New Computer

[CimminyCricket]

My seven year old computer finally died on me. When I mean died, I mean that there was a loud pop and it stopped working. It won't work, a few things are melted together, and I think it's time to just get a new one.
Or a semi new one. I'd like one that'll last as long as this one did. But that's nice and cheap. Any suggestions?

[Renmiri]

My new HP laptop is pretty nifty and average priced. Stay away from Dells!!!

[rubah]

dell laptops aren't too shabby, but HP have some sleek ones out.

(getamac)

[o_O]

Don't go within ten metres of a Dell. From my experience with laptops, Asus are fairly good, Acer are great and Toshiba are great too.

What I really recommend though is to choose your components yourself. Check for computer retailers in your area (not chain stores) and they'll more than likely be able to help you build your own. Most will do the assembly for free.

[Discord]

Toshiba and ASUS (don't confuse with Acer) are my favourites. Sony is also IMHO very, very good, though some people will probably tell you quite a few scary stories about them in the next few posts.:p

[Flying Mullet]

Are you in the market for a desktop or a laptop?

[CimminyCricket]

Either or really.

[Mirage]

I didn't have the best of experiences with my Acer, tbh.

[bipper]

Newegg.com - Buy Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more! (http://www.newegg.com)
ZipZoomFly (http://www.zipzoomfly.com)

build your own :D Imho, you get the best bang for your buck, and if you want to go cheap, you sure can :) As far as prefabs go, falcon NW, but a cheap good - I would say HP.

[Namelessfengir]

i'll go with building your own also or if you have a repair shop in your area they'll have a few custom built or rebuild boxes there on the other hand if you get stuff from newegg you could build your own box ie just the tower and then hook up your old peripherals to it (monitor mouse printer keyboard) and it would be cheaper then buying a whole new complete system

namelessfengir network database professional

[Discord]

I'd advice against building your own PC for three reasons:

1.) It's not as easy as it might sound and unless you know what you're doing, don't bother.
2.) You will very often get better deals by buying a ready one. You'll get a whole bunch of demo-versions, ad-cds and so forth with it, which eventually lower the price. Even more the case, certain shops give you special deals, for whatever reason, or by selling the PCs in large numbers lower their costs (Economic Law of Mass Production).
3.) If you build you own PC and it does end up working, it's far from probable that your choice of the components will not result in a significant loss of power. Shop-chains, usually know what they're doing.

Though if you do feel lucky, try building one. However, it will not be cheaper.

[crono_logical]

The problem with buying a ready made brand-name one I find is all the crap preinstalled that makes it so cheap - to be honest I don't find it worth the hassle removing it all to get the machine clean again :p

Local computer retailers or computer fairs I find are good for cheap custom-made ones with decent brand name components, and some will build it for you on the spot so you don't have to worry about it :p

[ZeZipster]

If you're getting into gaming: build it, overclock it.
If you're going to just use it: buy any computer from any company that has warranties.

HP Pavilions are getting good reviews right now.

Personally, if I was going to get a new computer I'd throw 2,000 down on a gaming computer. Get an nice E6600 overclocked to 3.5 like my friend just recently did.

[Renmiri]

Building your own is definitely better IF you know what you are doing. But bear in mind you will have no warranty and will have to do every fix yourself.

Considering you are about to travel far away (July right ?) I'd go for a premade one from a big company. Much easier to find service for it in Germany or wherever it is they will ship you.

[Baloki]

Building your own is definitely better IF you know what you are doing. But bear in mind you will have no warranty and will have to do every fix yourself.

Most problems on a pre-made you will have to fix your self or send off to a 'big company' for 2 to 3 weeks and they usually charge you for parts as that's not usually covered by warranties. If your going to buy a premade one do as Cl_out says and get it from a small local shop who will be more willing to help you fix it for free and on the spot if you take it in.

[o_O]

Building your own doesn't necessarily mean you have to assemble it on your own; it just means you have to choose the parts. A local computer parts retailer will certainly give you advice on what you should buy and get all of the parts in and assemble it for you, all for the price of buying the parts separately.

Don't underestimate the saving you'll make here: I built my computer for $NZ1600 instead of $NZ3000 for an equivalent machine from a chain store. That's nearly a 50% saving.

[bipper]

It is not hard to figure out how to build your own once you have the parts. If you want builds, just ask, we can supply em. :) And you do get manufacture warranties, and newegg's return policy is excellent. Dell and HP warranties are not worth :skull::skull::skull::skull:, unless you upgrade to their gold/premium support plans.

[rubah]

apple replaced my dvd drive in my macbook pro and I don't think it was even still in warranty! (bought it refurb) cheers to that

[CimminyCricket]

My friend is selling me his for $300.
It's a working laptop with 798mhz and 448ram. I dunno what those to things do, but they're alot higher than my old computer.

[rubah]

are you sure? :O

That's like good stats from like ten years ago ;o

[Flying Mullet]

A laptop like that was powerful about 6-7 years ago.

[Mirage]

Still good enough for Win XP, internet and media. Try haggling though :p.

For the record, more RAM basically means you can have more programs open without slowing down your PC, and faster CPU means your PC can process information faster, such as encoding and decoding stuff. 800 MHz would be enough to decode most videos in real time, but probably not a high-definition video.

[crono_logical]

If you intend to watch anime, 800 MHz is not nearly enough, especially with h264 encodes these days even at non-HD resolutions - my 1.3 GHz Pentium M barely copes with those :D

[o_O]

If that's $US300, I think it's far, far too much to be paying for a machine of that power. Personally, I wouldn't buy less than a 3200+ AMD or equivalent Intel processor, and even that is not nearly as powerful as I'd like or need.

[Yamaneko]

Building your own computer is not hard.

If you go with a notebook. Check out Asus and Lenovo. I'm currently waiting for the Santa Rosa (Centrino Pro) refresh of the Asus V1JP to hit the States.

[Discord]

Hmm... 300 USD a bit expensive. Considering the fact that it is used and the battery is probably also a little bit down the drain. 500 RAM is a LOT for that machine though. Usually a P3 laptop would have around 128 MB, so your friend must have stuck some fat RAM extension chip in there. 700 Mhz is nothing nowadays though. My guess is that the graphics card isn't larger than 16 MB either, possibly 8 MB.

How much are you willing to spend on a new computer? I think that's the big question.

[rubah]

it's probably 448 kilobytes of ram:D?

[Discord]

it's probably 448 kilobytes of ram:D?


[...]nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM[...]

http://www.pointofexistence.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/salute.gif

[rubah]

Apparently he didn't actually say that.

[Discord]

Apparently he didn't actually say that.

Even if he did, I can't blame him for this sort of mistake. I can't exactly remember the other quote, but it went something like this:


[...]In the future, computers will weigh less than two tons![...]

That wasn't Bill Gates though.

[ShunNakamura]

If you intend to watch anime, 800 MHz is not nearly enough, especially with h264 encodes these days even at non-HD resolutions - my 1.3 GHz Pentium M barely copes with those :D
<span style="color:#FFCCFF">
Hmm... well I know my Windows 98SE, 500mhz, with 256mb ram can't run high definition, but it handles just about everything else with a bit of tweaking around(this includes most games that I am interested in as well). Just about any anime I have ever watched is easily playable(including from the DVD, when my DVD player decides to work) except those in .mkv format. OGM runs fine usually; though after playing them so long(about 45mins to 1 hour) it starts to choke on me.

As for High Definition I have ran into problems with my current rig on some of them(1.8 Ghz Intel Celeron, 2GB of ram, 512mb ATI Radeon); which is sad to me.



However, I will concur that 300$ is a bit much for such a machine. I would likely pay 100$; maybe 200$ tops depending on stuff like how good is the battery, the size of the Hard-drive, and what extras are with it(such as useful pre-installed software, drives, does it have a station, etc).

Just for a comparison I'll list two recent examples:
-We payed around 300-400$ dollars(don't recall exact amount) for my desktop; used of course. 1.8 Ghz Intel Celeron, 2GB of ram, 512mb ATI Radeon(I think, it might be a 256 though I have it recored as a 512 from when I checked out each part individually), 2x 200 GB hard-drives, 2x Ultra Speed DVD/CD Burner Combo Drives, and it even had a [i]fancy Viper case with it that it all went in.
-We sold a 1Ghz, 512mb ram, 40Gb Hard-drive desktop computer[onboard video and sound, just a standard CD-rom Drive; mainly cause our spare DVD/CD-rom Combo burn Drive didn't work with the spare motherboard... we were going to charge 100$ with the addition of it) with WinXP on it for about 75$.

Things to keep in mind, laptops are more expensive in general than desktops(even used); in addition a good working battery can be worth a decent amount.
</span>

[Discord]

Things to keep in mind, laptops are more expensive in general than desktops(even used); in addition a good working battery can be worth a decent amount.
</span>

~150 USD.

I doubt that the battery of that machine is working though.

[Namelessfengir]

actually bill gates did say that or close to that he said 720kb

[CimminyCricket]

The lap top works fine, especially for what I plan to use it for. Whenever I hang out with him I'll spend hours playing on it. The only reason he's selling it is due to financial problems.

[Endless]

actually bill gates did say that or close to that he said 720kb

<a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/316483_software21.html">As far as we know, he did not</a>. Just scroll down to "What Gates didn't predict".

If you're willing to spend a little more ($500), you can get a <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115369">brand new laptop from newegg</a>. If a desktop PC is fine, you can get <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103054">one for $360</a>. No point really in paying $300 for something that seems to be almost as old as your dead computer.

[Mirage]

If you intend to watch anime, 800 MHz is not nearly enough, especially with h264 encodes these days even at non-HD resolutions - my 1.3 GHz Pentium M barely copes with those :D
Pft, most anime I download isn't encoded using h264, and everything else plays without any problems even if I set the laptop to run at 600 MHz.

[Discord]

If you intend to watch anime, 800 MHz is not nearly enough, especially with h264 encodes these days even at non-HD resolutions - my 1.3 GHz Pentium M barely copes with those :D
Pft, most anime I download isn't encoded using h264, and everything else plays without any problems even if I set the laptop to run at 600 MHz.

:eek: DOWNLOAD?! :eek: I feel the scent of a donkey! :eek: Probably an illegally immigrated donkey too! :eek:

Well, 300 USD is a little much for that machine, if you ask me.

[CimminyCricket]

If you're willing to spend a little more ($500), you can get a <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115369">brand new laptop from newegg</a>. If a desktop PC is fine, you can get <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103054">one for $360</a>. No point really in paying $300 for something that seems to be almost as old as your dead computer.

The one you showed didn't even have a monitor. :c\ The monitor that I was using liked to go all purple and red and a whole lot of other colours during gameplay, so I'm not sure if that's what I want to be using. xD
The laptop has a few upgrades though, a pretty new graphics card, dunno which model, but it's one of the more recent ones, a wireless thing built in, a bunch of gb for me to not store things on.

[Endless]

Count $150 for a <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009088">17" flat screen</a>.