OT: cheap computers

winrockpost wrote on 5/29/2006, 2:15 PM
Bought a computer today for my 8 year old nephew, was going to build one but low end systems are so inexpensive it would cost me twice as much for half the system. Celeron D 3.06 GHZ, 120 g HD,cd burner dvd player, 512meg, 6 usb ports, onboard 5.1 and video card, $ 213.00.
Loaded vegas on it, old render test set at best 1:28
all i can say is WOW!!!!! I couldnt by the os and hardrive for the price of this thing, 1:28 Wow!!

Comments

DGates wrote on 5/29/2006, 2:38 PM
For a couple of years, I've been using a lower end HP as a second computer for editing. Works like a charm. I've been looking at a new HP with an Athlon 64 X2. It's $699 (plain, no monitor).

There aren't too many industries where the product keeps getting better and the prices stay low.
Former user wrote on 5/29/2006, 2:57 PM
Where did you find this computer for $213?

Jim
winrockpost wrote on 5/29/2006, 3:04 PM
big box best buy,,, less monitor, came with keyboard,mouse and speakers. microsoft works, 6 months of aol...yuck, 3 months of office, and Mcafee.
jrazz wrote on 5/29/2006, 3:21 PM
3 months of office? You can get the betas of Office 2007 for free until February.
Here is the link.

I don't use microsoft office anymore- I use openoffice2, but the betas are there for free none-the-less.

j razz
winrockpost wrote on 5/29/2006, 3:23 PM
who cares , its a pretty amazing puter for less than an os and a harddrive
Former user wrote on 5/29/2006, 4:16 PM
This deal must only be available in the walk-in stores. Their web site doesn't have anything close to that price point. The nearest Best Buy to me is almost 100 miles away...
jrazz wrote on 5/29/2006, 4:18 PM
I understand the point in the heaps of software they pile on computers as it brings the cost down, but enough is enough. Over the past couple of years or so computers I bought for my customers had junk piled on them in hopes that they would use it, become familiar with it and then when the trial ran out they would buy it. Smart tactic but in my opinion, it is as bad as adware! I (as well as anyone else) can get them cheaper with all this software piled on them. I now offer a service if the customer wants it to remove the software for an additional fee and put in its place opensource or freeware that they don't have to worry about trials or reminders or subscriptions.
In a way, it brings in money for me, but with that stated, I would much rather do without all the bulkware!

j razz
johnmeyer wrote on 5/29/2006, 4:29 PM
So what did you use for an O/S?
jrazz wrote on 5/29/2006, 5:05 PM
Aw, the inevitable question. I use DOS- all DOS and train them on it for 100 bucks an hour- they sure do know their command prompts :)

Really though some I have loaded with UBUNTU Linux b/c all they wanted to do is get on the internet and they did not want a virus. But the majority come with XP Home and it stays on there.

There are definitely programs that I use that I pay money for and there are a lot of good ones. I think XP is a great piece of software and I know that others will disagree. Vegas is another as well as Macromedia, but for a lot of the people that I buy computers for, they are also not keen on using them. They know that they want one for doing this, but they don't want to bother with everything else and the pop ups, etc.
I got a phone call today from a guy asking how to transfer some files from a floppy to his computer. He didn't have a floppy drive and the computer that the files came from did not have a cd burner or internet and was equiped with Windows 95 (no USB support). He wouldn't have the slightest clue as to what to do if he got spyware or a virus- so simple is better when it comes to computers for those who do not know much (or care to know much) about computers. I would rather help them on the front end... but i've never been one to say I know a lot about the bottom line :)

edit: By the way John, I meant to ask you this a while back when I was working on that spreadsheet. The program you were writing for hp for the calculator- how long did that take you to make- it was really well put together.

j razz
dibbkd wrote on 5/29/2006, 5:44 PM
This deal must only be available in the walk-in stores. Their web site doesn't have anything close to that price point. The nearest Best Buy to me is almost 100 miles away...

The deal is still online, I noticed it myself this morning and the local store had it as well.

Go to bestbuy.com, click desktops, then sort by price. It's the eMachine Intel® Celeron® D Processor 346 with EMT64T Technology, 533MHz frontside bus, 256KB L2 cache and 3.06GHz processor speed with 512MB PC4200 DDR2.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/29/2006, 6:08 PM
edit: By the way John, I meant to ask you this a while back when I was working on that spreadsheet. The program you were writing for hp for the calculator- how long did that take you to make- it was really well put together.

Why thank you, that's a nice thing to say. I did that 8-10 years ago, so I don't remember precisely. I was a little sharper back then so I don't think it took long. I think I did it in a few hours. Most of the time was spent having to look up virtually every single command and prompt because I hadn't used the "Visual Basic for Applications" language very often. Also, I hadn't used the construction set built into Excel, so I had to work my way into that.

As I remember, the only things I learned that would be useful for the next project was that it made lots of sense to use different worksheets for each portion of the project. I just opened that up for the first time in a long time, and yes, I had one sheet for the output; one for the data (basically a data array); one for the dialog box construction; and one just to hold "scratch" data during the process. Thus, two of the sheets were "read-only."

I never totally finished that project -- I think if you ask it to print, nothing happens.

If you are interested in any other code, I've done about half a dozen other projects in Excel that explore other aspects of its programming interface. One of the most useful that my late father used every day was a spreadsheet that automatically updates an entire stock portfolio at the push of a button, using information from Yahoo. I wrote that a decade ago and it still works (thankfully they haven't changed their interface). Uses some interesting Excel features that most people don't realize are there ("Web Queries"). Again, the learning curve was steep, and I haven't done much of it since, so I wouldn't be able to give much advice based on current experience.