No not me. My future brother-in-law is having even more problems with his (about) 7 year-old Windows ME machine. It's time for a new computer, one without a floppy drive. Here's what I think he should get. He's a minimal computer user; Web surfing, web-based email, MS Office and TurboTax. Digital photos and music are in the future only if I convince him slowly. In particular gaming and home video are not in the cards. Here is how I spec'ed out a Dell machine (with some definitions for novices), comments appreciated.
Hardware:
CPU: The cheapest processor (Intel or AMD) since he's not a gamer. Is it worth avoiding the low end Intel Celeron and getting a Pentium for about $40 more?
Memory: 2GB. 1GB might be ok but with Vista I'm thinking it might be tight. Also, this is the single best place to splurge with a computer. You can probably save money buying your own cheaper, but then you have to install it and sell the original memory on eBay.
Hard Disk: >100GB. He doesn't need much since he's not doing store video or music or much of anything else. In a desktop adding more is usually easy. If a laptop comes with 80GB that's fine.
Optical Drive: DVD +/-RW. He won't use this much since he doesn't listen to music CDs or watch movies on it, so there are two uses. Installing software and doing backups. CDs hold 740MB, DVDs hold 4GB (thats 4000MB). While that sounds like a lot, the difference might be between picking and choosing individual files or just backing up a whole folder which is much easier. Backups to DVD will be easier and more future proof. A CD Burner/DVD Combo drive will read DVDs but not write them, so I think he wants a DVD+/-RW (RW is for read and write) which are also sometimes called "super-drives". The 8x or 16x or 32x that often appears in the choices refers to speed and won't matter much to him for these uses.
Graphics Card: get the cheapest, he doesn't plays games
Sound: get the cheapest
Networking: you want ethernet (which is wired networking) and I'd say wifi (802.11g - it's the "g" that's important) would be convenient. It can be added later, but might as well get it if it's available.
Ports: You want some USB ports, they will all come with at least one or two, four are actually useful (printer, keyboard, mouse, thumb drive, camera). Sometimes keyboards and oftentimes monitors have extra USB ports. USB 2.0 is much faster than USB 1.1. Firewire (aka IEEE 1394) is fine if it has it but unnecessary (easily added later if you every buy something like a camcorder that wants it).
Expansion Slots: this is expandability. a second drive bay is good because adding a second drive might be a good future backup solution. Other expansion slots are fine, it's good to have 1 or 2. The cheapest Dell desktop didn't have much of this so I choose the next one up for $20 more.
Speakers/Keyboard/Mouse: I choose getting the cheapest new speakers on the Dell for $20 because it seemed worth it rather than worrying about any (unlikely) compatibility issues with his existing old speakers. I did the same thing for a keyboard and mouse.
Modem: He doesn't need one.
Monitor: I'd recommend a new flat screen LCD monitor. They seem to be about $200 for 17" or 19". After memory, this is the next single thing you can do to make the computer experience better. An LCD will use less power than the CRT he has now, have a bigger screen, and take up less space on the desk. Dell got very aggressive with their monitor prices a few years ago and are the standard here. $200 for 19" or $400 for 24" widescreen. These are very nice and will be usable with any future computers.
Software:
Windows Vista Home Basic - I don't think the premium features apply. You could get XP but with a new system Vista should work fine and will be supported longer. it will also probably work better with a Mac in the house.
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 - This doesn't include Outlook, but he uses webmail so it's probably not a problem. Dell will install it for $150 but Amazon lists it for $125 if you want to install it yourself. The Standard edition includes Outlook but Amazon lists that at $324. Amazon will sell you Outlook separately for $90 if needed in the future. The Basic edition includes Outlook but not PowerPoint. Avoid Microsoft Works. And don't anyone tell me about OpenOffice, I know about it and while it's improving I don't think it's worth compatibility issues for a novice user compared to $150 for MS's version.
Norton Internet Security 2007 - I priced the Dells with 15-months of this. I hear that Symantec Norton is better than McAfee or TrendMicro.
So a Dell Inspiron 531 desktop came out to $990. A Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook came out about $20 less. An HP Pavilion a6200t (what kind of a model name is that?) desktop came out to $877.
An iMac with 2GB ram came out to $1350 without MS Office. But it includes a video camera, bluetooth, 802.11n, nice hard disk, gigabit ethernet, and a better graphics card.
If you have additional advice I'd appreciate it.
9 comments:
Since you'll likely be the support staff on an open-ended basis, have him buy a Mac and pay him the difference in price. That's a huge bargin for you!
Starchman said:
My advice is to get a computer with a Windows XP licence. I just bought a laptop that came with Vista, and I am very unimpressed. Vista has no 'must have' features, eats more CPU cycles, and all the control pannels are reorganized.
For exmaple I spent a weekend day to attach my laptop to my home wireless. Vista's "Wireless Netowrking Wizard" did nothing by think for 10 min. Reading up on things I discovered I needed to supply my laptop's MAC address to my router. After a half hour of hunting through Networking pannels I turned to Google and found out my laptop's MAC ID is only found through Vista's DOS shell.
Sure computer guru's can do this faster, but a decade of development focused on "ease of use" has resulted in running DOS commands to connect to a wireless network.
One more thought: Get a SATA HDD compatable motherboard.
Some Dell-specific advice: buy from the outlet! There's slightly more work involved because you'll probably have to find a machine that's ALMOST like the perfect configuration you're devising. There are generally 3 categories in their outlet selection: Ordered/cancelled, Refurb and Scratch/dent. The ideal case would be a small-format ordered/cancelled Optiplex, these tend to be well-configured machines that someone changed their mind about before the order shipped.
I like their Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks because they're the corporate models with well-designed and fairly static configurations, since they promise that parts are interchangeable within a series so that if a company buys 50 machines of slightly different model within a single series over the course of a couple of years, the parts are still interchangeable. This specific aspect doesn't help your brother-in-law, but it means that Dell's OS image is highly consistent and well-worked-out on those machines, and this isn't always true for the Inspiron/Dimension lines that are more targeted to the home buyer. Also, since these are targeted toward businesses, they don't include as much bloatware crap in the image.
So, you may end up with a little more machine than the ideal because that's what's in stock at the moment, but the discount over the roll-your-own configuration is usually worth it, you may get a bit more for significantly less. Their search doesn't totally suck, so it's easy to narrow down to the range you're looking for, just be careful not to over-specify or you may miss some of the better-than-needed deals.
http://outlet.dell.com/
I would second the recommendation to skip on Vista. Never ever ever buy a Microsoft OS before service pack 1 is released. Then again, your sister's fiance has been using Windows ME for 7 years, I would've thrown that shit through a (real) window after 7 minutes. You already knew I'm not particularly forgiving though...
I use a Dell Inspiron e1405 laptop with 2g memory and dual processor 1.86 ghz running Vista Home premium. It priced out less yours did but I did it from a special email offer. You can almost always find a Dell ad with some special deal that cuts the price.
I found Vista to be far better than XP; more stable, better power features, quicker boot, hibernation that works, ... But you definitely want the 2g and don't get too cheap a graphic card.
The 2g memory and the dual processor have made running 5-10 applications simultaneously no problem.
Thanks, that's good info. The Dell Outlet might prove useful for this, or other buying. So now I'm questioning the choice of Vista. I have no experience with it so if I have to do remote support, XP would be easier. Also, the fact that SP1 isn't out yet is another issue. Any more hands on experiences (good or bad) with Vista?
Starchman, does this show your mac address?
Kas do you mean a dual core or a dual processor?
Did you price out a Mac Mini? My next Mac will likely be one of those not only to save money and not only because of the flexibility of having a separate monitor, but in preparation for its eventual obsolescence. Right now I want to make my old (gooseneck style) iMac into a music server and put it in some corner of the house. Kind of hard to tuck it away with that big 'ol gooseneck monitor attached.
I did price a mini. I went for the higher end one for the super-drive (and since the 80GB drive in the low end one seemed wimpy) and bumped it up to 2GB. I also added a keyboard and mouse to have a mac keyboard. $1050, which doesn't include MS Office or a monitor. A 20" apple monitor is $600 so I'd buy a Dell one instead for 1/3 of that bringing the total to $1250 + Office.
Without much upgrade potential and for someone who doesn't already have apple peripherals, it's hard to see how a mini can be economical. Yes you get to keep your monitor when you replace the computer, but the iMac I priced at $1350 adds a graphics card, a 250GB disk, 802.11n instead of g, a builtin iSight, a firewire 800 port (which I use for a backup drive), and an extra USB port.
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