoke to my dad, and he mentioned the possibility of buying a laptop for my mom, and then buying a computer for placement on the big TV in the living room. This way he can surf in the comfort of the living room couch, but my mom could still work in the home office with the printer, or in her private practice.

Maybe one of those mini-laptops. My ex has one that seems to work pretty well. :-)

[struggle4progress]

11. I've got SATA drives in all my machines: they've been pretty much plug-n-play:

connect the sata power cable, connect the sata data cable, done
no switches to flip on the drive, no jumpers to set on the drive
might need to double-check bios settings on boot but probably not

[krispos42]

13. New horizons to me...

... but I suppose I can be dragged kicking and screaming into the future. :-)

[struggle4progress]

16. I got an acer aspire one about two years ago, which I've been rather happy with,

though the keyboard is a bit small and the monitor is only 10"

I've verified on mine that it's perfectly possible to hook up an external monitor and keyboard

Cost me about $250

The more recent models may be competitive: for what I paid, you'll probably get a better keyboard now and a dual core 1.66ghz N570 processor (instead of the single core I have)

[krispos42]

18. Mom nixed the laptop idea

Says she would have to carry around a bunch of paper files with the laptop to do her work, in addition to everything else she carries around. So no go with that. I guess my dad's been trying to get her to get one for a couple of years now, and she keeps declining.

:-)


You've been enormously helpful, though, so thank you. :-)

[struggle4progress]

3. Here's a cheap prebuilt you might be able to drop your videocard into:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883108456

[krispos42]

6. Hey, that doesn't look too bad

$380 bucks isn't too bad, either.

Understand the video card isn't anything special... I got it from Office Depot when they were having on one of their brown-bag sales. But it outputs in widescreen format, which they needed for their new monitor.

[krispos42]

17. Okay, we got one! Thanks for the help everybody!

:grouphug:

We wound up going to Best Buy and picked up an HP with 6 gigs of RAM and an Intel dual-core 3.2 GHz processor for $350. Seems to be pretty snappy so far.

Now I have to get the info from their old hard drive (EIDE) onto the new one, which is probably a SATA.

I think I'm going to install the old hard drive in my old PC, then copy the hard drive onto my USB external drive, then finally copy it onto their new computer.


Pain in the ass...

[hobbit709]

19. Get yourself one of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812226001&cm_re=drive_adapter_usb-_-12-226-001-_-Product

Comes in handy. I use mine all the time to read drives

[krispos42]

20. Great minds think alike...

...I just bought one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119244&cm_re=EIDE_to_USB-_-12-119-244-_-Product

before I checked on this thread. Not a half hour ago...

:toast: