May buy a new 'puter soon...

[Boxcar Willie 84]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

ANYWAY.....Chuck my roommate has a killer computer that he made over the summer. I don't know all the specs and whatnot but he's got blue LEDs on the front and its the ritz. I paid $375 for my eMachines and $90 for my MAG Innovision Monitor and it works fine for me, and I could afford it with pants-sellin' money.

[Guest]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

I know Monk, That was the first time I installed it on a Mac, just needed it because my PS6 Mac disk is toast and I wanted to run it under the Mac, so I had to install the PC vs, but it's not as fast as it's still basically running under the limitations of Windows, therefore not using the processing, per se, of the Mac. Sounds kind of wacked, but I think it's still under the contraints of the XP OS.

It took the same amount of time to install on the Dual G4.

Very impressive to say the least.

How do you like AMD's? I know, it's the old Ford/Chevy thing, but I've never used one for anything more than surfing the web, email, etc and it's been 6 yrs or longer.

What'd that setup cost you, if you don't mind? Where'd you get the parts, etc? ( Just asking for Chuck, basically )

Pat

[L]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

Chuck - If you decide on a Dell, watch this site for a week and all kinds of deals will be listed. You can save some serious money....

http://gotapex.com/

[Guest]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

Yeh, and someone else mentioned http://fatwallet.com/ and a couple of others as well. Just look and read carefully and find the stackable rebates/coupons.

Not too long ago, Dell had a deal with $750 off all notebooks $1499 and up, that was a killer deal. I think Paul ( J's bud snagged one )

There certainly are some Dell's for cheap out there to be found/had.

Pat

[Guest]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

Dude, that GotApex has got a killer coupon right now, expires today tho...

Dimension 8400, P4 3.2, 512 ram with a 19" LCD for $749, after what "looks" to be $100 rebate.

Snag it bro, that's a steal. Not sure about audio or video, but it has to come with something I'd imagine.

Thanks for the link L.... )

Pat

[SEEGERMANY]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

I've been buying Dells for several years, both for my business and my home. I've purchased eleven desktop machines as well as three laptops. I'm yet to experience a single problem. Having said that, my Dell expenditures are well above $700. Matter of fact, it's going to be tough finding a Dell for $700 that includes a 17" flat screen monitor and a CPU with enough "umpf" to handle most applications. Best of luck.

[Guest]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

Hey German.. Check that link L posted... $749 with a 19", not a bad config either...

Chuck, you stil with us bro, or did I/we scare you away? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Pat

[hippietim]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, I'll bite...

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That garbage came from you:

Come on Tim, you're telling me these companies don't push each other on you? ummm, K

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It was general statement, not saying that "you" were doing this, it was addressed to the general public, come on...

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I did not interpret that as such. It said "Tim" and "you" in the same sentence in a response to me. Interpretting that sentence using the grammar rules I learned in grade school, the "you" refers to me, not the general public.

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Please point out the flip/flop. We have a department at work that deals with computer problems. When my laptop harddisk died I had them take care of it just like I would if it had been any other piece of equipment by any vendor. I have never met or dealt with a Dell employee that worked at Microsoft so I have no idea if there are Dell people on site. It wouldn't surprise me though, we have folks on site from a lot of vendors.

[/ QUOTE ]

You stated that you've never had any problems except with the laptop you dropped, but then you proceeded to say...

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I can't comment on Dell support because I didn't have to deal with them because we have a department at work that takes care of this sort of thing - I send in a service request, they come get the machine, and then I get a fixed machine back.

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But all the while sending boxes in with a service request, again, an implecation implied that there's more than one request.

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I did not say there were multiple service requests for a Dell computer. I was describing how the process works. Sorry it was confusing.

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I use Dells at work because it is what I choose. They are not my only choice by a long shot.

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M$ let's you pick and choose the machine you want to work on? Nice gig...

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Another thing we can agree on - excellent!

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Again, that is incorrect. Dell has custom motherboards and chassis/cases which are excellent and typically designed much better than your average beige box. Also, they do not always use peripherals that are identical to what you can buy off the shelf. Like IBM, Compaq, Gateway and all the other big boys, Dell works with vendors for things like display cards and sound cards to get versions optimized for their systems. They get special drivers as well that are optimized for their systems.

[/ QUOTE ]

While I agree that testing is done for compatibility issues and what's the best card for this baord, etc etc etc, I find it hard to believe you can't buy "any" component that comes in a Dell off the shelf at some etailer. ( Before you twist this around, I'm only referring to the primary components, moboard, cpu and perhaps a video card.)

So tell me what seperates a Dell from any other "comparable" animal when it comes to a chassis/case?

The days of using proprietary peripherals are basically gone, sure there's a couple of them out there yet, but my understanding is that Dell is not one of these.

[/ QUOTE ]

Every Dell I've ever had utilized custom cases and custom motherboards. You really should just open one up. Some of the peripherals have definitely been off the shelf. No doubt about it. However, a lot of them have custom boards for Dell - the generic drivers would work in most cases but the customized driver for Dell would work better (faster frame rates, less CPU utilization for sound, etc.) I've seen the same thing on other vendors machines as well. The first thing to look for if you're trying to determine if you have a custom made board is to look at the low-level plug and play identifier. The display string in the UI will usually be indistinguishable so you can't go by that.

[ QUOTE ]
Next????

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backatcha

[hippietim]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

[ QUOTE ]
my PC:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/eMach...oductDetail.do

I bought it on sale with the 17" monitor bundled in for the same price as one without it, so check your local paper. It has good hardware, but the biggest complaint is that it comes factory-installed with a ton of spyware that needs to be cleaned out.

[/ QUOTE ]

That looks like a good deal to me. I am certainly happy with my eMachines laptop. I would definitely go for the LCD display - I will never buy another CRT again.

Regarding the factory installed spyware, that is unfortunate. Sorry to hear that. Did you contact eMachines about it? Mine didn't have anything to obnoxious preinstalled other than a bad anti-virus package.

[Shawn Lutz]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

entertaining debate.

Since I work for an internet company that hundred and hundreds of machines I can attests for Dells being great machines and great customer service (at least a couple years ago) we did a deal with HP/Compaq and they suck in comparison on the customer service even though we spend millions with them, our systems group say that as well.

Really a the main thing you want is a machine with a good mo bo with fast bus, CPU and memory. I use P4 and Athlon AMD's and the AMD is the better deal price wise and you can thank them for intel price drops over the years.

AS far as MS bashing it does become tiring but everyone does it, especially when you pay a $$$ for licensing fix, patch on the fly.

Pat after you get you apple you see the light when the only apps you can run is professional digital video editing stuff and QuickTime, well the OS will run good though. Everything is stable when nothing is running on it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Everyone raves about the security of Mac but if they were as widely deployed as MS I'm sure the vulnerabilities would be revealed.

And I do record on a no name PC with an AMD processor and have a M-Audio 2496 card in it. I don't do games as I find them to be a time waster, if I did a better video card would all I would need but I can run full screen vide no problem right now.

[Chuckracer]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

Guys, you are all awesome!
I have not the skills to build my own, so it's Dell or Mac, and that Dell deal looks like a screamer!

Coupons? Someone said coupons?

Thanks everybody for all your help!

[hippietim]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

There are a lot of folks that sell PCs from various mail order/online PC makers on Ebay for substantial discounts. They are brand new machines with full warranties from the maker. They are current models. I know a handful of folks that have bought Dells and Gateways this way and were very pleased. I don't think you get to customize the configuration though because the machines are already built and ready to ship.

FWIW, despite the potential savings, I bought mine directly from Dell.

[sully]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

also a mac convert, and i got my G4 with dual 500 processors, 1 gig of ram, a cd rw, and just about every single program i could ever use. i've got photoshop cs, illustrator cs, ilife, which has garageband on it (a very cool recording program, btw) studio mx2004 (which admittedly sucks on a a mac; macromedia has all but admitted that they released beta software for mac users).

i use my computer a lot, and there's not one program that i need and can't have. obviously, my needs may be different from yours, but i've got all the site building, graphic design, music playing (itunes 'effin rules), music recording, word processing (ms office) software i could ever need.

and it's faster, runs better, is visually more appealing (desktop icons that enlarge when you mouse over them, a desktop environment/background that changes like a slide show), and overall, it just seems like everything is more enhanced. i don't have any beef with MS at all, but i can't imagine ever going back to a PC. i agree with shawn in that macs would more than likely have more spyware/virus issues if they were more widespread, but if that's what keeps those things away (in comparison), stay small! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

another great site to get discount/refurb stuff from is www.tigerdirect.com. i got my last pc and monitor there, and i was very happy with them.

sully

[hippietim]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

Chuck, go to the search engine of your choice and enter "dell coupons".

[Guest]

Re: May buy a new \'puter soon...

Shawn,

There's a lot of programs available for the Mac now. Look around bro.. The "only" reason I even bought a Mac ( 1.5 yrs ago )was for recording, but since I've had it, I've grown in to it, especially with the GUI in OSX. For the basic programs people use, a Mac is fine.

There's an interesting topic, what programs do you guys run on your machine? How often are they used?

Pat