Our old Gateway is almost 6 years old. It's been updated a couple of times, but has gotten pretty slow, and "locks up" frequently. I'd like to spend as little as I have to. It isn't used by my son's for school any more, and therefore isn't used to download music, or other memory eating stuff. We use our computer for selling or buying on ebay, poking around on the internet, basic communications, etc. Should I buy a "package deal", or keep my monitor, keyboard and replace only the modem?

I just ordered my second $299 Dell. I am typing this on the first one, which will be exactly 2 years old in a few weeks. The new one is for my 11 year old since there is a constant 4-way battle for this PC. I added a wireless router last weekend and can use my work laptop when my wife/daughter/son are using this one.

This one is fast enough for Internet browsing (concurrent with listening to My Yahoo! radio station). It only has 128MB of RAM but it works fine. I can stream video but I can't play fancy games on it because the 3-D games require a better video card.

The new one is essentially identical was ordered with 512MB Ram, CD-RW/DVD-R as adders but now my daughter will have a slightly faster machine (more memory) and watch movies in her room. It came with traditional monitor, keyboard, mouse, modem, network card and a really crappy printer.

Since I am buying my second one, I would obviously recommend this as a possible replacement. I have had zero problems with this PC.

I always build my own. It's not usually cheaper than a $299 deal from Dell, but I get what I want (and it's still not terribly expensive).

That's the way I've always done it as well. My first roommate in college was a computer science major and got me started on all this computer stuff.



For the money you can't beat the price of a Dell if you just want a newer computer. Like every computer they have their "issues", but are great about tech support from what I here.

Things to speed up your current computer in the mean time
1. Defrag your hard drive (This can really help a lot)
2. Clean out your C drive. If your disk is getting full this can really slow you down.

Yep. I "Disk Cleanup" and "Defragment" every week on this PC.

'bulid your own' through like mwave.com they usually got decent prices and more importantly, good selection of hardware. next month a shitload of 64bit dual core cpus are coming out, so the prices are gonna drop hard soon, so i'd suggest waiting for that.
i'd seriously get everything new. 6 yrs is quite a few generations, and you should be able to enjoy all the new technology. even small stuff like mice gotten nicer. monitors have made leaps and bounds improvments, graphics cards went from bitshovling to terminator quality effects in real time, and so on.

if you need any help picking this stuff, gimme a buzz, i love buying computers

It's really tough to beat the deals that Dell can provide. The hardware is pretty crappy in my opinion, but for what you're doing you don't need to spend more money on better hardware. I'd suggest getting the package deal, since your Gateway monitor, keyboard, and mouse will probably give up the ghost at some point anyhow. Plus you know you want to get rid of that big monitor and get a low profile one. The space savings really is worth it.

Jason

Dell's are good for the money and if you just want something basic without the hassle of putting one together, I would definitely look into it. One thing I would look in to if you are going to go this route is their refurbished computers. They are even cheaper and work just as well. I bought a refurbished in July of 2003 and I am still running it as we speak. At the end of next summer however, I plan on upgrading by building my own. The main advantage of building your own is that you can upgrade misc. components much easier. You can't do this with most of the Dell computers.

Dell outlet

One thing I forgot to mention: The only problem with buying a refurbished is that you can't "customize" what you want. You just have to look at the computers that have already been made. If you spend a little time looking though, you can usually find exactly what you want anyway.