Looking at getting a new computer

[Leafsrule16 5]

Currently on a 5 year old Toshiba laptop, the keyboards gone. Its $150 to fix, but honestly the laptop doesnt have much life left in it. I was looking around at just simply a desktop but without a monitor or anything as i have all that other stuff and cannot really decide on a computer seeing as i dont know much about them. I was shown a Gateway pc today it has a quadcore processor (which i know is fast), it also had a terabyte drive and 8gb of ram which sounded good from what i know, it was on sale for $800 with a nice keyboard and mouse. Are gateway computers good? I simply go on the computer, listen to A LOT of music and im on the computer all day.. I want something blazingly fast (as fast as i can get for under $1000 for a tower), graphics arn't a huge deal for me neither is a sound card. I was also considering building my own but not sure where to start or what components to use.

[english15x 3]

1) theres no need for a terrabyte hard drive

2) quad core is pushing it

If all your looking for is a computer for internet and music storage just look for a well priced dual core laptop or tower with over 250GB of hard drive space and 2GB RAM and you should be just fine.

[Chadd 916]

Don't bother building your own, it just doesn't make sense anymore. You get much more value when buying from a manufacturer. I have a Gateway laptop that I picked up because it was cheap and I needed something for the road, it has been pretty dependable from day one.

[camhockey16 5]

i agree with chadd - its not worth building your own unless you are very picky and know exactly which components you want - and i dont think you will save money that way anymore.

i like to keep an eye on the dell outlet because you can occasionally find some steals in there - i'm not sure if any other manufacturers have a used/refurbished section of their website but you can find some pretty good deals in there. they come with just as long of a warranty as a new computer but they are either opened box or else have some small visual defect like a scratch on it.

http://www.dell.com/content/segmenter.aspx...;l=en&s=dfo

[Krev 86]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16834115592

Fast, cheap, great specs, free shipping.

[TBLfan 25]

Don't bother building your own, it just doesn't make sense anymore. You get much more value when buying from a manufacturer. I have a Gateway laptop that I picked up because it was cheap and I needed something for the road, it has been pretty dependable from day one.

It pretty much only makes sense if you want to build a supercomputer.

I have a laptop that is widescreen, lightweight, Dual-core, 64-bit, 250GB HD and 4GB of memory... Less than $900, last year.

It's perfect for me(HD is a little small) and I do a lot more than you said you'd be using the computer for.

[Leafsrule16 5]

I kind of dreamed of building a super computer. A quadcore processor, blue ray drive and a terabyte is about as close as i can afford to get although i really want a fast processor lots of ram and about 250-500gb of storage is ideal. Refurbished/outlet looks to be the way to go though really, prices are so much cheaper

[B19Kress 0]

I just bought this Sunday night.... not the most amazing thing out there... but for under $500

I'm going to use it for music, internet-ing, and playing poker... it will do the trick..

[Ahriman 1]

I kind of dreamed of building a super computer. A quadcore processor, blue ray drive and a terabyte is about as close as i can afford to get although i really want a fast processor lots of ram and about 250-500gb of storage is ideal. Refurbished/outlet looks to be the way to go though really, prices are so much cheaper

Why would you want a blu ray drive on a computer? Are you going to have a projector or 30" 1080p TV next to your desk?

[ultraman7k 0]

the biggest advice i can give is don't buy a manufactured pc. laptops, ok fine, but pc...please for all that is good don't!

if you wanted to spend like $400 and buy a pc, ok you can't beat that value, but if you are going to shell out $1000...do it right.

anyways that's my opinon...

for your computer, will you need windows or will you already have it?

do you need a mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor, etc?

do you prefer intel or amd processors?

all manufacturers will almost always develop their own motherboards which is a nightmare in itself.

case in point, and this is going back about 4 years ago: my friend had a dell computer which he bought from office depot. this was a brand new computer.

Besides that, he paid way too much for what he got.

he wanted to play games and couldn't run whatever it was he wanted to play because his graphics wasn't up to par namely

because it was an on-board graphics card which leeches off your RAM.

so off we go to buy a new AGP card which the standard back then. when i mean standard, that's like saying you have to sharpen a new pair of skates.

anyways we bring it back to his place, pop open the computer and the stupid dell motherboard doesn't even have the proper slot that fits the card. So, we returned

the card an paid even more for an older piece of crap technology that literally no one had ever used. We were pretty lucky to find it in the first place.

who knows what else they skimped on to make it cheap...they probably also used their own RAM.

my current build excluding graphics card and windows ran me ~700 before taxes, and it is a pretty rocking machine.

quad core tends to be overkill as most applications don't use 4 cores (yet) and leans more towards video editing and stuff like that.

that being said, if you want to futureproof...you can also get last gen's quad core for dirt cheap now that i5 and i7's are out.

and of course AMD provides a middle ground with a Triple core processor that provides a lot of punch for the buck and is well worth the money.

They also have a quad core that is good.

and it has to be <$1000 correct?

i can help you piece something together if you like.

www.NCIX.com is legit when it comes to this kinda stuff.

[sitzlejd 0]

Don't bother building your own, it just doesn't make sense anymore. You get much more value when buying from a manufacturer. I have a Gateway laptop that I picked up because it was cheap and I needed something for the road, it has been pretty dependable from day one.

That's good to hear that gateway got their shit together. I've had their pc's in the past and they were awful. Speaking from secondhand experience, my roommate is a computer geek and he has an Acer. All he does is download music (illegally) and that thing has run like a top.

Personally, I have an HP for home use. I've gunked it up with way too much video editing than it was meant to handle, but it still runs really well. Plus, when the fan went bad and it overheated, I sent it in and they fixed it for free and it came back running great. That was over a year ago and I'm typing on it right now.

[Chadd 916]

Don't bother building your own, it just doesn't make sense anymore. You get much more value when buying from a manufacturer. I have a Gateway laptop that I picked up because it was cheap and I needed something for the road, it has been pretty dependable from day one.

That's good to hear that gateway got their shit together. I've had their pc's in the past and they were awful. Speaking from secondhand experience, my roommate is a computer geek and he has an Acer. All he does is download music (illegally) and that thing has run like a top.

Personally, I have an HP for home use. I've gunked it up with way too much video editing than it was meant to handle, but it still runs really well. Plus, when the fan went bad and it overheated, I sent it in and they fixed it for free and it came back running great. That was over a year ago and I'm typing on it right now.

I can't say that all of their machines are great, just that my recent experience has been good. Back in the mid-late 90s I worked for an organization that used gateway desktops across the entire company and we had very few problems. They had some issues after that for a while though. My current home machine is an Acer. My wife's IT guy ordered too many machines and ended up offering them to a couple employees at the company cost. For a couple hundred bucks this thing has been great. It's running constantly unless I'm on the road for a couple days.

I have an irrational hatred for Compaq and HP desktops/laptops, every company that had them when I was contracting and consulting had nothing but problems with them and their support was terrible. HP servers were a completely different story, great machines and great support.

The only reason to hand build a machine now is to make a super gaming system or if you have very specific hardware needs. I also have an old server that I built with parts back when I was managing an IT department for an ad agency in 2000 or so and it's still running right now. It runs 24-7 and has only been shut down a handful of times.

[kredmore 2]

Don't bother building your own, it just doesn't make sense anymore. You get much more value when buying from a manufacturer. I have a Gateway laptop that I picked up because it was cheap and I needed something for the road, it has been pretty dependable from day one.

+1 on this. I went through a similar buying experince just a few months ago, as I wanted a fast desktop for my home office. Packaged systems are great values, if you are careful about the add-ons. I usually stick with Dell, have been personally satisfied, as well as many companies/clients. I purchased a nice desktop for about $800...Quad, 4GB Memory, MS Office, 20" Monitor, etc...

[Leafsrule16 5]

i can help you piece something together if you like.

www.NCIX.com is legit when it comes to this kinda stuff.

I have a nice keyboard, mouse and a brand new lcd monitor my parents cant get used to , so realy all i need is the actual computer itself. I couldn't really spend more then $1000, but i would like to have a computer that would do me for a really long time and be as "futureproof" as possible. I don't really need a whole lot besides reliability and speed however a okay graphics and sound card would be a bonus. Blue ray? Dont really need it, it would just kind of be cool seeing as i have a few blue ray movies from when i had my ps3.

The reason I've kinda been leaning towards the quadcore intel is because it seems pretty future proof, my buddy has one in his computer (not sure about the setup really besides 8gb ram and a terabyte drive) and its crazy fast. The experience ive been having is computers slowing down with time. I have a Toshiba satellite laptop right now, i believe it has 300 something gb hardrive and when i first got it it was lightning quick but right now its pretty dead (5 years later). I'd really like a computer that i could use for school work, LOTS of music downloads and lightning fast video and internet usage. Brand means nothing as long as I get good customer service, maybe a warranty and great reliability. I'd sacrifice some speed for reliability as this is pretty much it for a long time when it comes to computers.

[chk hrd 164]

If your computer is slower now than when you got it it needs a good cleaning. You accumulate alot of junk over time and routine maintenance should keep it working good. Virus programs like Norton suck up speed and IMHO are worthless. I switched to Microsoft Security Essentials (free from microsoft) and it works better in finding things than Norton, AVG and Avast and it doesn't slow things down. Defragging, disk cleanup, registry repair need to be done regularly to keep your computer working good and minimize the programs that start automatically and run in the background. Some can be turned off and are not required.

Unless your doing alot of video/image work and storage a TB is way overkill in disk size. If you need that much your better off with 2 500GB HD's instead of the 1TB. Most people can't tell the difference between Intel or AMD procssors or know what thier system is using.

My work system is a Intel QuadCore 2.4 ghz processor, a 465 GB hard drive with 2 GB of ram, GeForce 8800 GTS video card 1 top 6" fan, 2 front 5" fans, 1 standard side fan and 1 standard rear fan, a 28" monitor and a 21" monitor. It does everything I need it to very well. I also preffer a larger case because it's easier to work in and keeps everything cooler, and a cool running computer is a happy computer (that is why I have all of the fans).

You can find alot of premade systems that are good. The only thing I don't care for is the junk software that is included. The first thing I do is delete all of the crap. I preffer to go to a computer store that builds thier own units. They usually have good deals with good systems with no junk software. You can have them add or remove things to customize the unit. as far as future proofing, good luck. Systems and technology change to fast to try to keep up. You can get something that can be upgraded for a bit but after a year or two it gets difficult because sometimes old things won't work with new (motherboards, ram, etc). But for the average person a good system will last them along time.

[Rustyhole 1]

mine is a 2-yr old Dell Dimension XPS 9200; 20" LCD, 250Gb HDD, DVD drive, DVD/CD burner, Core2 DUO processor, 2Gb RAM and it runs great. also, i love Norton (Internet Security/SystemWorks) and always recommend it.

[flyers10 57]

For $600-$800 you should be able to find a quad-core(AMD or Intel) with 8GB DDR3, hard drive between 640GB-1TB, and a 256MB-512MB video card. Quad-core will future proof you some. Most people don't have an idea what cool thing they will end up using their PC for down the road and multimedia takes more power and storage. If you download tons of songs & start doing photos or videos you might want to consider the 1TB. Find out how much you can upgrade the ram too.

[chk hrd 164]

mine is a 2-yr old Dell Dimension XPS 9200; 20" LCD, 250Gb HDD, DVD drive, DVD/CD burner, Core2 DUO processor, 2Gb RAM and it runs great. also, i love Norton (Internet Security/SystemWorks) and always recommend it.

Give Security Essentials a try, on every system I've put it on it's found something the others didn't. It's gotten top reviews and is free.