my Dell computer smoked filled the house

[hig4s]

We bought a Acer for cheap $ at Tiger direct in October and have been pleasanty surprised. Am using Trend Micro anti virus, as it gets updates every 2 hrs,so far so good. I'm sure Macs are top of the line(my granddaughter let me play on hers), but didn't want to spend the $$.

 

We have actually bought two reconditioned e-machines from Tiger direct over the years. The current one still works fine and is several years old, the first one was fine for 3 years until it was left on during a lighting storm, Pfffft!

 

But my son just bought a new computer from Ibuypower.. the link I put in my previous post.. it was much more machine for the money and has a three year warranty.

[davepa]

Thanks I am researching using many of the posts , computers have come along way in a few years since my last Dell purchase.

 

Trying to deceide between 32 or 64 bit, any comments ? Any disadvantage with staying with the 32 bit?

[halfwitt]

I have always lived by "buy as much computer as you can afford" It will be outdated in 6 months. I'm with Freebird - I was an MS-DOS guy and converted to Windows at 95. Even that was painful going to a GUI OS. I have used Mac but I never got excited about them. I remember buying my IBM PS2 with a massive 70MB hard drive for about $2700. Couldn't imagine how I would fill hard drive. After all, how much space could a bunch of Lotus 123 files and a character based Dungeons and Dragons game take up???

 

One more comment on all the HPs in my house. My wife reminded me that one of the reasons we have two of the HP laptops that we do is becuase they have the numeric keypad on the side. We've only seen a couple models of any brand that offer that.

[ddoggma]

If your gonna stick with WindowsXP 32bit is the way to go. Vista is 64 and the new one too. Not something to worry about, very much. Just remember, Vista will want 4 gigs of RAM to run right. 2 is fine for XP

[hig4s]

If your gonna stick with WindowsXP 32bit is the way to go. Vista is 64 and the new one too. Not something to worry about, very much. Just remember, Vista will want 4 gigs of RAM to run right. 2 is fine for XP

 

 

Actually Vista comes 32bit or 64bit,, and while there are not many programs that take advantage of the 64bit software, the bottom line is there is no disadvantage to having the 64bit as it doesn't cost any more.

 

Go 64.

[ddoggma]

Vista 32 might be only able to use 3.5 or so gigs of RAM. Wich should be allright But A 64 bit OS can use like 8 gigs of RAM. Nobody but graphic artist and a few others need all that, but you never know. If the guy just surfs and does email, just about anything will do. I would just find the best deal, with the biggest monitor. Then upgrade the RAM yourself.

[BuddyRich]

We use a couple of hundred Dells and they work good. Have had a few problems from time to time but that's with any machine. I use HP for most of the servers and they are good machines also. I generally stick with HP,Dell, or IBM hardware as far as computers and Cisco,HP and Netgear for routers and switches.