Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler New Desktop.

I'm sure this has probably been asked and answered several times, but I'm in the market for a new desktop system. I really don't have a clue as to what brands I should be looking at. I don't play games on the computer but I do want a blu-ray, DVD player/burner, I want it to be fast and have tons of memory. Sorry but that's about the limits of what I know about computers. Any input would be appreciated.

Honestly, I would steer clear of any "brand-name" computer like Compaq etc. Your best bet is to get a clone, definitely without Windows Vista because it sucks and requires quite a powerful machine to run it properly. I would suggest Windows XP, a CPU speed of around 2.4 GHz, and 2 GB of RAM will be ample. As far as a burner goes, I think LG has a decent one out now.

Hope that helps you some

I would recommend getting a Dell Vostro. Vostro is a semi-business line that doesn't have all the crap/bloatware installed on the computer when you first get it. I think Vista is fine, people are haters of it, but people were also haters of XP when it came out.

I'm not just a hater of the program, I'm also a player hater LOL

Do some research and build your own. This way you get exactly what you want and I think they work better.

Just did that with my dad this Christmas... have now built 2 systems in the past 3 years and both of them were great bargains for the money.

Here are some dell desktops that are on sale in the DEC catalogue:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/catalog_seasonal_1_dt?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

You can customize them to meet your needs as well.

I buy my computers from lease buy outs. They are normally 2 years old with no operating system. I build them up a little from there. They're cheap and do everything I need to do.

I would also suggest that to get the most bang for the buck, building your own machine is the way to go. But, if you aren't really that knowledgeable with how to build a PC, it might be a frustrating experience. It's not rocket science, but building your own isn't for everyone. If you're not that familiar with which brands are good or bad, you probably aren't really the sort that would want to build your own PC.

I've got Vista up and running on several PC's that I support. It's pretty good now that SP1 is out. SP1 fixed a lot of bugs, IMHO. I've really not had a lot of problems with it. I was originally not all that thrilled with it but I've grown to like it.

I commonly suggest Dell's to friends & family needing PC's. No, they're not the best PC's in the land but they're usually decent and you can get them for good prices. Just keep an eye on xpbargains.com for deals. Sometimes you can get some pretty serious discounts. Look for codes and play with the configuration options on Dell.com.

Of Dell's offerings, I like their Vostro 'small business' line of machines because they don't come with all the trial software that their 'consumer' desktops do. They arrive out of the box with a nearly perfectly clean install. Whatever you do, get at least a Core2Duo processor and 2GB of RAM for Vista. Not a Core Duo, and absolutely not a Celeron. Anything less than 2GB and Vista won't be happy.

I've had pretty good luck with Dell Outlet. They sell refurbs, returns, open box, etc. at a fairly sizeable discount over their brand new stuff.

I've also built a couple of my own computers. Besides the savings, you can configure it exactly the way you want. There are lots of great resources on the web to get you through it. It's really not that difficult, and it's a great help for troubleshooting when something does go wrong to know how it all goes together.