mikeythemikey

Looks ok, do you think the extra ram, slightly bigger disk and flat panel are a better choice?

Dan725

Well, depends what you want it for - I think that is a pretty shoddy collection of components, that graphics card really blows, 256 ram is nothing these days, 60 gb hard drive is pathetic, no DVD drive!! Knowing about these sorts of PC's they really are built down to a price, you'll have no expansion slots and I really wouldn't waste my money. The PC will work like a three year old PC, nothing more, nothing less.

mikeythemikey

If you read further back in the thread you can see what the OP wants it for.

Dan725

Yeah, I see that, however, like I said, to me that seems like a poor collection of parts whatever the money - the machine would be totally non upgradable in the future, so whilst it might be ok for puttering about on the internet now, in a couple of years (when it will be running like a five year old PC), he'll have to go and shell out on a whole new PC. This one does not seem a good deal to me. It'll get you off the ground at the lowest level, sure, but that is all.

Chandler

Is it really worth paying an extra $350 for:

- An upgrade in Ram from 256 to 512
- An upgrade in the hard drive from 60GB to 80GB
- An upgrade from a 17 to a flat 15 Monitor
- But no Speakers or Printer

Which is essentially the difference to the Dell machine.

Whilst the above may be basic, it will get me up and running and that is all I'm really after.

Thanks to everyone for all your help and advice,

Dan725

No it isn't.....but shame you can't build your own (its not hard), you'd get so much of a better deal....

Rockgurl

When I moved over here I bought the cheapest Dell I could find. It cost me $499 with a $100 rebate which I got in the form of a credit card after about 7 months (which incidentally I used to buy a Harley Davidson crash helmet!). I bought the cheapest because I'd spent all my money getting to the US but couldn't bear to be without a computer. I lived alone and needed it to pass the time when I wasn't working. It's been absolutely brilliant for what I needed ot for at the time. The only time I had a problem was when I downloaded a Terminator 3 game which the computer objected to and we ended up reinstalling Windows XP. After that it was fine and I bought a PS2 for games instead.

Recently, however, I started writing and recording music on the PC using Cubase SX2 which is a very large and .wav-heavy program. The computer doesn't like it at all and it's become very slow, but considering the amount of plug ins I'm using I'm not surprised. It's only now that the shortcomings of the PC are beginning to show. I am going to upgrade the RAM as soon as I get a chance, but I can see in the future I will buy another PC (once we've bought a house to put it in) just for music, and keep this one just for internet. That way I can set it up in my studio with all my music equipment and just leave everything as is. Considering what I paid for it, I'm very happy, especially considering the amount of use I've had out of it and the amount of hours it's saved me from being bored! I have my CD burner, which has been really, really useful to me being in a band, and I got high-speed internet installed. There's nothing else I need.

I had a Gateway in the UK....never again. The customer service is supposed to be the best but we found it appalling, and no-one seemed to be able to tell us why the RAM we bought wouldn't fit, even though it appeared to be the right one. It was because you had to buy special Gateway RAM and customer service didn't know it! They kept sending us the wrong sized monitor so that in the end we had 3 in the house, but they'd charged us for each one!!! That was a mess. I think back to how much we paid for that Gateway and I just cringe. We spent £3000 getting a top-end graphics-ready PC as my then partner was a graphic designer. Yes it ran fine, but we sold it for £100 just 4 years later as technology had improved so much. Awful waste of money.

Bob

It ain't worth the extra money, the ram you can get anywhere online for peanuts, same with an extra hard drive, which you could plug in yourself, and the monitor, flat lcd one's are shite to be honest, dead pixels, that's what you need to read about in the warranty, how many before they replace, or the grouping of dead pixels. If you move about a bit, or need the space, there handy, but the cheap ones are just that, much better to go with a flat screen crt monitor.

mikeythemikey

Sorry, misread it as $30 rebate, no it isnt, you arent going to build one for much less than $330 - its fast enough, ignore mr 5yr old pc bloke. As for dell budget flat panels all having dead pixels.. they are fine.

Chandler

Emachine PC bought. Picking it up at the weekend. Thanks

Ray

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/computers/emachine.htm

but Dell, HP and other are mentioned also...

Franklin

I couldn't possibly recommend my PC, but I would recommend Ray ... that ray of sunshine without which Florida would not be the sunshine state.

Chandler

Wehn I say bought..... It turns out that my wife hadnt actually ordered the machine.

After reading the posts about the rebates in the link futher above I'm glad that I have held off a bit longer.

waxwabbit

Id make sure it was at least a 17' monitor, esp if ur gonna be on the net a lot.

I regularly checked the pc mags, and looked at what they recommended when they did round ups.....................

Id do that coz, its ok some pcs having so and so parts as part of the spec, but if they are not implemented well, they affect the performance of the pc.

lonsdale

l bought a computer off of walmart.com for $200 and its fantastic. l had to install my own windows xp but that is never a problem for me because l download windows xp off of kazaa.