MY COMPUTER TOOK A DUMP!! SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW ONE? (BUDGET FRIENDLY!!!)

[skip68]

So the other night I get home from work and find out that my computer froze up. (BLUE SCREEN-ITIS!!!)  Tried to fix it in safe mode, .........nothing!  Called Dell, and after being hung up on fourtimes and going through all their bullsh*t voice prompts, I get a live person. After an hour and a half of being instructed to unplug everything, open the cover, take out a green board, putting it back in, I said screw it!!!!! They told me that they could reset it for me, but I'd lose all my data and photos!!! So we took it to a local guy in town last night. He did some magic to it and the C.P.U. had a sleepover at the shop. Go to pick it up today, (They said it would be ready by 10am)......."HARD DRIVE IS SHOT!!!"  Needless to say, I'm ticked off!!!

I stole our sons old tower to use temp. but need info on what we should look at for a replacement. I need lots of memory for our photos, and the faster the better. Needs to be small budget friendly, for right now. Any suggestions??

Mrs.Skip68

P.S. Thanks for letting me rant! 

[BigRed66]

My wife just bought a Dell laptop for around $600 that kicks ass! Tons of memory, DVD drive/burner...A lot of people don't like Dell, but they have a lot of good systems for good prices...something for everyone...I'd hit a Dell store...

[Arthu®]

Uhm so what exactly was the problem? Was it only a harddrive problem? And why did the CPU have a sleepover? There are a ton of experts out there that can recover a lot of data from failed hard drives at a certain price. If it was just a hard drive problem I would not give up on the PC just yet. How old is it and were you thinking about replacing it any time soon anyways?

Arthur

[skip68]

Uhm so what exactly was the problem? Was it only a harddrive problem? And why did the CPU have a sleepover? There are a ton of experts out there that can recover a lot of data from failed hard drives at a certain price. If it was just a hard drive problem I would not give up on the PC just yet. How old is it and were you thinking about replacing it any time soon anyways?

Arthur

It was the hard drive. They said they could still get my data out for me, but I need another comp. to transfer it to. As far as it staying overnight,.......Chuck dropped it off after he took me to work at 4pm. I guess they must close at 5pm. They said they were going to plug it in overnight and runs some tests. They did tell Chuck that they could replace the hard drive for $100.00 and the labor would be another $75.00. Now were talking dropping two hundred bucks on a 6 year old computer. Rather put the money towards a newer one. (We weren't planning on this right now, as we just bought a house!  ) It also doesn't have a burner in it!

Gotta get ready to go to work! Chuck will be monitoring the suggestions!! Thanks in advance!

Mrs.Skip68

[mikepmcs]

best buy, 18 months interest free. I'd stick with dell myself. They have all kinds that will meet your needs.  Dell has a real nice desktop with all kinds of options under $600.

[Forza]

I personally will not recommend dell to anyone. Dell only gets the business they do because of their prices and well established name. Their customer service is bullshit and the parts they use in their systems are of the cheapest quality. Go to bestbuy and browse, I'd offer a suggestion but I usually build my own.

[472 R/T SE]

For every person who dislikes Dell there's usually two or three who feel the same about Gateway.

But we'll own nothing but the Holstein cow.

Might I suggest whoever you buy from that you also purchase an external hard drive for all the pix you say you have.  Long, long time ago my first puter, a Compaq, died a month past warranty & I learned my lesson then.  External HD will help keep the puter running on the fast end too if you keep all the pix & video there.

I don't know how many pix I have on mine but I didn't start noticing space being used up until I put my daughter's 60-70 or so videos on it.

[Mike DC]

                    
Remember to dispose of any old computer hardware in an appropriate & environmentally friendly fashion.  





 

[71ChallengeHer]

I agree with the external hard drive. We have one for all our photos.

[mopar_nut_440_6]

I would recommend Dell as I have been in IT for a number of years and have no complaints. I have always had good service, prices and minimal warranty problems and we have thousands of them in our facilities. I also have built my own water cooled overclocked PC's but for a stock unit Dell is great. Just my two cents.

I also highly recommend an external hard drive for your pics.

[Khyron]

I would recommend Dell as I have been in IT for a number of years and have no complaints. I have always had good service, prices and minimal warranty problems and we have thousands of them in our facilities. I also have built my own water cooled overclocked PC's but for a stock unit Dell is great. Just my two cents.

I also highly recommend an external hard drive for your pics.

what he said :-)

My Desktop PCs are all custom built, all my laptops are Dell.

[FLG]

Yep Dells are fine IMO.

BTW, about the water cooling bit...i went WAY overboard a few years go with my water cooled PC

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v231/-FLG-/

Granted the hardware is much outdated now and its kind of in pieces, im sure ill rebuild it one day. Was a great experiment!! Even painted the exterior electric blue BC/CC I eventually ditched the radiator fan and went passive.

[bakerhillpins]

I agree with the external hard drive. We have one for all our photos.

External drives fail too. If you are trying to save photos/music/etc go for a NAS solution. They are reasonably inexpensive, are networked, and can be setup to be redundant. I picked up a ReadyNAS Duo and 500GB of storage (RAID configured) for $300.  That was like 5 months ago. I bet you could get closer to 1TB for that $$ if you looked for stuff on sale.. Buy the diskless version and add your own disks to save $$.

They make big ones and small ones. The key is RAID which gives you hardware failure protection. The ReadyNAS is hot swappable and has all sorts of cool features like timed up and down, supports lots of streams...

I picked up my NAS from www.newegg.com

Oh, Im not a Dell fan either.

Bryan

[The70RT]

When I called about my Dell they didn't do shit for me( some idiot from Indonesia) he said my HD was shot (3 years ago) I took it to a buddy of mine and boom he got it up again. I have two computer repair buddys that do all my work for virtually nothing. If you don't need desk top you can get a Acer laptop for like 300 at wally world. I will never by a PC new again. I can get a 2-3 year old IBM from my work (school) when they upgrade for only 25 bucks! PC, monitor, K.B.

[Troy]

I use multiple hard drives: the OS and programs are installed on one, one is for all data (pictures, video, music, projects, and program data), and one to back up the second. I have no need for Raid as a straight (regularly scheduled) differential backup works well. I also use another computer or an off site storage system to back up the data drives daily. For a "normal" user, an online sync/backup like Mozy or Carbonite is cheap insurance. Sure you're computer can die but you don't lose all your important stuff. Reloading an OS and some software is easy.

I like Dell but everything I buy is business related - not home. My parents have 2 Dell PCs and have had 5 total with no problems - and they're totally non-technical.

Troy

[LeadfootBob]

Watch out for heat issues with the external drives.
They just don't get the air circulation that an interal disk does, and the internal ones are cheaper. If the computer dies, it's about five minutes of work with nothing but a screw driver to remove one.
I've got two external 500 GB's, one is starting to conk out (clicking and whirring, slow to access etc.) so I took that as an excuse to add another TB disk and move all the junk onto that
Now I've got 2.7TB's on four separate volumes, I keep a backup of the vital stuff on each drive JIC. The car chase movie folder just HAS to live!

[ChgrSteve67]

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11495739&whse=BC&Ne=5000000%204000000&eCat=BC|84|56670&N=4017745%205000107&Mo=24&No=5&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|0||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=

Even has normal 10 key keyboard.

Then to save or backup your files you can get one of these
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11315964&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|31022|4298&N=4017767&Mo=10&pos=4&No=6&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=4298&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10626-Cat31022&topnav=

[ChgrSteve67]

I do 98% of my work on a notebook and I use one of these for data storage, remote services, web services, ftp and backups.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11498069&search=home%20server&Mo=13&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Sp=S&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=home%20server&Ntt=home%20server&No=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1

[TruckDriver]

I'd stay away from Dell personally. I know a few people that bought them new, and have nothing but major problems with them. I even had a P.C. chain here in the state tell me they used to be the best, but all they are now are the best pile if junk you can buy. I never had problems with HP at all.

[472 R/T SE]

Then to save or backup your files you can get one of these
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11315964&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|31022|4298&N=4017767&Mo=10&pos=4&No=6&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=4298&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10626-Cat31022&topnav=

What's the difference compared to this one?  This one's Hard Disk Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM

Costco one is 5400 RPM

[ChgrSteve67]

Since the hard drive in the notebook is also a 5400 rpm drive the external 7200 rpm drive will not give you any performance increase. Of course there is the whole USB bottle neck issue that reduces the performance of the external drive as well.

If you are going to buy a notebook at Costco then buy the portable drive at Costco.
If you are just after a portable drive and are looking for a cheaper price then the one on eBay may be a good choice.

I trust Costco to resolve any problems I may have since most electronic failures due to manufacture defects happen in the first 60 days. eBay sellers are always a hassle when problems occur.

There are other stores that carry similar products so the two I provided can be used as a reference and price point comparison.

Buying computers are like buying cars. They are all equipped a little differently and you have to choose the one that has the features you want.

I guess I should have asked if Mrs.Skip68 prefers a desktop PC over a notebook.  I may be totally off in what she is after.

[472 R/T SE]

I ask cause every once in a while opening a file drags out forever.  Just started though.  It's close to 10 years old so I guess it's to be expected.

[jeryst]

Just go to Walmart and buy whatever they have on sale. THe same companies make the components for all of the computers, Dell, Gateway, Acer, etc. An Acer or an eMachines will run just as good and be just as reliable as any other. Been in IT for 25 years, so I know what I'm talking about. You can pick up a system at Walmart for $300-$400 with a good processor, 17"-19"  LCD monitor, 320GB hard drive, etc. Dont spend your money on the brand names, they're pretty much all the same inside. You can get a nice Acer laptop for around $400 if you are thinking laptop.

Here's a case in point. When my daughter went off to college two years ago, she bought an HP laptop($1200). At the same time, I bought an Acer laptop ($350). Hers had to be fixed twice, and finally just died about a week ago, now that its out of warranty. They told her it will cost $500 to fix.. My Acer is still running like a top, and I use it a lot more than she used hers. Tried to tell her, but she just wouldnt listen. Kids!

The moral of the story is, buy it cheap, use it for a couple of years, then replace it with newer technology. Most PC's are obsolete as soon as you buy them. THe more you spend for it, the longer you will want to keep it running, thereby depriving yourself of better, cheaper, technology.

[Khyron]

wow, if your in IT for 25 years don't ever come to my shop for a job.

[FLG]

I agree and disagree with jeryst post granted some of the lesser name brand PC's are quite good. Alot of people hear "Dell" or "Gateway", "Toshiba" and they "know" those brands. But unless your in the field of technology people look at "Acer", and "Asus" are are think "Oh i never have heard of them so they must not be good".

Honestly for ALL my computer builds i only use quality components, and that means EVERY build i do is with an Asus motherboard. As for Acer i dont use them regularly, but i have used plenty of Acer monitors and have had great luck (no dead/stuck pixels, and pretty good resolution)

But the one thing i dont agree with is eMachines....what bags of crap. Great for a cheap computer that you just "need" but i would NEVER point a customer near one. Cheap components!!! Especially the power supplies. And im sorry but all PC's are NOT the same inside...yes same components but heck no not the same quality.

They skimp on basically everything, as for MOBO's ECS, Biostar, or Foxccon garbage, and no name PSU's, Hitachi deskstar (or shall i say "deathstar") HDD's and crappy DVD drives.

I always tell my customers, if you want CHEAP go to the store and buy one. I refuse to build PC's with inferior components. Mainly all my builds consist of Fortron Source PSU's, ASUS mobo's, and im a little bias towards seagate HDD's, though i will go with Maxtor, or Western Digital if their on sale, any good quality DVD drive that's on sale, and a quality monitor.

Ive been registered to www.pcmech.com/forum since 2003 (im 21 now so yes ive been doing this since im 15 years old) i havent visited in a LONG time since i finally got my mopar and really have a very good grasp on PC's.  I started working on PC's by grabbing whatever i found in the trash, then being able to mess around with things without having to worry about breaking stuff.

[Khyron]

Thank you FLG for giving me some faith back

If your ever in Upstate NY and need a job, we can talk heheheh The fact that "The same companies make the components" is just unbelievable simplistic it's not even funny. yeah... it's all silicon so it's all from the same planet so it's all the same...... it's enough to bang my head on the table...

I need to get out of this field... too many "Experts" in it. 

[FLG]

Thank you FLG for giving me some faith back

If your ever in Upstate NY and need a job, we can talk heheheh The fact that "The same companies make the components" is just unbelievable simplistic it's not even funny. yeah... it's all silicon so it's all from the same planet so it's all the same...... it's enough to bang my head on the table...

I need to get out of this field... too many "Experts" in it. 

Where and when buddy? Ive been working my small home based business for awhile now. It gets some new parts put on the charger but not quite enough 

[jeryst]

Just how many hard drive, motherboard, chipmakers do you think are out there? One company will make components under dozens of names and labels, so you think you are getting something different, when you are really just getting the same thing rebranded. There are differences, sure, but to the average home user, it makes little difference. We tried all different brands at work. emachines, Acer, Dell, gateway, HP. Overall, the "Brand" names did not justify their much higher costs, and we were able to save the company tons of money by using the cheaper brands with hardly any adverse effects. For example, we have a 7 year old emachines that went through 3 different people, was used on the plant floor for a while, then eventually wound up being a specialized file server. Its still running strong, and doing its job admirably, all without any repairs. And just so you know, all of this was done in a heavy manufacturing environment, serving over thousands of employees and over 1000 PC's, so you can say what you want, but the "Expert" crack works both ways.

[Silver R/T]

www.newegg.com get all the parts there and build your own. You'll save hundreds of dollars.

[Arthu®]

I agree and disagree with jeryst post granted some of the lesser name brand PC's are quite good. Alot of people hear "Dell" or "Gateway", "Toshiba" and they "know" those brands. But unless your in the field of technology people look at "Acer", and "Asus" are are think "Oh i never have heard of them so they must not be good".

Honestly for ALL my computer builds i only use quality components, and that means EVERY build i do is with an Asus motherboard. As for Acer i dont use them regularly, but i have used plenty of Acer monitors and have had great luck (no dead/stuck pixels, and pretty good resolution)

But the one thing i dont agree with is eMachines....what bags of crap. Great for a cheap computer that you just "need" but i would NEVER point a customer near one. Cheap components!!! Especially the power supplies. And im sorry but all PC's are NOT the same inside...yes same components but heck no not the same quality.

They skimp on basically everything, as for MOBO's ECS, Biostar, or Foxccon garbage, and no name PSU's, Hitachi deskstar (or shall i say "deathstar") HDD's and crappy DVD drives.

I always tell my customers, if you want CHEAP go to the store and buy one. I refuse to build PC's with inferior components. Mainly all my builds consist of Fortron Source PSU's, ASUS mobo's, and im a little bias towards seagate HDD's, though i will go with Maxtor, or Western Digital if their on sale, any good quality DVD drive that's on sale, and a quality monitor.

Ive been registered to www.pcmech.com/forum since 2003 (im 21 now so yes ive been doing this since im 15 years old) i havent visited in a LONG time since i finally got my mopar and really have a very good grasp on PC's.  I started working on PC's by grabbing whatever i found in the trash, then being able to mess around with things without having to worry about breaking stuff.

Ok I by no means have a ton of experience with computers in the sense that I have an education on the subject, but I have been messing around with them and building them since I was 16 years old. Now I agree with you on the ASUS motherboards I too have only build PC's with their motherboards and I have great experiences with them. You still get what you pay for to some degree though. Acer laptops... Maybe you experience varies from mine, but what I have seen is that the ones that are actually a lot cheaper than the brand names also have a poor build quality, the parts individually might not be bad of quality, but the casing looks and feels cheap and is anything but robust. The PC I have now is the first one I didn't build myself, it is a laptop, so it's kind of hard to build those yourself. It's also a brand that not a lot of people know, but I'm very satisfied with it. The brand is MSI I have their GX620, originally made for Vista, but as everybody knows that was a piece of crap, so I am now running x64 XP Professional and it is lightning fast. I can recommend their products to anyone. Great support forums as well, because I got it when it was just out and the x64 XP drivers were not released yet so I had to do some digging to make it work and they were very helpful.

Arthur

[FLG]

I honestly cant say too much for Acer laptops. Ive seen a few, seemed people were happy with em and ive used them for LCD's a few times and have had good luck.

As for MSI, i actually bought the GX720 for a customer (believe its the same as the 620 just a bit higher end) and i gotta say, i was very very happy with the performance, looks, and feel of the unit (man that line can sure be taken out of context). With Acer laptops i noticed its just plane jane in the past, nothing special. I haven't looked at their newer stuff, but it does seem to be a little more visually appealing and maybe more robust. 

MSI has always been on the fence with me. They did have what seemed like more quality control issues in the past but seemed to have been good since than.

[451-74Charger]

I swear by Dell.
My wife and I both have Inspiron laptops, We have a Sony Desktop and a Dell Precision for my "desktop" and a Poweredge servers.
Total cost for ALL this hardware???
Less than $1000
Get an Inspiron 1525 or Studio15 for home use, you'll love it.

[Arthu®]

I honestly cant say too much for Acer laptops. Ive seen a few, seemed people were happy with em and ive used them for LCD's a few times and have had good luck.

As for MSI, i actually bought the GX720 for a customer (believe its the same as the 620 just a bit higher end) and i gotta say, i was very very happy with the performance, looks, and feel of the unit (man that line can sure be taken out of context). With Acer laptops i noticed its just plane jane in the past, nothing special. I haven't looked at their newer stuff, but it does seem to be a little more visually appealing and maybe more robust. 

MSI has always been on the fence with me. They did have what seemed like more quality control issues in the past but seemed to have been good since than.

The only difference between the GX620 and GX720 is the 17" display I believe. I have the smaller 15.4" which suited me better because at home I use a 24" HD screen and the 15.4 is just a little easier to handle when using it as a laptop.

I can't speak about the newer Acer laptops, the only experience I had was with their line of about 2/3 years ago. Like I said I'm not really an expert I'm just a guy that a lot of people think knows something about PC's and therefore they dump all their problems on me... I don't really know why I keep solving them free of charge though.

Arthur

[MoparManJim]

Well I had a compaq, it work very very well for what I mostly do. Then one night between around 1AM to around at least 7AM something happen to it and the system wouldn't even start back up for me. Not even to the restore area on the system. I went out and got a Dell Vista system and let me tell you I hate the dang thing. It doesn't hardly do anything, the burner mess's up when I'm online and not doing anything. The audio thing doesn't work right either and I went through adjusting it and still doens't work like it should. When I turn the computer on it takes me alittle while to get online because the stupid michine takes like 3 to 5 minutes to go through the system checking for updates  and then it tells me which it slows the system down. When I do update the system when i get updates it still does the same thing. It's always updating itself and it can't be that far out of date  . Give me a Compaq anyday. So my sugjection to you would be find a Compaq one  .

[jeryst]

I dont think you ever mentioned what price range you are looking for. Last night I went to Walmart, and they have a Toshiba laptop for $400, and an HP for $500. They had a nice HP desktop for under $600. They had a couple Dell systems, but they were more.

[RusTy/SE]

Consider IBM - now Lenovo - as an option. Some five years ago, my 'shop', the Department of Industrial Relations, State of Alabama, rolled out approximately 500 IBM 8189 ThinkCentre pcs to personnel in local employment offices statewide. They've been tanks enduring all sorts of conditions while basically operating 24/7. About the same time I purchased an 8187 desktop model virtually identical to the one in the link below.

http://www.superwarehouse.com/IBM_ThinkCentre_M50_8187/8187E3U/p/290472

It never so much as hicupped until a few months ago when the memory started deteriorating. After replacing the original 256k memory stick with a pair of 512 sticks, all is fine again. Regardless of which make/model you decide on, by all means look into external hard drives as mentioned earlier. One as the main drive, the second as backup. These days external drives come with built in security features as well.

We've just begun the next big pc replacement/rollout, this time using 600 HP Thin Clients - the 'cpu' mounts behind the flat panel display - trending towards HP products (I always wanted to use 'trending' in a sentence, lol) and at least so far seem to be holding up fine.

Russ

[mopar_nut_440_6]

Consider IBM - now Lenovo - as an option.

We've just begun the next big pc replacement/rollout, this time using 600 HP Thin Clients - the 'cpu' mounts behind the flat panel display - trending towards HP products (I always wanted to use 'trending' in a sentence, lol) and at least so far seem to be holding up fine.

Russ

I have a IBM Lenovo as a home PC and it has been great until my wife picked it up by the display and cracked it.  Ouch. Cheapest one I can find is about 200 bucks!

We also have the HP thin clients in 25 of our medical facilities and they work great. They actually have a small water cooling system on the cpu, cool!!

[buie1289]

Just thought I would chime in here. I own an IT firm based in TN. We have been resellers for HP and IBM/Lenovo for years now. We used to be resellers for Dell, but ended up having to drop them due to reliability issues. Here's my 

Little known fact: For most mainstream manufacturers there are 2 very distinct model lines, home/home office and business. For the most part, the home/home office stuff is absolutely trash. They have a life expectancy of roughly 2 years on average. They're marketed to death and mass produced with the absolute cheapest components to be had. There seems to be very little in the way of standards relating to hardware in these model lines. They are marketed squarely at the general public with one thing in mind, price point. For most average consumers, there is little to no brand loyalty anyway, only price loyalty, so manufacturers aren't really striving to make you buy their home line brand over and over.

When you move into the business sector, things change quite a bit. Average life expectancy goes to 5 to 7 years. Manufacturers typically want to be sure that business are brand loyal, so they product they turn out is very good. There's excellent R&D time spent on the hardware components, there's absolute consistency relating to hardware components, the PCs are free from all that "Free" software and bloatware found on the home versions and they last! As an IT integrator, we support somewhere around 35,000 desktop PCs for our various customers. Some of them are HP and some are IBM/Lenovo, but all of them are business line machines. It is a rare occurence that we have a hardware issue with one of them. Typically they are replaced only for the next fastest model and we get the old ones back, still working.

How do you know if it's home or business? Simple. If you purchase it retail, then 9 times out of 10 it is home/home office. For HP, their Pavilion line and Compaq Presario lines are home/home office, so I would stay away from those.

You can buy the business line off most any manufacturer's website by going to their business section, and in most cases the prices are fairly close to the home/home office stuff. I guarantee that you will have MUCH better results.