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Need to buy a new desktop computer, advice needed.

Mark, those of us in the business in the KC area shop at http://www.microcenter.com/. They always have some sort of sale going on so you would want to go into their store off of Metcalf in Overland Park and ask them what kind of deals they have that day. Seems like you come to KC every now and then.

I picked up a very nice Compaq laptop for the wife for $275.
 
"Shaun" said:
Before making go fast goodies for Mustangs full-time, I did IT for 8 years. I can't recall the amount of Dell machines we had fail. At one company it was pretty much 90% of all the hard drives in one particular model, probably 150 units. The batteries would stop holding a charge after about 13-15 months (warranty was only 12 months). The next place used Dell desktops, 75% of all their hard drives failed, none of the HP's had any issues. Even though these were all corporate leased machines with 3 year parts warranties so stuff got replaced for free, who wants their data lost?

I'll never, ever buy a Dell. I buy a base-ish HP every 3 years for $300-$400 and throw the old one away. The machines are light years better than the were 3 years ago so the speed increase/data storage is noticeable. Sounds like you are not playing games or anything fancy so you don't need a $1000+ machine. I have 3 hard drives, 2 internal and 1 external. I keep the OS on one, all data on the other and then backup that data onto the external automatically daily. Then, when/if the machine dies, a quick trip to Best Buy, $300-$400 later, plug in the external drive and I'm off working again. The base machines are so cheap its not worth paying the 'Geek Squad' to fix it if its something major.
Click to expand...

Now you tell me. :nut I bought a Dell couple of months ago and my daughter just got one with her graduation money.

fd
 
I have a Dell laptop....5 years old....working good with just two good virus cleanings. Wife has a Dell laptop ....3 years old, one virus clean up..... HP's we had before were just as good.
 
We use Dells here at work. Most have been pretty reliable. My old Lattitude 2610 never had a problem, bought it off lease and it's still ticking in the garage at home - 7 years old, IIRC. My new work laptop, a Lattitude E6400 - well, it sucks. Had it two years, two hard drives failed. DVD drive quit. Litany of windows / software errors that can't be replicated, but just show up at random. So, right now, I'd second the no Dell camp. Seems the QC has gone out the window. IT guys now hate them.
 
I think I'll give the HP a try. My Dell has been pretty good all these years, but it's just to small and slow anymore with all these giant programs. I can't complain about a 6 yr old laptop that hasn't crashed.

Thanks for all the ideas and info!!
 
I wouldn't touch HP/Compaq with a 10ft pole wrapped in a grey sweatshirt. :Mark

Everything's great until something bad happens (say the hard drive dies) then you find out you were supposed to make your own recovery discs. So you order recovery discs (or find the ones you made and forgot about) and pop them in.

Fire it up and it says "your model is not supported". So now you're stuck buying a $100 copy of windows at a store or paying HP $110 to re-tattoo the computer so the discs will work again.

I've run into this FIVE times recently, and no one can explain it, or explain what "tattooing" is, or why it's so special compared to a hardware ID string in the BIOS. I will never buy an HP again.
 
The system "tattoo" thing is a real pain in the ass. A lot of manufacturers use something like it. Just another reason why I build my own, buy an oem copy of windows, then backup a complete image on another drive. Screw some recovery disks.
I know I will never buy a HP printer again. I've had to install plenty at work, and for some reason, Hp thought it would be awesome to make the install take 2 hours! For a printer!
 
Build yer own.

Start here http://www.directron.com/phex4combo2.html
then add 4 gigs of ram, two 1TB sata hard drives, a case of your choice(with a high end power supply)

If you plan to do a bunch of photo/video manipulation, you'll want to double the ram and add an nvidia gtx460 1gb video card and sound blaster fatality sound card.

The onboard sound and video included with the motherboard should be fine for regular old interweb activities.
 
"Gigantopithecus" said:
Are you sure you want him to build one? This is Mark after all.
Click to expand...

It will rain on the day you want to use it
Any heavy use and it will blow up
Only colors are grey or gray
It will set next to the tractor
It will not have a sweatshirt cover
It will have LARGE speakers
 
"AzPete" said:
It will rain on the day you want to use it
Any heavy use and it will blow up
Only colors are grey or gray
It will set next to the tractor
It will not have a sweatshirt cover
It will have LARGE speakers
Click to expand...

Now that's farg'n funny!
 
I've always had good luck with Dell.

I've got a very outdated Dell laptop that I keep in the closet for emergency use. It was the wife's work computer for about four years before her old company basically gave it to us. I used it personally for a long time and the darn thing still runs.

We have two HP / Compaq laptops right now and they are a pos...I'll never buy another one.

On one of them, the mother board was replaced via warranty. A bit after that the hard drive crashed (while it was still under warranty). Got it back from the repair shop...it ran ok for about three weeks until the warranty ran out and it's crapping out on me again. Sometimes it just shuts down for no reason and you have to wait a while for it to boot up again. As cheap as computers are these days I don't plan on spending a lot of $ fixing it. Plan to back up all my data, use boot and nuke on the hard drive then take it to the recycle center on my way to buy a Dell.
 
The processor is overheating. When they swapped the motherboard, they probably didn't put additional thermal compound of the heatsink. Blow out any crud, clean the bottom of the heatsink and the processor with rubbing alcohol, apply a dab of thermal compound to the top of the processor, reinstall heatsink. Make sure to plug up the fan to the board.

What model is it?
 
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