Posted: 7/20/2006 8:56:00 PM EDT
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I only surf a little (few gun boards, ebay & bill paying) and check email. Nothing else. While speed and whistles are nice, they are really so unneeded. Generic will more than suit my needs. Pants and shirt, not Armani Gucchi Dolche Gabanna. That said, my last one came from Frys (Great Quality), Tower only, $200, lasted 30 months. I think I got my moneys worth. Best buy has emachines, and does price match. iirc, Great Quality had a good reputation online from reading here and there. Any input, coments or suggestions appreciated. |
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I've done a few of the Great Quality machines for people. Typically get a machine for $150-200. Then upgrade the memory to 512MB or more, replace the CD-ROM with a DVD burner. For the low-end gamers, toss in a $100-200 AGP video card and they're all set. Haven't had too many issues with them. But for you, I'd say yeah, just up the memory a little bit and it's great for surfing/email. They're made by ECS (Elitegroup) in Taiwan. ECS makes motherboards for all sorts of other companies..they did it for IBM and Compaq for awhile. Tech support from Fry's or ECS is basically non-existant. I stay away from the GQ blank discs though...my DVD players have all hated them. |
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the majority of the NEWER (that is the key word) emachines are all using standard powersupplies, and motherboards... i have seen some that a regular cdrom wouldn't mount you had to drill a new hole to mount them. but overall emachines has greatly improved. now for myself. i would never buy a "big store brand" computer. that would just not go over well i roll my own 
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My experience with Dell has been very positive. The computer arrived ready to go and has been very reliable. In...what, three years....? I've had to reinstall Windows ONCE. And that was due to the usual infestation of worms, adware, and other invading crap, gone out of control. Some people don't like Dells, but my experience with them has been very good. CJ |
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dells are ok until the end user needs to have some type of hardware problem fix. if the system is under warranty they WILL attempt to help you. with them being in various locations they are very hard to under stand. my boss gave them so much grief we finally got a direct line so we could purchase parts directly. WITHOUT having to troubleshoot parts with 3 different techs. verifty the part number over and over because they can't understand v instead of b. etc. |
I'd go with eMachines. When a family member or friends want a pc, but just want something basic to get the job done. I get them eMachines. Probably bought 12-14 eMachines for family and friends, and knock on wood none of them have had a single problem. And IF they do, all of the parts are easily replaced with something I already have or that the store stocks. -d |
That's not correct. You need to look at facts rather than blindly believing the media lies. You can still buy PC's from IBM with IBM's name that are not made by Lenovo. I have 30 IBM xSeries 100's in my office that we're configuring for a customer. They were $559 plus shipping. The sales people I've dealt with at IBM were all polite and competent. That is the exact opposite of Dell. The last for sales reps we've had with Dell barely spoke English. The supervisor at Dell recommended we hire someone that speaks Spanish to handle our orders. I don't know anyone that speaks Spanish, and I'm certainly not going to hire someone even temporarily just to be able to deal with Dell. That's ridiculous. One of the IBM's was damaged by UPS, and I got a replacement on the way after less than a 10 minute phone call. In 1999 when we bought 24 Dell desktops for the office it took us over 18 months to get one of their systems replaced that was DOA. IBM is an absolute pleasure to deal with compared to the Mexicans and Indians at Dell.z |
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(not trying to start any flame wars) I like my mac because i dont have to be nearly as careful about viruses. Apple also has better customer service IMHO I wont discuss power or speed or graphics cards or anything like that, b/c for your uses, they are irrelevant. |
The IBM/Lenovo deal was announced December 2004 and was expected to take almost a year to complete. Those 30 PCs sound interesting...was that this year? Media Story
IBM's product page
More info: www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/pcannouncement/ On the IBM vs Dell service...yeah, I'll go with that. |
It was last week. As usual the media exaggerates and sometimes just prints outright lies. In this case, AP attacked the US company non-stop for weeks to try to make them look bad. Go to www.ibm.com/products/us/ and you'll see that IBM still sells plenty of PC's. IBM sold several product lines to Lenovo including ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkCentre desktops, but IBM still makes and sells their more profitable and higher quality IntelliStation PC's and xSeries PC's. A relative of mine recently finished an installation of nearly 600 xSeries PC's, and not a single computer was DOA and the failure rate was about 1/10 of the rate that the Dell OptiPlex systems they replaced. Based upon that experience, I recommended trying these to my customer. Admittedly all we've done so far with them is format the drives and run a memory checker a few days, but they're all good so far.z |
Ah...found some non-Xeon-non-Opteron PCs on their site here. Yeah, higher end...and more profitable stuff. Not your every day web-surfing/office-using/emailing stations...a little higher up. The C-Net article did say the deal was "complex"...hehe. |