I'm so broke it's academic but,just out of curiosity... I notice Wal mart has an Acer machine, with a19" flat screen included, for $600....I don't know all the specs frommemory but i assume that as always ith Wally world, part f what they are selling is conveinence so it made me wonder....if you had $600 or less to pend on a pC, where would you get the most machine for the money? I'm sure that a local custom-built place could do better than anyone but I mean if you just walked into a store and bought one off the shelf.
Hard to beat Dell on price, they just have the volume. Otherwise I'd roll my own from Newegg.com. I'd never buy a computer off a shelf.
Strange you should post this today. Earlier, I went by the local supermarket -- the cheap one -- and was surprised to see what looked for every spec like a very good current desktop PC for 399 euros -- branded from a rather well-known local computer chain. If I needed a new computer right now, I'd be very tempted to try that.
IIRC, that machine comes with NO bloatware--and loaded with Open Office (but not Linux, I don't think). Let's hear it for Wal*Mart! Go open source!
Well, shadow, you never know unless you have specs. I have seen great deals for under 400, and ripoffs for over 800 and more... Why don't you give us a quick rundown on what you want to do with the machine... then I'm sure we could advise with some specs you could write down and take with you. Here are some good general guidelines... For general use... not necessarily gaming, the 3 most important things are: Processor Memory (RAM) Hard Drive Space If you are just a general user, any processor marketed today would probably be sufficient, but they are not all created equal. I am such an enthusiast, so I don't know how well I could do with recommending a "minimum"... but I will say avoid celerons if possible. RAM.. well.. at least 1GB. 2GB is better, but you will probably be looking at more money to find one built that way. Hard Drives. Well.... a lack of storage is a pain. 160GB is plenty for most folks, and you can always buy another, if you need it. I would worry about this the least unless you have assloads of data to store. This is one of the cheapest and easiest things to upgrade on a pc. Gosh, I guess that is a mouthful, and it might already be stuff you know... I don't really know what your level of expertise is... Bottom line gut feeling is that you can probably find something better online for less.. something like this would probably be an excellent deal for you.. http://dealnews.com/deals/Dell-Insp...top-PC-19-Monitor-for-529-shipped/190042.html
I'd want to be sure the RAM is upgradable. Even if I couldn't afford 2 gigs of RAM now, I'd like to be able to add it in the future.
Well, you've got to remember that he's not exactly on a kickass machine at the moment. While I agree with you on the Celerons, Shep could probably get by with a gig of RAM (on an appropriately tweaked XP/Vista build) and under 80 gigs of hard drive space. Hell, I made it for years on 80 gigs - you just have to be a little more judicious in what you keep. While my mantra is "You can never have too many hard drives," it's simply because I tend to have a lot of computers for them to go in. The issue is that if you aren't keeping at least some sort of check on your drive usage, you're going to end up with a filled hard drive and a shit-ton of sorting to do to separate the wheat from the chaff. You tend to miss important things when backing up, or spending more than you need to in order to back up crap you don't really need. I'll definitely agree that we'd need specs before we could say that it is a good deal.
Aye.. I agree, essentially... the thing is... most pre-builts I looked at that only had 80 gigs of space also only have 512MBs... definately not enough... And I never have forgotten the words of that salesmen, back when I bought my first pc... "You will never need more than 450MB's of hard drive space... and that 66mz Dx2 486 should be FINE!! No need to go with the Pentium." Hmm.. I have learned over the years to plan ahead... lol... I have save game files, music, pictures, images, roms... oh gods, the roms... The trick is to keep it organized... that is the important thing.
