I've narrowed down the field of contenders and have decided that my next computer purchase will be an HP. While I was researching them on Friday I started by letting the site recommend a computer for me. My minimum requirements were 533 Bus, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB hard drive space, 128 MB video ram, and a DVD+ROM drive. Anything above and beyond that were just icing.
The midrange CPUs that I found, the Pavilion a815n and a820n were the frontrunners until I did some investigation and found that if I were willing to take a step back in the model to the a810e, I could save several hundred dollars and get the monitor thrown into the package. They're running rebates on last year's early models, it seems.
Considering the fact that the dinosaur I'm typing on right now will be six years old come April, that little step-back was negligible to me. It's not like I need a super-industrial computer that will be used to hack into Blockbuster Video's customer database or anything....just something stable that isn't going to eat all of my fiction writing if I do some accidental weird key command. And yes, I do want to be able to play bigass games without hearing whirring, crashing, and resoundant thuds.
So. I'm going to customize an a810e and get the most of whatever I can within the $1200 smackeroonies range. It appears that I can get 1 GB ram for an additional $40, or so.
Good thing I'm not interested in the lastest fashions.
So...has anyone heard any bad shit about the a810e line? Basically I'm going to close my eyes and respond with, "Gee, thanks for letting me know," no matter what you say. If they haven't exploded or tried to suck blood, I don't want to hear it.
Posted by Tiffany at January 23, 2005 12:33 PMI am not a huge fan of HP, but than again I am a geek and I build my PCs because I am to picky. If you are getting by on a six year old PC I am sure that HP will kick ass.
Posted by: mace at January 23, 2005 01:50 PMI'd check Epinions as another resource for insight on the model you want, especially since it has been out for a little while already.
I'm a machead though so unless it runs OS X then I just can't see the point in spending the money.
By the way, Dell was having some outstanding deals this last weekend.
Posted by: Johnny Huh? at January 25, 2005 06:22 PMHP makes fine machines, and there's nothing wrong with them.
Twelve-hundred was my gf's range, and she shopped and shopped and shopped, and found a Gateway at Best Buy (yeah, I shudder when I walk into that store, too) for $1199 (no monitor, though) that won't be truly obsolete for at least a year, IMO (I, too, am a geek. I've been fixing these things since the 80's). It uses the new standard BTX architecture & PCI Express, and has a 250-gig hard drive. I have to say, when she pointed that system out to me, I was impressed. If she hadn't bought it, I might have.
Posted by: Victor at January 26, 2005 11:29 AM