13 Mar
2011
13 Mar
'11
2:46 p.m.
The only basic recommendation I can make is, make sure it has an AMD cpu.
Now, before this gets into another CPU flame war,
Intel has for a while decided that the users/owners rights don't matter,
it's DRM (digital rights management) all the way for them,
with even the ability to disable or remove software "they" don't want you to
run.
oh, you paid for that program? that's too bad.
no thanks, when I buy a machine, I buy it, not a license to use it.
go ahead, get Intel, let them monitor everything you do.
but the usual fanboys will say - the faster is better, more cores is better, more FSB is
better, larger cache is better. blah
why a desktop anyhow? why not a decent notebook? why not an ipad2 (its under your price
requirement) ?
the desktop days are numbered (yeah, just like the year of the linux desktop is every
year)
most companies aren't even making desktops any more, or are cutting back, or ending
soon.
good luck!
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:35:30 -0500
Subject: OT: Can someone help me pick out a desktop machine?
From: brianlanning at gmail.com
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
I've not been paying attention to computer hardware for a while, and
all of the marketing terms have gotten away from me. It has to come
from Office Depot. My wife was able to get roughly $650 for free, so
I need to get it from there. I'd prefer to build my own, but money is
short and this deal is too good. It looks like they have HP/Compaq
(yuk), Acer, and Lenovo. I'm going to aim for a machine with quad
cores and 8 gigs of ram. I can spend a little more than the $650, but
not by much. My main problem with picking out a machine is that I
don't understand the differences in processors beyond the number of
cores. In the good old days, they'd list the processor speed and that
was all you needed. Now even that's not a good measure. Can anyone
suggest some must-have or must-avoid specs for these machines?