WTB: Desktop for my wife + some smaller tech?
Our plan is to get a recent used desktop with WinXP on it for home use, with 2GB ram and a DVDRW. She wants to play her "older" (2004 and back) computer games, as well as download movies and music. Just a good solid home PC for fun stuff. From the looks of things, on eBay this will cost about $100-$150 for an old name-brand jobber (specifically, we're looking at HPs). We actually already purchased one last week, but the seller backed out for some crap reason, so now we're looking again.
She also wants a nice portable solution, but doesn't want to spend the money on a laptop that will do the above tasks, as well as be easy to tote around. We can get a portable solution plus the desktop for $100's less than getting it all-in-one, brand new.
They have these mini computers now with touchpads and no hard drive / disk drives, just the kind of memory that you'd find in a keyfob USB device I guess. Cheap ones run about $300 retail (and still have WinXP), we were thinking of waiting until Black Friday for deals if we were to go this route.
With this, she could access documents, do email and the web on-the-go and bring it to competitions for her speech and debate team to play and archive small films of her kids performing from our mini video camera. What about phone technology instead, though? Smartphones will do the same thing, and cost about the same amount, but would be smaller. Perhaps maybe a blackberry style with a built-in keyboard? Do they work on wi-fi or do you need to pay for the expensive net-by-phone service?
Also if anyone has an old desktop tower that is at least 2GB, any size HD with WinXP, we'd be happy to pass the money to an NA member, rather than go back to the Bay. Peripherals not necessary, just a DVD burner.
She also wants a nice portable solution, but doesn't want to spend the money on a laptop that will do the above tasks, as well as be easy to tote around. We can get a portable solution plus the desktop for $100's less than getting it all-in-one, brand new.
They have these mini computers now with touchpads and no hard drive / disk drives, just the kind of memory that you'd find in a keyfob USB device I guess. Cheap ones run about $300 retail (and still have WinXP), we were thinking of waiting until Black Friday for deals if we were to go this route.
With this, she could access documents, do email and the web on-the-go and bring it to competitions for her speech and debate team to play and archive small films of her kids performing from our mini video camera. What about phone technology instead, though? Smartphones will do the same thing, and cost about the same amount, but would be smaller. Perhaps maybe a blackberry style with a built-in keyboard? Do they work on wi-fi or do you need to pay for the expensive net-by-phone service?
Also if anyone has an old desktop tower that is at least 2GB, any size HD with WinXP, we'd be happy to pass the money to an NA member, rather than go back to the Bay. Peripherals not necessary, just a DVD burner.
Comments
The major limitation of a smartphone will be that it is using some crappy protablized operating system. A netbook will run XP, Vista, or Linux, depending on your preference.
Nathan: I had a good feeling about them too, esp the name brand ones. With no conventional HDD, I can imagine they're pretty robust, can stand some banging around in a purse or whatever. Also esp with USB onboard, any drive space issues can be solved with an external.
As for the netbooks...most of them actually have magnetic drives due to the expense of SSDs. The versions with GOOD keyboards (i.e. the Eee series) have 160GB HDD. The HP and the Lenovo versions both have decent keyboards but they're about 10% smaller area than what the current Eee 1000HE is equipped with.
The upside to the Lenovo and HP models is the ability to customize your system and include an SSD, though.
Properly equipped, the name brand netbooks are in the neighborhood of $100 more expensive than the MSI wind and the Eee series.
yeah, so only 512gb ram but it runs well and can be upgraded cheap
512gb?! That must be quite the computer!
512gb?! That must be quite the computer!
I rock an old school 512, and as long as I don't have twenty things running in the background, the speed difference between it and something with more ram is almost undetectable.
I've discussed it at length with her, and the more I try to talk to her about her computer needs, the more she hates me. She understands somewhere deep down that there's a smart way to do it, but really, if it's the difference between spending $100 on a computer, and $150, then why not just throw in the extra dough.
She's also concerned about running "newer" games (although what she means, I've no clue, since I cannot picture her playing WOW) so I think part of the idea is paying it forward if she sees something on the Wal-Mart shelf that looks irresistable, but she's prevented from trying by the numbers on her little System tab.
Does that Sid Meier's game play in Windows or was it emulating DOS? You might have just had DosBOX configured poorly. I have a monster PC and if I set up DOSBOX incorrectly even old 386 games will play sluggishly.
512gb?! That must be quite the computer!
I rock an old school 512, and as long as I don't have twenty things running in the background, the speed difference between it and something with more ram is almost undetectable.
I was pointing out that he wrote gigabytes, instead of megabytes.
By "new games" I think she's had her eye on Prison Tycoon 3, among various other puzzle games. The kind that come in those little cardboard foldover things next to the "big-box" DVD case games. She wouldn't really play immersive 3-D environ games...fortunately some companies still do make non-3D games anymore for her.