Posted: 4/29/2010 3:00:57 PM EDT
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Is this a good buy. and feel free to add you computer system recommendations.
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That is actually not a bad deal at all.
800 bucks isnt bad considering 8 gb of ram and the new 6 core AMD processor, which by itself is worth about 250. What makes it a good deal is the fact that it has a 2 year manufacturer's warranty. Most OEM computers you will buy come with just a 1 year standard. Extra years = Extra $$$ The only thing holding me back is the fact that it's from a company I've never heard of before. I would do a BBB search on them. But then again, comparable computers from Dell and HP are probably going to have just as many problems. If you really want it, go for it, I dont think it's a bad deal at all. I've been a computer technician for 5 years and I'm a manager at a computer repair shop. Although I've been a nerd all my life 
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Quoted: That is actually not a bad deal at all. 800 bucks isnt bad considering 8 gb of ram and the new 6 core AMD processor, which by itself is worth about 250. What makes it a good deal is the fact that it has a 2 year manufacturer's warranty. Most OEM computers you will buy come with just a 1 year standard. Extra years = Extra $$$ The only thing holding me back is the fact that it's from a company I've never heard of before. I would do a BBB search on them. But then again, comparable computers from Dell and HP are probably going to have just as many problems. If you really want it, go for it, I dont think it's a bad deal at all. I've been a computer technician for 5 years and I'm a manager at a computer repair shop. Although I've been a nerd all my life  Yeah 2 year warranty.. likely worth dick. |
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Like Dell or HP ? I would recommend staying away from HP. It may be a big brand but I see a ton of them in the shop. While this chart represents just laptops, I suspect their desktops arent too ahrd to find... http://images.smh.com.au/2009/11/19/870236/420-laptop-graph-2-420x0.jpg |
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Like Dell or HP ? Dell, HP, Lenovo... hell eMachines before some random shit brand. No. eMachines is horrible. They are owned by Acer, which also runs Gateway. They are shit, their CS is the worst in the industry, and their computers often die within a year or 2 after purchase. Not all of them, but I would say a good portion. And I would certainly choose an off brand over eMachines. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Yeah 2 year warranty.. likely worth dick. It cant be worse than the warranty provided by Dell or HP. And Costco isnt bad at honoring what they sell. If you buy through the consumer portal, sure. Buy through small business like a non-retard and the hardware quality, support and customer service goes WAY up. Buying a Computer at Costco is like buying a car at the grocery store. "Hey look a good deal!" 6 months later: "What a piece of shit!" |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Like Dell or HP ? Dell, HP, Lenovo... hell eMachines before some random shit brand. No. eMachines is horrible. They are owned by Acer, which also runs Gateway. They are shit, their CS is the worst in the industry, and their computers often die within a year or 2 after purchase. Not all of them, but I would say a good portion. And I would certainly choose an off brand over eMachines. So ZT is the brand to beat?  Stay at the helpdesk for the sake of humanity. |
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We run these at work. My next home one will be from them. Get some advice on configuring it if you need it, don't get distracted by the gamer crap, they are top shelf.
If I were buying now I'd base it on an I7 Core Intel. http://www.xicomputer.com/ |
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Like Dell or HP ? Dell, HP, Lenovo... hell eMachines before some random shit brand. No. eMachines is horrible. They are owned by Acer, which also runs Gateway. They are shit, their CS is the worst in the industry, and their computers often die within a year or 2 after purchase. Not all of them, but I would say a good portion. And I would certainly choose an off brand over eMachines. So ZT is the brand to beat?
Stay at the helpdesk for the sake of humanity. Just speaking from personal experience. I see a lot more Acer, HP, and Gateways than I see off brands. If you have similar experience please share. Also, if you've ever tried to get eMachines to replace a motherboard...good luck. Also, ZT Computers is a subdivision of ZT Systems. A pretty large company actually that does a lot of corporate work. American owned with hundreds of employees. Seems a bit better than your fly by night companies. |
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Like Dell or HP ? Dell, HP, Lenovo... hell eMachines before some random shit brand. No. eMachines is horrible. They are owned by Acer, which also runs Gateway. They are shit, their CS is the worst in the industry, and their computers often die within a year or 2 after purchase. Not all of them, but I would say a good portion. And I would certainly choose an off brand over eMachines. So ZT is the brand to beat?
Stay at the helpdesk for the sake of humanity. Just speaking from personal experience. I see a lot more Acer, HP, and Gateways than I see off brands. If you have similar experience please share. Also, if you've ever tried to get eMachines to replace a motherboard...good luck. I imagine you see more of those because they sell more. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Like Dell or HP ? Dell, HP, Lenovo... hell eMachines before some random shit brand. No. eMachines is horrible. They are owned by Acer, which also runs Gateway. They are shit, their CS is the worst in the industry, and their computers often die within a year or 2 after purchase. Not all of them, but I would say a good portion. And I would certainly choose an off brand over eMachines. So ZT is the brand to beat? Stay at the helpdesk for the sake of humanity. Just speaking from personal experience. I see a lot more Acer, HP, and Gateways than I see off brands. If you have similar experience please share. Also, if you've ever tried to get eMachines to replace a motherboard...good luck. I don't fix computers for a living. I am in IT director. I know what works, and consumer shit, is consumer shit. For the same price as that POS, you can get a business machine that will last 5+ years with a real warranty from HP or Dell. Next day service. American support. Or you can call the call center in India and pray they don't take 3 weeks. |
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Dell Link
The Studio XPS 8100, customized with a good video card would be a good computer. A little more money but a whole lot more computer. |
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Like Dell or HP ? Dell, HP, Lenovo... hell eMachines before some random shit brand. No. eMachines is horrible. They are owned by Acer, which also runs Gateway. They are shit, their CS is the worst in the industry, and their computers often die within a year or 2 after purchase. Not all of them, but I would say a good portion. And I would certainly choose an off brand over eMachines. So ZT is the brand to beat?
Stay at the helpdesk for the sake of humanity. Just speaking from personal experience. I see a lot more Acer, HP, and Gateways than I see off brands. If you have similar experience please share. Also, if you've ever tried to get eMachines to replace a motherboard...good luck. I don't fix computers for a living. I am in IT director. I know what works, and consumer shit, is consumer shit. For the same price as that POS, you can get a business machine that will last 5+ years with a real warranty from HP or Dell. Next day service. American support. Or you can call the call center in India and pray they don't take 3 weeks. Sorry, I edited my above post. ZT Computers is an American based company that doesnt seem to have Indian based tech support. You can find their website athttp://www.ztsystems.com/ It's also worth nothing this person's price budget is probably not going to be the same as yours for the company you work for. Even if the business models from Dell or HP are better, to get the stuff in them he wants, he will have to pay more, esspecially if he wants a better warranty. I get business class computers from Dell and HP all the damned time. The quality doesnt matter until you spend the real money. |
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Years ago I worked for a shop that sold 3rd tier machines, they were great. But that's because you could spec whatever you wanted in them. The shop bought those and sold them under their own name. Like any other machine, it's the guts that matter rather than the badge on the front.
But I don't know how a smaller company can compete with Dell when it comes to building machines other than by building them with cheap components and competing on price. |
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You could go cheaper, but not sure how easy it'd be to find. Integrated graphics is okay if your idea of gaming is john deere tractor or the sims, but not so much if you want to play cod: modern warfare. Not buying a dedicated graphics card is an okay way to save money if you won't use it, but as has been mentioned, not ideal.
I have no idea where to buy a whole computer so can't help there. I usually just buy crap off newegg or from some random tiny store after googling the part. |
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Years ago I worked for a shop that sold 3rd tier machines, they were great. But that's because you could spec whatever you wanted in them. The shop bought those and sold them under their own name. Like any other machine, it's the guts that matter rather than the badge on the front. But I don't know how a smaller company can compete with Dell when it comes to building machines other than by building them with cheap components and competing on price. I certainly agree with this. A quality custom built machine will always have better components than something from the Tier 3 companies. But you'll end up paying more for it. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Like Dell or HP ? Dell, HP, Lenovo... hell eMachines before some random shit brand. No. eMachines is horrible. They are owned by Acer, which also runs Gateway. They are shit, their CS is the worst in the industry, and their computers often die within a year or 2 after purchase. Not all of them, but I would say a good portion. And I would certainly choose an off brand over eMachines. So ZT is the brand to beat? Stay at the helpdesk for the sake of humanity. Just speaking from personal experience. I see a lot more Acer, HP, and Gateways than I see off brands. If you have similar experience please share. Also, if you've ever tried to get eMachines to replace a motherboard...good luck. I don't fix computers for a living. I am in IT director. I know what works, and consumer shit, is consumer shit. For the same price as that POS, you can get a business machine that will last 5+ years with a real warranty from HP or Dell. Next day service. American support. Or you can call the call center in India and pray they don't take 3 weeks. Sorry, I edited my above post. ZT Computers is an American based company that doesnt seem to have Indian based tech support. You can find their website athttp://www.ztsystems.com/ It's also worth nothing this person's price budget is probably not going to be the same as yours for the company you work for. Even if the business models from Dell or HP are better, to get the stuff in them he wants, he will have to pay more, esspecially if he wants a better warranty. I get business class computers from Dell and HP all the damned time. The quality doesnt matter until you spend the real money. 3 year standard next business day on Optiplex. |
| Stay away from that thing.. Yes it has a nice CPU but its only the $200 6 core chip rated at 2.8ghz. Also WTF did they go with DDR2? That chip is intended for DDR3 but also has a DDR2 controler. That alone tells me they cheaped out on the pc. The 350 watt power supply will hamper your upgrading ability since most decent video cards require a minimum of 500 watt psu. For that kinda of dollers, go to TigerDirect.com and check out there barebone kits. You could gets a nice PC with decent vid card for that price and get the experiance of building it yourself. Im doing another one tommorrow. Takes about an hour and a half to OS bootup. |
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talk about lipstick on a pig. "ZOMG we can has the AMD 6 core for you!!!!11@!!" "and look we have 8GB of ram." then they throw on a shitty power supply, integrated graphics, DDR2 ram. for $800 you could put together a much better system with a real power supply, and a real graphics card for gaming, and DDR3 ram. |
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talk about lipstick on a pig. "ZOMG we can has the AMD 6 core for you!!!!11@!!" "and look we have 8GB of ram." then they throw on a shitty power supply, integrated graphics, DDR2 ram. for $800 you could put together a much better system with a real power supply, and a real graphics card for gaming, and DDR3 ram. Sounds easy but except for adding memory and updating a video card or 2 i have no experience building computers . |
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talk about lipstick on a pig. "ZOMG we can has the AMD 6 core for you!!!!11@!!" "and look we have 8GB of ram." then they throw on a shitty power supply, integrated graphics, DDR2 ram. for $800 you could put together a much better system with a real power supply, and a real graphics card for gaming, and DDR3 ram. Sounds easy but except for adding memory and updating a video card or 2 i have no experience building computers . thats about as tough as it gets. lol. really building a computer is about as simple as can be. plug ram and video card into mobo. put processor on mobo. connect harddrive and usb ports to mobo, then plug powersupply into everything and your g2g. Run OS and you are up and running. Really simple. |
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talk about lipstick on a pig. "ZOMG we can has the AMD 6 core for you!!!!11@!!" "and look we have 8GB of ram." then they throw on a shitty power supply, integrated graphics, DDR2 ram. for $800 you could put together a much better system with a real power supply, and a real graphics card for gaming, and DDR3 ram. Sounds easy but except for adding memory and updating a video card or 2 i have no experience building computers . thats about as tough as it gets. lol. really building a computer is about as simple as can be. plug ram and video card into mobo. put processor on mobo. connect harddrive and usb ports to mobo, then plug powersupply into everything and your g2g. Run OS and you are up and running. Really simple. This computer is $1200 how can you buy all of the componets for less? BTW is this a good deal ? is the intergrated audio a big deal? DELL |
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talk about lipstick on a pig. "ZOMG we can has the AMD 6 core for you!!!!11@!!" "and look we have 8GB of ram." then they throw on a shitty power supply, integrated graphics, DDR2 ram. for $800 you could put together a much better system with a real power supply, and a real graphics card for gaming, and DDR3 ram. Sounds easy but except for adding memory and updating a video card or 2 i have no experience building computers . thats about as tough as it gets. lol. really building a computer is about as simple as can be. plug ram and video card into mobo. put processor on mobo. connect harddrive and usb ports to mobo, then plug powersupply into everything and your g2g. Run OS and you are up and running. Really simple. This computer is $1200 how can you buy all of the componets for less? BTW is this a good deal ? is the intergrated audio a big deal? DELL A substantial upgrade over your previous choice. |
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Crap.
Although pointed out a not being that good, last year I saw Gateway PCs that were pretty decent for the time. Came with a 9800GT. For that price, it better come with a high end video card, or two 1.5TB hard drives at the least. Bad price, and crappy brand. Though, Costco does return computers. Or at least they used to. Do not expect them to repair it though. |
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talk about lipstick on a pig. "ZOMG we can has the AMD 6 core for you!!!!11@!!" "and look we have 8GB of ram." then they throw on a shitty power supply, integrated graphics, DDR2 ram. for $800 you could put together a much better system with a real power supply, and a real graphics card for gaming, and DDR3 ram. Sounds easy but except for adding memory and updating a video card or 2 i have no experience building computers . thats about as tough as it gets. lol. really building a computer is about as simple as can be. plug ram and video card into mobo. put processor on mobo. connect harddrive and usb ports to mobo, then plug powersupply into everything and your g2g. Run OS and you are up and running. Really simple. This computer is $1200 how can you buy all of the componets for less? BTW is this a good deal ? is the intergrated audio a big deal? DELL First off, integrated audio is no big deal at all. The integrated audio is quite good on most mobo, and unless you are doin a great deal of audio mixing or what not, the integrated is just fine. Now your computer you showed, Its a dell, so your payin for a name right there, plus I am not a fan of dells. First off, I dont like all the software they pack on to them, however HP and the rest do the same thing. Second, you have no idea on the quality of the components. Sure it says 8gb ram, however what kind? Same with the mobo. Third, the graphic card is a g310, which is just a renamed g210. old technology. The PSU is only 350 watts. That is shit. Here is what i found just seachin New egg real quick. I860-$280 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214 Same procesor as the dell. Good processor Ram-$230 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231323 8g ddr3. just grabbed the first one i saw. Pick a brand you trust. Hd-$100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337 nice hd. 1.5 tb like the dell. This one is made by seagate, good company. Who knows where the dell one is made 700 watt psu-$80 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341019 solid PSU made by OCZ. Usin the exact same one in my comp for the past 3 years. good stuff Case-$50 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133087 pick whatever case looks cool to you or fits your budget. Mobo-$90 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138186 Do some seachin and pick whatever one has exactly what you want. For instance, how many PCI slots, usb headers,ect. Graphics card – $140 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102859 the 5750 is a very good card, for a very good price. Way better than the crap in the dell win 7 home premium 64 bit- $100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116754&cm_re=oem_windows_7-_-32-116-754-_-Product Total cost - $1070 This is cheaper than the dell, plus you know exactly what your getting, plus your getting better componets. way better vid card, way better Power supply. Also, this machine can easily be upgraded as need be, thus savin you even more money in the long run. That dell...well good luck upgradin it. The Power supply couldnt handle any upgrades in the first place, plus the mobo probably has very few ports for upgrades. This is just my 2 cents though |