Is it worth it to buy the cheapest PC?

[vansmack2000]

as long as it's a pentium and NOT a celeron, there is nothing really wrong with it. especially for what you listed her doing

bah, your caught up in the marketing machine of /pentium/ too much. they are basically the same, ive had both with no problems.
Like non brand name drugs, its all good.

 

[javaguru]

I would definitely go with a memory upgrade over a cpu upgrade. I like Dell and have had freat experiences in the past.

 

[gonelifting]

256 is heaps, dont upgrade more imo, no need.

im running a p4 1.7 with 256 in this laptop, and it plays music while i surf while burning a DVD while recording music off the net. computers these days are WAY overspecced for standard stuff imo.

ask her if she is happy with the deal, stress that the warranty is good, stress that Dell is a good brand etc, make sure she wholeheartedly says "buy it now!!!" before you press it, because people are funny with computers - if you buy something for them and then, in a fit of dickhead logic, they see something worse that they think is better, they get all sour at you. i had customers installing AMD drivers on intel machines, getting errors, and then blaming me. i wanted to cave their skulls in

good luck

Nah she'll be cool with it. Hers is 5 years old and she ASKED for a 15 inch. She's easy to please I guess.

The memory upgrade to 512 from 256 was $32. lol That's worth it IMO.

After further reading though, I see that the LCD upgrade is only for the $999 model in the 4700 series. That's too much IMO for her. So I DID end up with the Celeron processor that has the free Flat screen upgrade that was $639 and I added the 512 memory and little stuff for a total of $690 something...

So, that's even cheaper than the original one I was looking at and will be more than enough for her. Free shipping free CD burner upgrade free LCD monitor upgrade... good stuff, 80 gig HD... 512 RAM, for under $700. Good enough, thanks everyone.

 

[TC2]

Nah she'll be cool with it. Hers is 5 years old and she ASKED for a 15 inch. She's easy to please I guess.

The memory upgrade to 512 from 256 was $32. lol That's worth it IMO.

After further reading though, I see that the LCD upgrade is only for the $999 model in the 4700 series. That's too much IMO for her. So I DID end up with the Celeron processor that has the free Flat screen upgrade that was $639 and I added the 512 memory and little stuff for a total of $690 something...

So, that's even cheaper than the original one I was looking at and will be more than enough for her. Free shipping free CD burner upgrade free LCD monitor upgrade... good stuff, 80 gig HD... 512 RAM, for under $700. Good enough, thanks everyone.

See how much less it is with the minimum amount of memory,...you usually can save a ton buy buying memory separately and installing it later yourself.

 

[GoldenDelicious]

bah, your caught up in the marketing machine of /pentium/ too much. they are basically the same, ive had both with no problems.
Like non brand name drugs, its all good.

you used to see a difference back in the days of, say, the 500Mhz processors, where the pentiums had more cache than the celerons, especially when you were playing games

for normal everyday stuff? lol you get 10x better performance by simply running a defrag here and there

 

[chyllaxyn]

can't go wrong with Dell . eMachines maybe a little cheaper but if you want solid equipment and a good warranty go Dell

 

[AristotleBC]

dell was running a deal on the Dimension PCs for $499 after mail in rebate. if the computer is just being used for basic stuff, it'll be above and beyond what she needs and she won't have any need to replace it for years.

i almost went with the Dimension, but with the upgrades i needed it was going to cost me $699 after mail in rebate. since i don't "need" a new moniter, i built my own for just under $500, no moniter, and better upgradeability.

and yes Dev, i got a Celeron. i have no fear on that either. plus i can drop a 3.4ghz P4 Extreme in this board when they become cheaper.

Why would you do that man? You wouldn't get 1066mhz FSB (unless your mobo does support it of course) and by that time you may as well buy a new PC. Especially if the FSB on your PC is 533.

 

[AristotleBC]

256 is heaps, dont upgrade more imo, no need.

im running a p4 1.7 with 256 in this laptop, and it plays music while i surf while burning a DVD while recording music off the net. computers these days are WAY overspecced for standard stuff imo.

ask her if she is happy with the deal, stress that the warranty is good, stress that Dell is a good brand etc, make sure she wholeheartedly says "buy it now!!!" before you press it, because people are funny with computers - if you buy something for them and then, in a fit of dickhead logic, they see something worse that they think is better, they get all sour at you. i had customers installing AMD drivers on intel machines, getting errors, and then blaming me. i wanted to cave their skulls in

good luck

And I thought your political posts were dismal. Don't buy a new pc that will be running Windows XP with less than 512mb of memory. The 512 will be useful and it's generally too cheap to not do so.

 

[gonelifting]

$32 to upgrade from 256 to 512. Easy decision...

$16 to upgrade from 40G to 80G. Easy decision....

 

[GoldenDelicious]

And I thought your political posts were dismal. Don't buy a new pc that will be running Windows XP with less than 512mb of memory. The 512 will be useful and it's generally too cheap to not do so.

youre absolutely right, taking that 0.32 seconds less to boot up and shut down XP totally justifies the expense

i have a 466Mhz celeron based laptop with 32meg ram running XP, playing music and surfing without a hitch, so really, dont get all PC Authority on me, because its a bunch of bullshit. in the real world, for ultra basic users, 256 is overkill....or do we have to treat people like idiots when we sell them computers? like the engineers i had coming to me and demanding extra ram so that they could run CAD, because they were used to the old days where 4meg ram was the norm and you should spend the extra $600 to upgrade to 8 meg