If I should decide to throw the Gateway tower out the window
(first having had to carry it upstairs to maximize the impact,) and then find that I’m feeling kindly enough to provide a new functional one for those who use that system, where might be the most affordable site to track down a cheap substitute?
I’m seeing refurbs for about $300 on Delloutlet.com.
We will most likely attempt a clean install first. Having trouble talking it into booting from the cd.
Throwing off the roof may be fun, but I look forward to erasing the hard drive.
I found my computer through techbargains.com. I figure I saved about $75 over the daily deals offered, and maybe $250 over what I might have paid at a local store on a $600 laptop.
Techbargains has paid staffers looking at all the popular sites, and ads from the big box retailers, including outlets and refurbs. If a person checks once a day, like checking for a good airfare, a clearly better deal usually emerges after a week or two of checking.
In addition to techbargains.com I also track slickdeals.net.
There’s nothing wrong with a refurb as long as it has a decent warranty.
Hi emmline
Had a look at Dell Outlet and this looked like the best deal at $329.
After looking at the dfsdirectsales site - overpriced and underspecified.
david
I think refurbs are a fine option. That “refurb” word actually can mean a lot of things. I always had in mind that it’s a thing that goes back to the factory, for whatever reason, and has to be repaired or reconfigured or something. And it CAN mean that. But sometimes it’s just a return or even a problem with packaging. Seems to me you can get some amazing bargains.
I’ll second Dale; there are some awesome deals to be found under the “referb” category. My last laptop (before my new one that I bought last year) was an HP factory refurb, and it will turn five years old this august. Still runs like a charm apart from the battery being shot.
tanks.
I think the kid hangs out in too many anime and fanfic sites which double as the portals to hell.
So far, I’ve got things running semi-ok.
You might want to check out newegg.com, if you haven’t already.
They have some machines at just a hair over $300 that look pretty sweet.
–James
must commit that to memory, as it’s bound to crash and burn, if not now, later.
Good grief. They have a few under $300, too, with Vista preloaded.
It’s cheaper to buy a new computer than to buy a stand-alone copy of Vista.
Vista running on 512M of DDR2 is anything but sweet. Add on the unincluded necessities and you’re in the same ballpark as the rest of the retailers.
I agree. Vista on 512Mb = chugalug chugalug.
I have 4GB of DDR2, a fast core2 duo and a 8800GTX graphics card - all overclocked. I’m still on XP.
Mukade
I was thinking more along the lines of using the Vista that came with the PC on
another machine, and loading the cheap box with Linux. Though, I don’t know
if those newegg deals would even come with an install disc. These days, install
discs seem to come at a premium…
Speaking of which, I’ve got Vista installed on a PC, which is dying. I recently
bought a MacMini (awesome) and installed Windows XP on a Parallels Virtual
Machine. Is there any reason I can’t install the copy of Vista on another VM,
since it’s already been used on the PC? Do I have to inform Microsquish if I
want to move Vista to another machine? I think that was the M.O. for XP, but
maybe there was enough backlash to keep that from being a problem with
Vista…
I doubt it. You’re licensed for one install, so it shouldn’t matter if you move it from one machine to another, AFAIK. In any case, M is not going to pursue a home user with a dying PC.
I recently moved onto a new Vista system, and gave it 3G. Probably overkill, but I got a good deal, and want this to keep me going for a few good years. So far, I have never regretted overspending on RAM, and often regretted underspending.
I run Vista (reluctantly) on a Core Duo with 2 Gig RAM. It’s still a little sluggish.
For Vista I wouldn’t want less than 2 Gig if I were gaming at all or doing heavy Photoshop or any music or video editing. 4 Gig would be much better and a RAM upgrade is high on my shopping list.
I’d never go back to a desktop machine. My last 4 PCs have been laptops and the freedom from desks and spaghetti is to good to give up. Even in the office I use my laptop while the desktop sits usually neglected.
Currently running one of these.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/117852/acer-aspire-5920.html
It’s better than I expected.
I wasn’t worried about the legality, it was more of a technical question. IIRC,
XP “called home” when installing and checked to see if this was a different
configuration. If so, it refused to install. I think you then had to contact Micro$
to reset their database or somesuch arse-pain. I was wondering if Vista was
similar.
Ohhh…I guess you can figure they haven’t softened up their stance.
My bro-in-law just bought himself one of those new Acers and he’s really happy with it.
Yeah, anything less than 2gig of RAM and Vista is practically unusable. Surprisingly enough, there are lots of OEM boxes that come with Vista and only 500mb… But, of course, if you go into Burst Buy or Circuit S****y and you pay attention you’ll notice that all their ‘demo models’ that they use to sell their bottom barrel computers all have at least 2 gig so that the unaware think they’ll be getting a computer of similar performance capability…
One such store tried to take my younger sister for such a ride, and thankfully she had the common sense to call me before making a final desicion. I went back to the store and let the salesguy give us the pitch again (he totally said “the ammount of ram doesn’t matter as much as your processor speed with Vista, you’ll be better off with 500mb…see it works great on this here demo model…”).
Of course, I said, “Hey, can I drive?” as I batted the the Burst Boy away…
“Hmmm, Start—>MyComputer---->(r.click)Properties---->General Tab…Hey, call me crazy, but this demo computer appears to have 4 gig of RAM. I thought you said this thing was the same as what we were going to buy, eh?”
We got a free upgrade to 2gig and a “store discount” on that unit… 
IMHO, after spending the better part of a year with the OS, Vista is a pig.
Lots of unneccesary eye candy that eats up ram (thankfully one can still choose classic view, which helps a little), lots of useless add-ons like that crazy wigits bar or whatever the hell it is, redundant items (two f’in clocks on your desktop? who really needs/wants two friggin clocks?).
There are one or two items that I feel are an improvement on XP, namely the file tree start menu. I love that feature, but not enough to warrant choosing Vista over XP, providing I had the choice.
Vista will also act as a local host and compile ASP code (or so says my programming instructor, I’ve never tried), and I haven’t done a whole lot of reading up on that because I dont’ use ASP. (anyone else know?..I’m lookin’ at you, Chris).
If I had my druthers I’d switch back to XP, but a bunch of my laptop’s perif hardware isn’t compatable (a buddy of mine with the same laptop switched his back to XP, but had to scramble together some hashed up drivers for all the components for it to work right, and he gets frequent error messages about odd things…not really worth the effort IMHO, at least not in my situation).
My laptop runs fairly well with Vista on 2gig of ram, but then again, I’m only using my computer for minor programming, mostly web stuff (XHTML, javascript, php, SQL, yadda yadda yadda) and school, and I don’t really need more than that. I’m not a gamer anymore, so I don’t even have an advanced graphics card; i just run on my integrated intel thingymabob for now. When I reall need an advanced graphics card, I’ll probably need more ram too, then I’ll just give my laptop to my wife to replace hers and get myself a fantastic whang-biz-with-racing-stripes laptop package.
For those who are into the geekier side of computers, there is an article in this months CPU about life after one year of Vista. One of the opinions expressed was that M$ ought to release XPSP4 as Vista2 next year