I had to explain computer purchasing concepts to my brother in law. he doesn’t understand why he cannot buy a $299 computer and be happy with it. I tried (not sure if I succeeded) in explaining that it is low end crap, and that it will be easily outdated in 3-5 years. Since they want to (plan to) keep the computer that long, they should not buy the bottom of the barrel. I didn’t mention but felt like I should mention it, that I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemy to buy a $299 computer so I would not let my family buy that stuff. The only exception of the rule mentioned above is Gus. Since he seems to think he can run the universe on his old P-2 300mhz, I would recommend a 5 year old used Dell off of ebay for him:)
Life, Kids, Technology & that move to another continent
I disagree partially with you on the low end pc part. I built a cheap pc for my girlfriend last spring. Har last computer was a P2-300. This new one was an Athalon XP 2400, 256 megs of ram, my old 64 meg agp card, and an old 80 gig HD in a new $20 case plus power supply.
Out of pocket was $235. and I should add another 512 megs for when I use it, but when she uses it, she doesn’t come close to maxing it out. She uses two applications, firefox, and iTunes. Now she also plays java based games at http://www.popcap.com. Her main complaint was that she couldn’t run iTunes.
The inportant thing when it comes to cheap PCs is that you use an excelent motherboard. I used an ASUS A7N8X-E Delux. Tyan is also good. This board has the features on board that I need it to have, being a mac head. Namely USB2, Firewire, and gigabit.
This PC will be good to run for the next 2-3 years at which time I can upgrade the CPU, to 3.2gz (the socket has reached end of life), the ram to 4 gig, and the HD to 500 gig, and it will still be a cheap but usable PC for another 2 years. I think that this is a decent method purchase. It keeps the user on a somewhat decent upgrade schedule when the money is tight. She will have a computer which was decent 2 years ago at both times, vs a computer which was last decent 8 years ago, but cost several thousands of dollars, and is not user upgradable.
She recently got a better job, and is now saving up for a mac mini.
I just upgraded my 1.4gz athalon thunder bird to an athalon 2.8 with the barton core, tripling my speed, without the need for an OS reinstall or any other change. I also recently used notron ghost to migrate my data from a 40 gig to a 200 gig hd.
My primary computer is the 1.5 gz 15 inch powerbook with superdrive.
-Michael M