[Archived] Buying A New Pc

[Scotty]

I'm going to be buying a new pc in the next week or so as my old one has gone belly up. I only need the base machine, I've got a monitor and all the other stuff. I also don't need any extra software other than the operating system.

My budget is up to £1000 but I'd really like to spend less. However, I would like a good one that I'll hopefully be able to use for years to come.

I've had a search around and these are a few possibilities that caught my eye:

The middle one here

The one on the right here

This one

Now, I know very little about computers so there's no point telling me to build my own - I wouldn't have a clue. However, if anyone could give me advice on the respective merits of the pc's above, or point me in the direction of any better ones for less money, then I'd be eternally grateful.

Cheers in advance.

[Biddy]

I think a lot of it depends on what you want to do with the machine which will determine how long it would last you and how much you need to spend.

If you want to run the latest games then, yes, you need to be spending the £700-£900 type prices. If you are going to be just working/browsing the internet then you could lower that.

Looking at the three systems you highlighted, they are all pretty well spec'd and would do anything that you wanted for the next few years. They are certainly a lot more powerful than my current machine and I have no plans to upgrade.

Do you really need the O/S by the way? Did your last machine not have a setup disk? Interesting that Novatech appear to charge about £60 for XP Home on top of the list price.

Add to that, I personally wouldn't buy from Tiny, but that's only from the things I've read.

Edited May 17, 2005 by Biddy

[Dan Furness]

Few mates have the one Aldi are knocking out. Cant go wrong with that, built in Bluetooth etc

[Scotty]

I think a lot of it depends on what you want to do with the machine which will determine how long it would last you and how much you need to spend.

If you want to run the latest games then, yes, you need to be spending the £700-£900 type prices. If you are going to be just working/browsing the internet then you could lower that.

Looking at the three systems you highlighted, they are all pretty well spec'd and would do anything that you wanted for the next few years. They are certainly a lot more powerful than my current machine and I have no plans to upgrade.

Do you really need the O/S by the way? Did your last machine not have a setup disk? Interesting that Novatech appear to charge about £60 for XP Home on top of the list price.

Add to that, I personally wouldn't buy from Tiny, but that's only from the things I've read.

I generally only use my PC to browse the internet, however, I do occasionally work from home and I also play the odd game (I got particularly addicted to the Tiger Woods golf game recently).

As for the o/s - my last PC came with XP installed although I think there was a setup disk as well. I'll have a look tonight. If installing XP involves me doing anything vaguely intelligent though I think it's probably worth me paying the £60!!

[Biddy]

I'm sure Chris could install XP for you. It's not hard anyway, pretty much the same as installing any application. If you don't have the software then you should at least have the license key. It's usually on a small rectangle sticker with lovely Microsoft holograms all over it.

If you have that then all you need is a copy of the XP media which someone could provide as you already have the license. Why give Microsoft another £60?

[Flopsy]

£1000 pounds will damn near get you a top of the range gaming machine.

If you have the peripherals and just need the box, mobo, and processor - you can keep your hard drive (if not knackered) and CD/DVD drive from your old machine

try www.dabs.com and have a look round

If not try www.dell.com

[Jim J]

For price, you'd struggle to beat Dell.

[Biddy]

For price, you'd struggle to beat Dell.

316819[/snapback]

Got to agree, if you don't want any messing around, good prices, good delivery time and great support then Dell are highly recommended.

This Dell Dimension 8400 appears to be a similar spec to those you are looking at. £751 including VAT and delivery and includes P4 3.2Ghz, 1GB Ram, XP Home, 250GB Hard Drive, 17" TFT Screen and DVD Writer.

If you click on Customise and buy then the price changes from £751 to £892, simply change the "support service" from Basic to 1 year European and update the price. That happens on every dell machine you look at.

If you wanted to save a bit more cash, This One is £571. That is a P4 3Ghz, 1GB Ram, XP Home, 160GB Hard Drive, 17" TFT Screen and DVD Writer.

Both are more than enough for Tiger Woods and web browsing.

[Flopsy]

250gb of hard drive is a hell of a lot of Porn scotty, even for a man with your "interesting" tastes

[Parasyte]

Beware with the OS of you've got the disk. If its OEM software and all the hardware doesnt match, it may not install, and if you re-install on your current HDD in your new machine, it will probably need a phonecall to MS, as when XP detects major hardware changes, it fears the worst thats its bootlegged and on a different machine, and so wont work.

And a computer build yourself isnt daunting, and your £1k would stretch a LOT further. So long as you have an anti-static wristband (or touching a radiator every 120 seconds), and avoid working on static surfaces, I'm sure myself, or someone else, could write the dummies guide to putting it together. I built a PC for a mate, whos £550 had better specs than my £1k Dell that was a mere 3 months older.

But if its a PC out the box, I recomend SPecialReserve.co.uk ... or is it .com? Either which, they use quality components, and seeing as you have a monitor et al, you'll cut out the one major flaw in their systems.

[Glenn]

For minimal fuss your best value is Dell, but watch their special offers as they can sometime be exceptionally good (double memory is a common one) and don't be afraid to pretend to be a small business to get different offers. When buying PCs for work I always get dell nowadays.

As for self builds, if all goes well it's no more complicated than lego nowadays and anyone capable of weidling a screwdriver some be able to do it with only small ammounts of guidance. HOWEVER the skill of a real system builder comes when it DOESN'T work. Thats when you need a complete set of spares to deduce what is failing (along with the patience of a saint, lots of coffee and an environment where you can swear openly).

Once upon a time I used to swear by self builds, nowadays I just point everyone to Dell, you might save a few quid, but you might also create yourself lots of hassle. My home PC is a self build, but only because transparent side panels and blue neon throughout aren't an option Dell offer .

[Ronin]

Looking to upgrade myself, and have been perusing the www.ebuyer.co.uk website. Some very good prices on there. May be worth considering.

Edited May 18, 2005 by Ronin

[Glenn]

ebuyer customer service is legendarily bad. So bad it makes NTL look good

[Scotty]

I'd looked at Dell but the only problem is that I've already got a 17" TFT monitor - and I don't really want another one. They don't seem to sell just the base unit separately.

Although I suppose I could sell my old monitor. I'll have a think.

[Biddy]

Or just sell the new one if you're happy with the old one. fully boxed, unopened from Dell, must be able to get at least £50 back on Ebay. OK, theres hassle but at least you'd be effectively knocking so more money off the price.

[Ronin]

ebuyer customer service is legendarily bad. So bad it makes NTL look good

316931[/snapback]

Christ, that's saying something then

[Scotty]

If you wanted to save a bit more cash, This One is £571.  That is a P4 3Ghz, 1GB Ram, XP Home, 160GB Hard Drive, 17" TFT Screen and DVD Writer.

I went for the one Biddy recommended above in the end. Got the PC and a laser printer for around £680. Thank you everyone for your advice.

Oh, and I now don't want to know if I could have got a better pc cheaper somewhere else.

[Drummer Boy]

Hope it does what you want - next time you get a chance, take a look at an Apple - superb OS, all the applications you need day-to-day thrown in as part of the deal, total interchangeability with MS Office, great performance and far more intuitive to use than Windows. Oh, and you don't "critical errors", hanging screens, missing dll files, umremitting spyware/adware and, to the best of my knowledge, there are very few viruses that cause you to have to reformat every so often.

The problem? Limited software - instead of millions of applications, you only have hundreds of thousands to choose from!!

After two years as a mac user, I would recommend it to anyone

[Bazzathegreat]

For 1k just on a base, you hould be looking at a top spec laptop notebook for that kind of money, my advice would be if youre still looking at spending 1k them either get a decent laptop, Sony Toshiba or Acer or Drop your budget to £600 and look for a high quality spec

AMD

ATHLON 3200+ or equavalent Intel spec

At least a gig of DDR ram

200g+ memory

a 256 graphics card ( do not have on on board )

XP Home

dont spend more than £600 on just a base

[neekoy]

If you wanted to save a bit more cash, This One is £571.  That is a P4 3Ghz, 1GB Ram, XP Home, 160GB Hard Drive, 17" TFT Screen and DVD Writer.

I went for the one Biddy recommended above in the end. Got the PC and a laser printer for around £680. Thank you everyone for your advice.

Oh, and I now don't want to know if I could have got a better pc cheaper somewhere else.

317074[/snapback]

It appears from the link you bought the last one anyway!!!

[Andy_f]

Quite funny to see no one recommend PC WORLD?

Also I have never had any trouble with Ebuyer - I use them quite often, They deliver on time and are really good with returns - so whats the problem?

[Glenn]

I know I've posted this before, but this is the response a work college sent to Ebuyer. A guick google shows he's no alone.

Personally, I've bought a few bits from the in the past, but seeing how much time and effort this took to resolve I haven't used them since.

Mon 6th December 2004  02:49:pm  [ Name Removed ]  Disgruntled 

  I dont understand.....

Firstly:

I requested a return on a product I had ordered incorrectly RMA No. [ Removed ].

The Fault Description I set to "Incorrect item Ordered".

The Required Action I set to "Exchange for Different Item*".

In the notes I wrote: (Invoice:[ Removed ] Product:[ Removed ]) Could I please exchange this item for Optorite 8x8x DVD+/-rw Retail Kit Beige (free Black Bezel) (Quickfind code: 61415) (Mfr #: DD0405).

I come to check my accounts today to see about the OTHER returns I made and the first thing I see is: "03/12/2004 3544996 (View) £27.02 Invoiced".

Further investigation shows me that you have decided to replace my incorectly ordered item with EXACTLY THE SAME ITEM....????!!!!

WHY?

Secondly:

I returned a faulty product RMA [ Removed ] ( 1 x EZ Buddie D3V7-2 AMD Alum Barebone System Ez-watch 62206 2608980 ).

In the returns notes it states: "(Invoice:[ Removed ] Product:62206) Unfortunately the product you have ordered a replacement for has had its product line discontinued. We are therefore, unable to replace your faulty computer. We apologise for any inconvienience this may have caused you and have issued you with a full refund.".

For a start: Fantastic...!!!

Yes it does cause great inconvenience to me, and yes I am bitterly dissapointed.

I cannot believe I have gone through all this FOR NOTHING! Although hang on.. no; it's not nothing is it... Alongside the barbones chassis, I obvioulsy ordered parts to go with it... So sorry, I am left with something: Processor, memory, HD, printer, CD Drive (NOT DVD Drive as I wanted)...!!! Absolutely useless without the PC part though!!!

Beyond the above, I can't see on my ledger a refund for the cost of shipping the PC back to you.

Apparenty, if it's faulty you get refunded the cost of shipping... Or is that only if you decide to give something in return???

So to recap:

1. You're sending me an item I don't want, nor asked for.

2. You've cost me time, effort, and money (not to mention hair) in getting absolultely nowhere VERY slowly.

3. You've not, from what I can gather of your very complex ledger system, refunded the cost of shipping of a faulty product.

Three problems, One disgruntled customer.

If any of these are my fault then I will gladly apologise. But will somebody please tell me what to do now, because I am beginning to feel like everything I do with your comapany is just going wrong...

I know I asked this before, but do you not have a customer service department that is capable of actually talking to someone via telephone.

Since you're only allowed to open 1 eNote at a time it's very difficult to get ALL my problems across to you and resolved in one go. Not only that I'm sure it would be a damn sight quicker for both you and me...

Ticket No : [ Removed ]    Status : open  Assigned to : [ Removed ]

  Mon 13th December 2004  02:20:pm  [ Removed ]  Customer Service Announcement 

  Perhaps I should offer you, as a company, a Customer Service Announcement: Your Customer Service is disgustingly poor, if not non-existant.

I am absolutely disgusted by your apparent lack of respect for your existing customers experiencing problems.

You appear to simply not care when a client experiences problems, and even when you do it comes all too late, like 10 days later, before an (inadequate) response is offered.

I feel you are doing yourself absolutely no favours by offering proprietary, online, text based services as the only form of customer contact.

You should know that to repsond to a text based contact, via text, takes 20 times longer to express the same as could be done vocally.

If you are only going to face the customer with this type of support you should have in place an escalation system, that offers priority services to customers in similar positions to mine were you have made mistake after mistake.

You should not try to hide away from these customers. These are customers who could make or break your company by simple word of mouth.

I emplore you to do a search on Google UK for "ebuyer customer service". You will find LOTS of VERY BAD experiences referenced by very disgruntled customers.

It would appear that if you are lucky enough to have everything go through smoothly your ebuyer experience would be satisfying, given your excellent value for money.

However, you appear to make too many mistakes, too often, and not even care about them or the customer.

I have never, ever had to make a complaint about any company in my lifetime, but you have left me feeling literally ill and unbelievably angry.

The above is just an offereing of what I feel about ebuyer as a whole.

However this does not get over the fact you have ignored this "enote" for 7 days now.

I still want a response on the refund of shipping of the unit which was faulty. It cost me over £8 to send this back to you and I EXPECT it back.

Not only was there the shipping costs, but there was the absolute lack of help on your part to resolve this problem.

As described in the first part of this enote; you left me with components I had no use for. This would not have been so bad if you had have actually helped me by offering different resolution paths, like maybe ordering the P4 unit, and returning AMD processor in exchange for a Celeron... but no; nothing... absolutely nothing.

This sums up your company wonderfully.

I have since resolved my own problems by ordering the required components from CCL.

With that in mind, I can assure you that once you have resolved my final problem I will never deal with you again.

[LeftWinger]

Can anyone answer this for me? Which is better? Pentium? Celeron? AMD Athlon? ie. How would a P4 2.8 compare to a Celeron 2.8?

[Biddy]

Celerons are the cut down version of the Pentiums (therefore at the same clockspeed, Pentiums are quicker).

They run at the same clock speed but Pentium 4's have 1mb or 2mb on chip cache (VERY quick storage area) to shift instructions between the processor and the rest of the system.

Celerons only appear to have 256K cache (thought it would have been more by now) therefore have more of a bottleneck passing information from the processor.

Comparing AMD's to Pentiums are harder. AMD's have always run at a slower clock speed but been as quick as Pentiums. For instance an AMD 2700+ processor actually has a clock speed of about 2.1GHZ but runs effectively as quick as a Pentium 4 2.7GHz.

Then you have the AMD64's which are what AMD are really pushing now which are 64-bit processors so should out-perform the Pentium 4's. Unfortunately, unless you are using a 64-bit version of Linux or you bother to buy the new Windows XP 64, you will not see too much performance increase due to Windows XP Home and Pro being 32-bit operating systems. Also, even if you buy Windows XP 64, there are hadly any apps currently using 64-bit instructions.

Still much confusion.

Edited May 31, 2005 by Biddy

[Biddy]

And to add to the earlier conversation, I've never had any problems at all with Ebuyer. Granted I've never had to send anything back.