Our local school is selling 3-4 year old pc's for $150, here's the details: DESKTOPS - $150 System Information for Dell OptiPlex GX280 (Desktop) 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 Processor 1 GB Dual In-Line Memory (Supports 4 GB) Integrated Video 40 GB Hard Drive CD-RW Drive 1.44 MB 3.5” Floppy Drive 17” CRT Monitor Dell Keyboard & Mouse Windows XP http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/optix/en/spec_optix_gx280_en.pdf They also have laptops for $250: System Information for Dell Latitude D810 (Laptop) 15.4” LCD WXGA Display 1.73 GHz Pentium M Processor 512 MB Dual In-Line Memory 48X CD-ROM Drive ATI Mobility Radeon 128 MB Video Memory 30 GB Hard Drive Built-In Wi-Fi Card Carrying Case Power Cable Battery Windows XP Has a SATA hard Drive and PCI-e slot. Any thoughts? I can get the 4GB from Newegg for $49. I was thinking about picking up the laptop and desktop. The desktop would replace my Dell Dimension 4400 (P4 @ 1.7ghz 1 GB ram (maxed out).
IMHO, I wouldn't touch 'em with a 3 meter Slovakian. You are getting very little incremental value. In this case, quantity is NOT quality. There's more wrong with these systems than right, unless all you want to do is browse the web. For $499.00 you can get a new dual core laptop that would run rings around both those systems combined.
Any laptop recommendations? I see Dell has a few in that price range. I really don't want to spend more than $500. We're just going to use it to surf the net, maybe for basic office applications, watching DVD's and a very low graphic games here or there.
If that's all you REALLY want to do, then buy the $250.00 laptop, but it's barely more Powerful than the desktop you have right now. I don't have a specific recommendation, I just shop and check the ads like everyone else. I wouldn't buy a single core CPU unless I was really strapped for budget. They're really a dead end machine. Your budget puts you in a tight spot. There are plenty of new single core machines in the $350-500 range, and a few dual core in the 450-600 range. Realistically, a $499 laptop is gong to cost you $550 after tax and (possibly) shipping. If it were me, unless I were in a real hurry, I would save the 250 now (after all, it is used and at teh age where things will start breaking down). And keep shopping.
If you install Ubuntu (Linux made easy to use for beginners), you could configure it so that it makes your computer fast. Many thing can be done such as installing the preload package which will preload applications into your RAM for faster startup of applications, etc. Not to mention that, you do not have to worry about defragmenting your hard drive ever nor do you have to worry about checking your filesystem for errors! The filesystem is very fragmentation-resistant and as for filesystem errors, it checks for errors and fixes them if there are any on a schedule by default when you boot your computer without you telling it to do anything. Ubuntu 9.10 is planning to have a boot time of less than 10 seconds! Although, I would recommend going dual-core at the very least because the jump from single core to dual-core is huge while dual-core and above is really not noticeable at least on Linux.
ubuntu isn't going to make it fast.. it's bad bloatware with nasty mono dependencies.. For fast you need a distro which comes with xcfe or fluxbox as the desktop.. or install a base system and then pick whatever you want (great fun) .. debian base system and basics added.. running in 32MB's ram on a pentium 2 266 .. read it and weep Loaded to desktop from cold boot in 38 seconds.. apps opened faster than on an xp machine with a duron 800 with 512 ram (gimp.. 56 seconds on xp.. 40 on the old heap) For multi processor systems linux has the answer.. clusterix .. or build your own kernel from source and specify the number yourself.. up to 1024 as far as I'm aware as things stand.. most I used in a cluster was 64.
