computer???

Before you call Dell, check www.slickdeals.net . It's a must. I'm a roll your own kind of guy myself and an inveterate gamer so I've got a 3.12 ghz P4 screamer with all state of the art stuff in it, but if you're a more normal person, Dell builds some great machines. They even build some smoking gaming rigs in their higher end offerings, but at that level of performance, I can well beat their price.

The thing about slickdeals.net is that they always have all the latest Dell promotion codes. Last week I saw a Dell P4 2.0 ghz machine with 256mb of ram and a 40gb hard drive for $323.00 after $100.00 rebate! Sure it used a PCI video card so it wasn't suited for modern gaming, but it had an open AGP slot so you could easily upgrade the graphics if needed. If you didn't need all the multimedia enhancements that a full P4 brings to the table, you could have had a Celeron 2.0ghz with all of the above for $223.00 after rebate!

Here's their most current deal as posted from slickdeals.net . This is a screaming machine and for $399.000 you can even get a FREE digital camer or PDA! The following is cut & pasted directly from their site. With slickdeals stuff, sometimes you have to stack multiple discount codes on your Dell order, but they offer easy instructions on how to do so:

Exp: 12/10/03 Comments(101) | Tell a Friend | AIM | Top


Dell Small Business has the Dimension 4600 P4-2.66GHz System for $399 + tax & free shipping. No rebates. You also get a free Palm Zire, Largan Digital Camera or Dell A920 All In One Printer.

You can also add an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro for an additional $200 which is recommended since the video cards sells for $300+.

Specs:
Pentium® 4 Processor at 2.66GHz with 533MHz front side bus
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
256MB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 333MHz (2x128M)
Dell® Quietkey® Keyboard
Dell® 2-button scroll mouse
Productivity Pack including WordPerfect® and Money®
40GB Value Hard Drive
48x CD-ROM Drive
Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics 2
Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio
Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet
1 Year Limited Warranty plus 1 Year On-site Service

Update: You can get the same configuration as above but with a P4 2.60GHz w/800MHz front side bus/ HT Technology instead for $439.

Click here.
Select your free printer, PDA or digicam.
Select the following options:
256MB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 400MHz (2x128M) [subtract $80]
Dell® 2-button scroll mouse [subtract $30]
Productivity Pack including WordPerfect® and Money® [subtract $99]
40GB Value Hard Drive [subtract $10]
No Floppy Drive Included [subtract $20]
48x CD-ROM Drive [subtract $50]
Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 [subtract $60]
No Speaker Option [subtract $20]
Click continue.
Select "1 Year Limited Warranty plus 1 Year On-site Service [subtract $218]"
Price will be $439.

The machine noted above with the P4 2.6 and the 800mhz front side bus, if upgraded with the Radeon 9800 video card option would play ALL the current games in all thier 3D glory for only $639.00!

Regarding your camera needs, what are you going to do with it? A 6 megapixel camera is great if you're a real photographer, but most folks would be well suited with a 2 megapixel Canon/Nikon/Sony for a lot less money. A 2 megapixel camera will produce nice shots up to 8.5"x11" prints for most people and really great 3"x5" or 5"x7" prints. If you're going to be shooting for general family purposes or to post on the web anything more is serious overkill. Unless you're a skilled photographer to begin with, you won't appreciate the advantages of a really top class Digicam. If you're a beginner, by the time you can max out your $200.00 2 megapixel camera's capabilities, the 6 megalixel machines will have come down considerably in price (think half).

These are my opinions, but are based in reality from my perspective.

jmx
 
Dell is indeed offering up some great deals. I am in the market for one myself and this is where I am going. I have an old Dell (circa '95) that has yet to hiccup at all at home and have used them for years at work without a single glitch. They work and are priced right and most come with 1 yr. in-home warranty coverage. Great packages at around $450. If you are going to be using it for internet, record keeping and phot work you will definitely have enough machine.
 
Hey buddy - glad to hear you are getting a camera too. Now I get to see pics of all of them right?? Nick whatever computer you wind up w/ just make sure to get a large hard drive. Using a 5 MB camera will use up storage room in a hurry.
Call Dell, tell them how you use a puter, and see what they reccomend Nick. I think they will reccomend a back to school type w/o a lot of the fancy stuff you don't need and at an affordable price. I have always been impressed at their customer service.
 
I have to admit that I haven't read all of the replies, but i will add my input and appologize if I repeat what has already been said.

I bought the Sony DSC F707 and I am really happy with it. It is a great camera. You can fit about 51 full rez. pictures on a 128MB memory card. My pics at full quality are about 1.5 to 2.3 meg each. I bought it about 8 months ago and I have taken over 2200 pictures with it. Granted most were junk and got deleted, but that is why digital is so cool.

My computer is a home built job. It used to be overclocked and water cooled, yes water cooled.:D Then that processor took a dump and I dropped the water cooling and got a 1.8 G AMD, 256 M ram, 64M vid card, a 30 gig HD and a 60 gig HD, 17 inch regular monitor.

What i would recomend is buying a prefab unit from dell. I would stay away from gateway and compaq. That slickdeals place sounds good too. But if you are not going to be doing alot of heavy cpu loading applications, go for something on the low end.

2 gig processor, alot of hd space for all those pictures, and at least 256 ram. The only thing I would really recommend is that you get a comp that you can upgrade with more memory, hd drives, cd burners, etc.
 
Originally posted by ddavelarsen
I have an iMac that's about 3 years old; I will never, ever, for any reason whatsoever, ever own another Microsoft-driven computer, ever! No way! And I know; I learned on Wintels, use em every day at work. But nope: Mac for me.
Click to expand...

Yew.... I bought a Mac 1 year ago, and I just couldn't stand it anymore - I had to buy a Windows. I can't stand Mac. Oh, it works fine, and I'm sure that in some areas it's the cat's meow, but if you want a variety of softwares, well, you might be in for a bad surprise. Plus, I'm used to and like the Windows idiosyncracies.

I bought an IBM ThinkPad A31, refurbished from IBM's site. Expensive, but great machine.

Nick,

I recommend you get a reputable brand directly from the maker. IMHO, refurbished products are good deals. Get one with not much RAM, but a lot of bay space for add'l RAM, and then upgrade it yourself. It's very easy to do. You can buy good quality RAM at a fraction of the price sold by the manufacturer. Dell is going to be hard to beat in terms of value.

Personally, I value very much the convenience offered by a laptop: for example, you can bring it to shows and show a slide-show on it, or even video clips. If you don't travel much, you can buy some of the "mobile workstations", i.e., a powerful laptop, but not as thin and light (and expensive) as the top of the line. That way, you can take it with you and edit pictures at some other location, etc. IMHO, the only draw back of a laptop is that their HD capacity isn't much. Apart from that, I think it's pretty reasonable to expect to upgrade or buy new stuff every 3 to 4 years.

If you don't want a laptop, I think that there's much to be said for building your computer yourself. It's easier than most people think, and with your skills, it should be very, very easy, and you'd save a bunch of money this way.

You may also want to buy an external hard drive to copy your documents and save them.

JD
 
Well, I have read all the posts and I am happy that all of us agree completely with each other and because of that Nick will not be confused one bit now in choosing a computer :D .

RL
 
Great idea Greymaker, why didn't I think of that. I find a pen and paper so useful for downloading drivers when my computer is apart on the bench...:)

jmx
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top