New Computer

Ryan from Ohio · Post by **Ryan from Ohio** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:11 pm

I spent about 5 minutes playing with a Vista equipped machine at Wal Mart.

It was different, thats for sure.

sdlvx · Post by **sdlvx** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:19 pm

1. Mac is based of Unix. It is basically a free OS modified to be proprietary and then they charge you out the ass. It's popular among alot of lesser educated people (although some smart people DO use them). You can forget about every upgrading it or playing much games on it, because you have to upgrade through Apple or hunt for Apple compatible parts.

Am I safe to keep my considerations away from place like best buy and wal mart?

I would NEVER buy a computer from best buy or walmart, and I would never let anyone I know do so.

It's not really that advantagious, except that you built it yourself.

Thats dead wrong. Building your own is WAY cheaper. Not to mention, when you build your own, you pick quality parts. Computer manufacturers will pick the ram vendors who scrounge the crappy ICs out of the bottom of the bins.

Even if a Dell/HP/w/e has a nice brand motherboard in it, odds are its a neutered version with most of the features missing and a crappy chipset (FYI the chipset AKA northbridge is the main duct where all info passes through from CPU to RAM to Video Card to AGP. It cant be upgraded, and it controls so much on your motherboard)

You can build a nice gaming rig for 1000 off of newegg, provided you harvest some old parts (monitor, HD, power supply, etc) from your old computer. You can always continually upgrade parts. I just ordered a new 560w PSU with 38a on the +12v rail because I'm going to start migrating towards a faster computer (part by part).

In all honesty, I'd avoid Vista like the plague until service packs come out, or at LEAST summer. Everyone likes to go after M$ because it has the largest base. Because Vista is new, it also has lack of support and the drivers suck. You can expect to lose 5-20% performance in DX9 games in vista right now. Also, if you don't plan on spending 500 on an 8800, there really isn't any need for DX10 now. Specially since there aren't games out that use DX10.

You should build like I do. Spend a bunch on the motherboard and RAM and kind of skimp on CPU and graphics card. In a year from now when it starts to get slow, you can sell your CPU and graphics card and then buy a new ones. It's alot easier to spend 300 on a CPU later down the road. If you don't want to just the parts, you can always cobble together another comp and sell it whole. It would probably pay for most of the new CPU or video card.

Max · Post by **Max** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:21 pm

solacedagony already gave u a website to buy off of but u might wanna check out http://www.tigerdirect.com aswell, good stuff for a good price if ur doing it yourself...

sdlvx · Post by **sdlvx** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:24 pm

tigerdirect will rip you off with mail-in-rebates and send you damaged goods. I've had BAD experiences with them, and plenty of other people have too.

Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:36 pm

I've also had bad experiences with Tigerdirect.

bought a external HDD from them, and the fan was bad. I emailed their customer support at least 6 times, and not once did they return an email. All I asked was if they could send me a new fan? Would have cost them all of $2 but they instead chose to just flat our ignore me. So now I make sure to steer everyone away from them.

So far, I've had pretty good luck with newegg.

Darthness · Post by **Darthness** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:53 pm

zipzoomfly.com is another good online store for parts. bought from them a few times, never had any issue and they do free shipping on most stuff.

solacedagony · Post by **solacedagony** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:37 am

sdlvx wrote:Thats dead wrong. Building your own is WAY cheaper. Not to mention, when you build your own, you pick quality parts.

There are two different topics here and one is an over generalization. Building your own isn't always way cheaper. I can go to Circuit City or Best Buy and get a computer for $100. I really don't think any of us, unless we have parts laying around or we find parts in the clearance bin, can build one that cheap.
I totally agree, like Ryan was saying earlier, they use cheaper parts and buy in bulk so it is that cheap. Parts you're buying on NewEgg as assumably going to be of higher quality. Plus, you'll usually have some kind of upgrade path.

theformat · Post by **theformat** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:55 am

William from NOLA wrote:Vista is ok right now. Just make sure you've got the 32 bit version. Most stuff doesn't work with the 64bit right now, and wont for probably 2 years.
The biggest difference between it and XP is the fact that it needs more power to run itself.

Its not like they can just write the program overnight...
Attempt to imagine, if you will, the complexity of every little thing you do on the computer... then multiply that by about 1000? and maybe you would be able to understand how difficult it is for them to dish out new OS's...
Give em a break guys! :happy055:
at least be glad that we know were 2 years closer to a working vista :)

Bwcad1 · Post by **Bwcad1** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:32 am

im so tired of the ANTI MICROSOFT/INTEL boners.

brent · Post by **brent** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:36 am

I have a brother who is very capable of building computers. I am going to talk with him about putting together a system. Myself, I probably could, but my lack of experience tells me not to. As far as Vista is concerned, I considered it, I did some research on the 32 bit version, it seems well enough, but the OS itself does not intrigue me. As Ryan said, its definitly different. I appreciate everyones help. If anyone happens to come by a great deal on a pc let me know. Otherwise, I am going to look into a build.