Thread: Might buy this computer..Tell me what you think.

Hey guys,

Well it's time to put ol' Philly out to pasture..I'm looking at buying a new computer. It's gotta be a *decent* price as I got medical expenses these days. :eek:

Now, I really don't need the whole kit (monitor, speakers, etc) but it's a plus because I'm going to make my current computer Mom's solitaire and mahjong machine and I may throw an extra HD in it for network backup but that's down the line.

Here's what I've been looking at..Now before you get all excited, I know it's a wally world special but it seems to have decent specs + my current computer is Compaq and has lasted nearly 5 years under heavy useage without a hitch.

Compaq Presario SR5233WM-B

Argh: Cannot Copy/paste the specs.. The specs are here

Basic Specs:

Intel Pentium D 915 @ 2.8 Ghz 4 MB Cache (little small no?)
RAM 1 GB DDR II SDRAM / Max 2 GB
250 GB 7,200 RPM HD
DVD Burner
19" Widescreen monitor

I know the processor isn't the most up to date thing but it's a BIG step up from a P4 1.7 plus it's still dual core.

My only worries are:

Max RAM: 2 GB is small in today's day and age my PC (almost 5 yrs old) is expandable to 4 GB.

Graphics is Intel integrated which I assume means it eats off the system RAM.. right?

It's not a dual optical drive so copying anything would require me to rip to the HD first then burn. = Waste of time + additional stress on HD.

That's it.. Out of the box all I would do is max out the RAM which I'm sure will cost me some because I'll guarantee there is probably 2 512 sticks in there now, I'll have to pull both of them.

I'm still open to suggestions, if you have any please post some links. I'd like to stay below $600. My only real requirements are a decent amount of RAM. Also, I really want to stay with a dual core processor and away from 64 Bit processors as it appears running desktop Linux under 64 Bit is a royal PITA for multimedia.

Thanks for your thoughts,
Dan

Definitely go with 2GB RAM right away and, yes, the onboard video is going to steal some of that RAM for itself.

My suggestion... Try and stretch the budget so that you can get a system that's expandable to 4GB RAM. Vista is demanding on resources if you ever want to use it and it will be a while before (I'm assuming) you buy another one, so this one has to perform for quite a while for you.

I always try and stay away from Compaq, they tend to be a bit dodgy and use rusty old parts in their stuff, and I'm not kidding.

Well after searching around I've bumped up my price to about $750. I've searched New Egg, Wal-Mart, Tiger Direct, Circuit City, Best Buy, Dell, and Gateway. I found a couple of decent systems but nothing great. Any other suggestions for online retailers?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&CMP=ILC-FPM05

for the price this isn't horrible

I was actually just looking at the next step from that one: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...802&CatId=2639

I'm not sure if the extra processor speed and HD space is really worth $200 to me. :eek:

Now, I'm going back and fourth, don't know if I want to order online or just buy something off the shelf, I can be quite impatient. Best Buy had a decent setup that's available at my local store Gateway - E2160 Desktop - GT5622 it's got a slower processor but more memory than the $399 one you listed. But the only experience I've had with Gateway was bad, my friend needed his mobo replaced 3 weeks after getting his.

Search out ebay also.

Guys great news. I got my new computer today!!

I wound up with this: HP Pavilion a6333w-b Desktop PC w/ 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Wal-Mart

The 22" monitor is really amazing, I'm blown away by it after being on a 17 for so long. Vista is nice not all that great IMHO.. I'm about to partition and install Ubuntu let's hope I don't blow anything up. :eek:

Will post most later

Now I need to get a new computer!

lol This thing is freakin' awesome, I still cannot believe it's all mine. I just resized the windows partition and installed Ubuntu in the time it would've taken me to burn the ISO on my old computer.

Just running the Ubuntu Live CD on this computer is faster than a hard drive install of Ubuntu on my old computer.

Web pages actually load as fast as my connection can go instead of firefox stalling on the render.

My only small complaint is the keyboard is weird, the keys seem "flat" and I keep making mistakes. Other than that I'm one happy customer! Let's hope this computer is as good to me as my last one.

Now to go screw around with networking so I can copy all my stuff over.

At Dell, in the small business section, you can still get machines that run XP

For those that don't want to get bootstrapped to Vista beta just yet

Originally Posted by axemedia

At Dell, in the small business section, you can still get machines that run XP

For those that don't want to get bootstrapped to Vista beta just yet

Shouldn't be too big a deal for much longer.
SP1 (Final) for Vista is supposed to be released very shortly.

Originally Posted by Zap

Shouldn't be too big a deal for much longer.
SP1 (Final) for Vista is supposed to be released very shortly.

There are a lot of corporations that have their own custom software applications and are not jumping too quickly onto Vista until they are certain its stable, and of course their software has been updated to be compatible.

I doubt the first major update to Vista, one year after its launch, will be enough to make them confident in it.

Dell is offering machines with XP still because many of these businesses demand it. But for how much longer, I don't know.

From personal experience, AVOID HP/Compaq, they turn old with 3 months.

Originally Posted by iRoyal

From personal experience, AVOID HP/Compaq, they turn old with 3 months.

That is any computer

I wound up with the HP linked to above and even though I found out shortly after I bought it that the processor in this thing was available in the summer of 2005, I'm still very satisfied with this computer. It's a major upgrade over my old one (Pentium 4 1.7 ghz & 512 MB RAM) and comparatively is blazing fast. The truth is I spend most of my time in a web browser, I don't really need killer specs to run that.

Surely if I got my hands on a quad core or something I'd be jealous but I'm still very happy with this one.