Seems HP is the way to go

[landbeforetimelover]

I've noticed something quite alarming.  HP is way ahead of other computer manufacturers when it comes to producing really inexpensive powerful computers.  Take a look at this machine.  It's only $598.99!





Now you can finally get a computer with 4gb of ram and a 500gb hard drive for under $1,000.  Amazing! Just a week or so ago, a $600 computer would get you a MB that could handle a max of 2gb of ram.

[Littlefoot90]

You have taken a good decision with the PC there, however.

[TheNumberOneShmuck]

Are you going to upgrade it to XP?

[pokeplayer984]

Are you going to upgrade it to XP?

Knowing LBTlover, he'll put in XP SP3 in the end. :

[Clawandfang]

Thinking of buying yourself one LBTLover?

[Kor]

Looks like a nice computer.  

[landbeforetimelover]

LOL.  I made this topic a long time ago.  I did eventually buy 3 of them.  I put XP Lite SP3 on all of them and sold 2 for $1,000 each.  The other one I kept.  I'm loooooving it!

[Kor]

Sounds like things worked out well.

[Petrie.]

Heh, Microsoft Works. :  They still make that?

[landbeforetimelover]

Heh, Microsoft Works. rolleyes.gif They still make that?

Well it's better than just including a 30 day trial of Office 2007.  It's really crappy when a computer includes all this awesome software and then in 30 days it all becomes stuff you have to pay for.  As a repair tech you'd be surprised how many calls I've gotten from people who don't understand why their copies of Office 2007 that came with their new computers don't work anymore and asks them for money. <_<

[Kor]

I guess folks do not read enough things to know all that neat software is not free, unlike if they went with Linux.   It's not very intelligent to get a new pc and expect all the software to be totally free.  That would drive the price of the pc up much higher then what they paid for it.

[Tyrannosaur]

5 reasons why i would not buy that PC; ranked from worst to can live with:

1: Windows Vista
2: 64 bit OS
3: integrated chips = bleh
4: too much RAM for the average user, even for Vista
5: included software is a memory hogger and normally you can do without it.

for the average person who knows nothing about PCs, i wont deny that it is a great buy. however, if you know a little about PCs and have experience with building them, you could build better for the same price .

peace.

also, cus im bored xD, i decided to test my claim and see if i could actually do that lol.

heres what i came up with, specs wise:

Windows Vista 32 bit basic edition OEM
Gigabyte motherboard for the AMD chipsets with maximum memory of 16GB. AMD 770 northbridge
AMD Athlon 64 X2 running at 3GHZ
4GB OCZ PC-6400 RAM
nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB
OCZ Game Xstream 600W PSU
500GB Western Digital SATA HDD, OEM

case is nothing special, just a standard thing to house it all.

DVD rewriter drive also. all that for about 600 bucks after claiming all the mail-in rebates. took about 5 minutes to assemble that lol.

sorry, but im overly critical about off the shelf computers. i have no problem with laptops, but as i work in retail selling computers, theres always this thought in the back of my mind that the customers could get so much better for the money if only they knew how to build them, and from my experience, if you even mention something that could potentially be technical; a CPU or explaining RAM frequency, they look at you as if you have grown another head. if they only knew, they would save themselves a world of cash...

happiness to all

[pokeplayer984]

Heh, Microsoft Works. rolleyes.gif They still make that?

Well it's better than just including a 30 day trial of Office 2007.  It's really crappy when a computer includes all this awesome software and then in 30 days it all becomes stuff you have to pay for.  As a repair tech you'd be surprised how many calls I've gotten from people who don't understand why their copies of Office 2007 that came with their new computers don't work anymore and asks them for money. <_<

Yeah, I know what you mean.  My laptop finally ran out on it's Trail Period for Office 2007 and it never came with a disk for it.  How sad is that? (I'm serious.  I looked all over for it.  Couldn't find one.)

So, not really in the mood to buy it, I have to either reinstall the Trail Period or hunt down some other writing software that's free.

I did try asking my dad to put in the 25 character code he had for his recently bought computer that actually had a full copy of Office 2007 come with it, (Disk and everything) but he has all of these freaking beliefs as to what could happen, ya know?  It just really sucks at this point. -_-

[Petrie.]

Open Office is very close to being a perfect free replacement.  Compatability is a bit off on some charts and diagrams in word but its close.

[landbeforetimelover]

I did try asking my dad to put in the 25 character code he had for his recently bought computer that actually had a full copy of Office 2007 come with it, (Disk and everything) but he has all of these freaking beliefs as to what could happen, ya know?

Don't even try it.  Office 07's security is just like that of windows xp/vista.  It requires activation, which really sucks.  If you used the key on more than one computer, it would invalidate the copy of Office on the second computer you put it on (unless you purchased a multiple copy product key from Microsoft, which costs A LOT of money).  There's no way to *legally* bypass activation.  Like Petrie said, if you really need a word processing, presentation, and excel-like program go with Open Office.  It's not nearly as good, but it's free.  Either that or you can go with other less.........moral ways to get a copy of Office 07.

[pokeplayer984]

I'll try this OpenOffice deal you're talking about.  We'll see how things go with it.

EDIT: Wow!  I downloaded the whole thing and I'm LOVING it.  Thank you! :^.^:

[Kor]

Glad things worked out for you, and you can't complain about the price.

[landbeforetimelover]

I've actually never even used open office.  I've stuck with MS office forever.  Maybe one of these days I'll get open office just to try it, but for now I really don't have the time or the desire to do something like that.