Another new computer thread...

[RootDKJ]

Ok, it's now pretty critical that I get a new computer. I've basically been running a SCSI system at home, but tonight I fried my last SCSI drive.

About 5 years ago, I rescued out of the garbage a box of 150GB hard disks and a DLT tape drive and a box of tapes. I was able to cram in 3 of the drives into my Dell Dimension, I setup two drives to mirror each other for data backup and 1 was just a dumping ground. I'd boot off a 20GB IDE drive. I'd also back up My Documents and Music to DLT for safe keeping.

My last SCSI drive is reporting errors and I've kinda been using my work laptop for surfing at home this weekend (and I really don't want to do that).

It's been about 5 years since I've built a system. I'm really leaning towards getting a barebones system, only because I don't want to detail over each single part. The only thing I would salvage off the old computer is the DVD writer and the SCSI card/DLT drive. I'd like to stay under $700.

What do some of the computer geeks around here think?

AMD / Intel?
Barebones Kit / Pick your parts?
Dell / HP? (yes, sometimes I'm just that lazy)
OS? (I'm leaning towards just staying with XP). Might try 'nix but last time my wireless usb mouse wouldn't install.
Tigerdirect / Newegg?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks AZ!
Root

 

[Marc]

Ok, it's now pretty critical that I get a new computer. I've basically been running a SCSI system at home, but tonight I fried my last SCSI drive.

About 5 years ago, I rescued out of the garbage a box of 150GB hard disks and a DLT tape drive and a box of tapes. I was able to cram in 3 of the drives into my Dell Dimension, I setup two drives to mirror each other for data backup and 1 was just a dumping ground. I'd boot off a 20GB IDE drive. I'd also back up My Documents and Music to DLT for safe keeping.

My last SCSI drive is reporting errors and I've kinda been using my work laptop for surfing at home this weekend (and I really don't want to do that).

It's been about 5 years since I've built a system. I'm really leaning towards getting a barebones system, only because I don't want to detail over each single part. The only thing I would salvage off the old computer is the DVD writer and the SCSI card/DLT drive. I'd like to stay under $700.

What do some of the computer geeks around here think?

AMD / Intel?
Barebones Kit / Pick your parts?
Dell / HP? (yes, sometimes I'm just that lazy)
OS? (I'm leaning towards just staying with XP). Might try 'nix but last time my wireless usb mouse wouldn't install.
Tigerdirect / Newegg?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks AZ!
Root

Not a computer geek... not smart enough to be one but, here's my uninformed opinion-

AMD / Intel? - I wouldn't notice a difference for similarly rated (clock speed, flop rating) products, I'd go with cheaper
Barebones Kit / Pick your parts? - if you can find a barebones that does what you want for the right price, go with it, but socketing a processer and some RAM is not that difficult either
Dell / HP? (yes, sometimes I'm just that lazy) - Jesus, neither, please
OS? (I'm leaning towards just staying with XP). Might try 'nix but last time my wireless usb mouse wouldn't install. - Ubuntu/Kubuntu... support for peripherals is literally increasing daily, and the online support community is huge
Tigerdirect / Newegg? - Pricegrabber

 

[SkiDork]

Not a computer geek... not smart enough to be one but, here's my uninformed opinion-

AMD / Intel? - I wouldn't notice a difference for similarly rated (clock speed, flop rating) products, I'd go with cheaper
Barebones Kit / Pick your parts? - if you can find a barebones that does what you want for the right price, go with it, but socketing a processer and some RAM is not that difficult either
Dell / HP? (yes, sometimes I'm just that lazy) - Jesus, neither, please
OS? (I'm leaning towards just staying with XP). Might try 'nix but last time my wireless usb mouse wouldn't install. - Ubuntu/Kubuntu... support for peripherals is literally increasing daily, and the online support community is huge
Tigerdirect / Newegg? - Pricegrabber

I would add if you use pricegrabber, make sure you check any unknown vendors on resellerratings.com

 

[Marc]

I would add if you use pricegrabber, make sure you check any unknown vendors on resellerratings.com

Good point, I typically go with the cheapest "well known" or at least widely reviewed vendor on pg...

 

[gmcunni]

Dell / HP? (yes, sometimes I'm just that lazy)

the joy/challenge of building something myself left me years ago.

 

[RootDKJ]

I've seen a couple kits on Tirger Direct's email's that have peaked my interests.

Last time I tried Mandriva and Fedora. No problems with either of them besides the lack of wireless mouse drivers.

 

[mondeo]

AMD / Intel?
Barebones Kit / Pick your parts?
Dell / HP? (yes, sometimes I'm just that lazy)
OS? (I'm leaning towards just staying with XP). Might try 'nix but last time my wireless usb mouse wouldn't install.
Tigerdirect / Newegg?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks AZ!
Root

High-end and low-end probably go to Intel at this point, but I'd go with AMD in the mid-range. Exception is for mid range single threaded performance, AMD doesn't have any respectable dual cores for another couple months. I'd go with BMM's choice of Phenom X3 720, 2.8GHz triple core out of the box, and if you want to screw around with it at all it's a pretty good overclocker, and there's the potential that you can get the fourth core to work. Don't expect it to, just a nice little bonus on top of very good $140 chip to start out with. If you do a TON of video editing, a low end Core i7 may be worth it.

I don't think barebones really saves you that much effort.

Probably Dell.

Windows 7 RC or Vista. Vista's only a dog on hardware meant for XP. If you go with Win7 RC and dual boot Linux, you get two OSs for free to try out, and if they don't work fall back to Vista/XP. [K/X]Ubuntu should have pretty good driver support.

Mix and match tigerdirect and Newegg. I think I ended up with 2/3 of my parts coming from Newegg, the others from Tigerdirect.

 

[BushMogulMaster]

Ok, it's now pretty critical that I get a new computer. I've basically been running a SCSI system at home, but tonight I fried my last SCSI drive.

About 5 years ago, I rescued out of the garbage a box of 150GB hard disks and a DLT tape drive and a box of tapes. I was able to cram in 3 of the drives into my Dell Dimension, I setup two drives to mirror each other for data backup and 1 was just a dumping ground. I'd boot off a 20GB IDE drive. I'd also back up My Documents and Music to DLT for safe keeping.

My last SCSI drive is reporting errors and I've kinda been using my work laptop for surfing at home this weekend (and I really don't want to do that).

It's been about 5 years since I've built a system. I'm really leaning towards getting a barebones system, only because I don't want to detail over each single part. The only thing I would salvage off the old computer is the DVD writer and the SCSI card/DLT drive. I'd like to stay under $700.

What do some of the computer geeks around here think?

AMD / Intel?
Barebones Kit / Pick your parts?
Dell / HP? (yes, sometimes I'm just that lazy)
OS? (I'm leaning towards just staying with XP). Might try 'nix but last time my wireless usb mouse wouldn't install.
Tigerdirect / Newegg?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks AZ!
Root

>If you go AMD, go for the Phenom II line of CPUs. All other current AMD models run hot, and far underperform compared with their comparably-priced Intel counterparts. That said, I would actually definitely recommend AMD... just get a Phenom II CPU.
>If you can get the right barebone setup, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's always more fun for me to pick myself. That way I get exactly what I want, and I know that none of the components are cheapo garbage.
>Dell/HP? No.
>Well, you could do Win 7, but then you'd have to buy it next spring. And there are compatibility issues that I am finding. Driver issues, printer problems, etc. Overall, it's much better than Vista, but not perfect. Linux is a great choice, and the Ubuntu OS (based on Debian) is a solid performer, and is actually very compatible and very user friendly.
>Both TigerDirect and Newegg are awesome... just search for the best deals. And check computergate.com from time to time.

 

[kcyanks1]

I've seen a couple kits on Tirger Direct's email's that have peaked my interests.

Last time I tried Mandriva and Fedora. No problems with either of them besides the lack of wireless mouse drivers.

Try the Ubuntu live CD on your current setup if possible. They just released 9.04 in April. I would figure your mouse would be supported. If it doesn't work on the live CD it may still work when installed, but it can at least show you that it will work.

 

[WJenness]

Stumbled across this in another forum: http://fit-pc2.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Pretty cool looking little device and you could have a big honkin NAS somewhere for storage...

Of course, it all depends on what you're going to do with it.

-w

 

[RootDKJ]

Stumbled across this in another forum: http://fit-pc2.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Pretty cool looking little device and you could have a big honkin NAS somewhere for storage...

Of course, it all depends on what you're going to do with it.

-w

The price isn't too bad on that either...but would still need some NAS. Still a nice little box

 

[SkiDork]

1GB ram too small. Hopefully they'll come out with an upgraded version with more.

 

[billski]

Buy the processor with the most L2 Cache you can afford.
Buy the most video ram and main memory you can afford.

Forget about tape. (I was in the commercial side of the tape business for 5 years). Need backups? Just get some removable drives, that's what I did.
I used to have SCSI - too expensive.

Remember, if you are running XP and yo upgrade to another Gates OS many apps fail to continue to work, or behave badly. I am a poster child for a Vista upgrade. It gets costly to do app upgrades. Plus not every vendor has all written Vista drivers, nor do they plan to. Stick with XP.
Be careful if you have I/O cards you want to migrate. You might not take it with you. PCI is almost never offered on motherboards and it's PCI-Express.

Have an old parallel printer or serial i/o? many boards don't offer legacy any more. I was in for serious culture shock. You can buy "adapters", which sometimes work. more money.

Be careful of you DVD writer interface. The new boards may offer only serial ATA. You'd need to get an adapter. More $.

Most HP boxes, other than the commercial boxes no longer offer legacy support: parallel, serial, Parallel ATA, PCI, PCI-X, so take care when ordering from one of the big boys.

Regarding home brew, I don't think you can do it for any cheaper than the big boys can. that said, control of your own destiny is definitely an advantage to roll your own. you choose.

 

[mondeo]

Buy the processor with the most L2 Cache you can afford.
Buy the most video ram and main memory you can afford.

Both AMD and Intel have moved to large L3 caches beyond individual L2 caches per core. Difference is that Intel's new architecture hasn't filtered down to their mid- and low- range products yet.

RAM is only effective to a point, and is easy to add in afterwards. Start out with 4GB, and if you come close to using all of it, add another 2GB. I don't know that I've hit 3GB yet on Vista. Similarly, the amount of video ram needed is dependant on the resolution you're running. A typical 20"/22" 1680x1050 monitor can probably get away with 256MB, but no reason to go beyond 512MB. If you look at gaming benchmarks, it's apparent that the high-end cards are overkill unless you have a 30" screen.

 

[mondeo]

Buy the processor with the most L2 Cache you can afford.
Buy the most video ram and main memory you can afford.

Forget about tape. (I was in the commercial side of the tape business for 5 years). Need backups? Just get some removable drives, that's what I did.
I used to have SCSI - too expensive.

Remember, if you are running XP and yo upgrade to another Gates OS many apps fail to continue to work, or behave badly. I am a poster child for a Vista upgrade. It gets costly to do app upgrades. Plus not every vendor has all written Vista drivers, nor do they plan to. Stick with XP.
Be careful if you have I/O cards you want to migrate. You might not take it with you. PCI is almost never offered on motherboards and it's PCI-Express.

Have an old parallel printer or serial i/o? many boards don't offer legacy any more. I was in for serious culture shock. You can buy "adapters", which sometimes work. more money.

Be careful of you DVD writer interface. The new boards may offer only serial ATA. You'd need to get an adapter. More $.

Most HP boxes, other than the commercial boxes no longer offer legacy support: parallel, serial, Parallel ATA, PCI, PCI-X, so take care when ordering from one of the big boys.

Regarding home brew, I don't think you can do it for any cheaper than the big boys can. that said, control of your own destiny is definitely an advantage to roll your own. you choose.

Windows 7 RC comes with a liscense for XP and can run apps in XP virtualized. Performance won't be great, but if there's a couple of XP apps that you need and don't work with Win7, you can get away with it.

The way I look at it, Win7 and Linux are free. They don't work out perfectly, you can always go buy a copy of XP later.

 

[SkiDork]

Windows 7 RC comes with a liscense for XP and can run apps in XP virtualized. Performance won't be great, but if there's a couple of XP apps that you need and don't work with Win7, you can get away with it.

The way I look at it, Win7 and Linux are free. They don't work out perfectly, you can always go buy a copy of XP later.

so the XP virtualization will be contained in the final release of 7? That would be cool.

I'm looking to try out 7 myself, although I don't know if I have a beefy enough box to do it on. I'm looking to run it in server mode rather than kick-ass graphics workstation mode so I _might_ be able to get away with something less powerful than recommended

 

[mondeo]

so the XP virtualization will be contained in the final release of 7? That would be cool.

I'm looking to try out 7 myself, although I don't know if I have a beefy enough box to do it on. I'm looking to run it in server mode rather than kick-ass graphics workstation mode so I _might_ be able to get away with something less powerful than recommended

XP virtualization will be in the higher end versions of the final release; Ultimate and Business, I think. Still issues with virutualization though, including lack of virtualized peripheals (I think AMD's processors now virtualize RAM, though, not sure if it's just in their server processors at this point) and general poor performance.

Win7 is supposed to be less resource intensive than Vista.

 

[RootDKJ]

Windows 7 RC comes with a liscense for XP and can run apps in XP virtualized. Performance won't be great, but if there's a couple of XP apps that you need and don't work with Win7, you can get away with it.

The way I look at it, Win7 and Linux are free. They don't work out perfectly, you can always go buy a copy of XP later.

Win7 = Free???

 

[SkiDork]

Win7 = Free???

currently free because it is only available as RC

Once it goes full production, expect to pay

 

[mondeo]

Win7 = Free???

Until the temporary liscense runs out about a year from now.