Need A New Computer

[NJL52]

My father's computer is completely dead. It takes 10 minutes to turn on, and sometimes it won't turn on at all. But when it does turn on, it is less useful then when it was off.

But I don't want one of the bullshit Best Buy computers where they charge you 1000 dollars for something that you will never use with all the picture programs and media bs.

Just need the bare basics: Office, CD drive, windows whatever, processor from 6 years ago, 10gb harddrive etc, nothing fancy, just something that runs.

Anybody know where I could find a deal like this for like 200 dollars? New btw.

 

[craig145]

try a local computer shop..you can get very nice used/refurbed comps for cheap..

 

[taekwondokid]

Agreed. You're not going to find anything new for that price, either a local computer shop or something on eBay. I don't know how badly you stand with money, but for $400 you can build a decent rig, whereas with $200 you'll end up with an old Pentium III or something else that will struggle to deal with the basic programs of today.

In my opinion, right now is the perfect time to build a new computer. Preliminary benches are showing the new 45nm Intel chips to be ~15% faster. Whether this figure goes up or down, it probably won't be worth the initial price hike. Along with that, DDR3 RAM has been delayed also, and RAM prices are dirt cheap right now. Plus, it might not even be worth getting a 45nm chip with Intel finally going with a memory controller similar to what AMD has been using sometime in 2008. So basically, you can build yourself a pretty nice computer that won't be outdated in a few months (relatively).

Here's an example of something relatively cheap:
X2 3600+ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103046 - $72
80gb WD Caviar Hard Drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822135106 - $50
Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135011 - $60
1GB RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220088 - $60
Case/Power Supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119118 - $65

Total - ~$300

Reuse your dvd burner from the current computer and that should be it.

 

[daveyboy2345]

Walmart has bargain pc's in the aisle ways for about 350-450.They are decent enough.

 

[taekwondokid]

Walmart has bargain pc's in the aisle ways for about 350-450.They are decent enough.

Like eMachines?

Quick walmart.com check resulted in a $408 PC coming with a Celeron D. You'd have to be extremely lazy or computer illiterate to spend $100 on top of my above list and you end up with a worse computer. Plus it comes with a minitower case so you basically have no upgrade path in the future, not to mention whatever horrible underpowered power supply they stuck in there.