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Originally Posted by Jester
My five year old HP 742c recently had a power surge during a bad storm. My ethernet connection, all three cd/dvd drives and other misc things have been damaged. Any opinions on a replacement? I have been looking at Dell.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FloridaOrange
Build it, don't buy from Dell/gateway or whatever. I priced a couple of rigs a couple of months ago. A tad over $1K for a so-so with real nice parts and very upgradable. Around $2K for a conservative kick-azz machine with 2 19" LCDs.
I had some help from 2K and Rick last year when I built my first one. It's so easy.....even a caveman can do it. I spent about $1500 on mine, but it would've cost almost twice what I paid for it if I went the Dell route. Plus I know I've got good boards (not the generic crap you get in a cheap dell/hp/gateway) and the machine is very upgradable.
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Depends on what his usage is. For just browsing the internet, checking email, and a few small tasks then the cheap Dells are hard to beat. They are a lot of bang for the buck. If you want something that can handle gaming, photo/video editing then you will be better off building it yourself.
Personally, I'm not sold on Vista yet so I wouldn't buy a brand new PC right now. I would look for something that comes with XP on it. If you do decide to go with Vista, keep in mind that there are several different versions. Most lower end PCs are being sold with the Home version which doesn't have the hardware requirements of the Ultimate version...and I wouldn't even think about the Ultimate version unless the PC had at least 2GB of RAM.