And computer geeks, need help from you too!

The Unknown Gomer · #1 01-06-2008

My mom is in the market for a new PC since the old hand-me-down that she got from me is crashing a lot (oh, dread "blue screen of death", how I don't miss you at all!) and starting to make some really weird noises. Plus since she's still running Win 98SE, even some of the new low requirement games that she likes to play are starting to not work, since they require at least XP to run.

She essentially just uses it for those low end, low system requirement games, email, and surfing, and doesn't use it all that often, so she doesn't need a super heavy duty powerhouse PC.

She's contemplating an eMachine, since they're a little less expensive than the major brands, which I was initially thinking that she should avoid, thinking they were just TOO cheap. But someone I worked with had one and liked it just fine, never had a problem with it, so I figured since she doesn't use it that much, it might be a decent PC for her. Anyone have any experience with eMachines, good or bad, that they'd like to share?

Also, these processors have me befuddled. When I bought my Vaio many years ago, it was a pretty straight forward thing, it told me that it was a 2.8gHz processor. Period. I understood that.

Now, for Mom's new PC, it's like trying to compare apples and oranges.

One PC says it's got an "AMD Athlon 64 Processor 4000+".

The other one says it has an "Intel Celeron Processor 420".

That's all geek - er, Greek - to me! Which one of those is better/faster? I have no clue.

Any assistance from the smart computer people out there would be greatly appreciated, since while I know PCs pretty well, all these different processor types confuse me greatly.

Thanks!

~ Karen ~

SmileyFreak1981 · #2 01-06-2008

I'm not a hardware expert by any means, but I think the AMD Athlon 64 is the faster processor. (I have an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ in my PC.) A quality graphics card and a nice amount of RAM is also a good investment.

And if you have the option, just say no to Windows Vista and have it loaded with XP.

hochspeyer · #3 01-06-2008

Try www.pricewatch.com.

I'm in the market for a (relatively) new pc, and they have business-quality name-brand pc's (reconditioned) for ~$300, delivered.

danbos · #4 01-06-2008

Personally, I would stay away from Celeron processors. I would stick with either a Pentium or AMD. I really don't know anything about AMD processors though, but I've heard they're just as good as Intel now.

I've never had any experience with eMachines, but I've heard that they're as cheap as the price indicates...but that's just hearsay.

ibanez_player · #5 01-06-2008

I have had a good deal of bad experience with Emachines. Not horrible, but you will get what you pay for. Their build quality is not very good.
I do also believe the AMD is faster, but not sure.
Definitely stick with XP and ditch Vista.

The Unknown Gomer · #6 01-08-2008

So eMachines not great, but AMD good. Good to know.

I just checked the ads, and well, what do I do if the eMachine is the one with the AMD processor?

The two choices we've narrowed it down to - assuming we actually get one while they're on sale this week - was the eMachine with the AMD, or a Compaq Presario with the Celeron. The Compaq is only $50 more than the the eMachine, but actually has a slightly smaller hard drive, so I know you're just essentially paying more for the brand name. But it's a name I can vouch for, my laptop that I've been using for the last several years is a Compaq and it's worked great for me.

Basically we're looking for the least expensive desktop tower that we can get, since she doesn't really need a whole lot of space or much processing power, with a history of being a decent brand.

And Vista would probably be okay for her, since I've heard that the biggest problem with it is that it doesn't like old printers, scanners, etc. and she doesn't have any of those, it's just her and her computer. She's very low computer maintenance. The only issue might be her wireless networking card. But I've seen that Vista seems to like Netgear, and seems to play nice with another PC on the network that still runs XP (we've got that kind of set up at work) so we may be okay there too.

middletree · #7 01-08-2008

I'd take the AMD over the Celeron, although if she isn't doing something graphics-intensive, she may not notice.
And the biggest issue with Vista is the slowness of it. I hate it. You better have 2 Gb of RAM, or she will hate it, too.

Jason · #8 01-08-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by middletree

And the biggest issue with Vista is the slowness of it. I hate it. You better have 2 Gb of RAM, or she will hate it, too.

Not that this helps Karen, but how does Vista run on 4 GB?

middletree · #9 01-08-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason

Not that this helps Karen, but how does Vista run on 4 GB?

Huh? If 2GB is fine, wouldn't 4GB be even better?

The Unknown Gomer · #10 01-08-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by middletree

I'd take the AMD over the Celeron, although if she isn't doing something graphics-intensive, she may not notice.
And the biggest issue with Vista is the slowness of it. I hate it. You better have 2 Gb of RAM, or she will hate it, too.

I figured that if she turned off all of Vista's pretty system hogging graphic effects, that would speed things up substantially; if she did that, would 1gb still not be enough to keep things running quickly enough? Keeping in mind that she's currently running Windows 98SE on a 700mhz machine with probably 512MB ram. Coming from this computer, I'd think that even Vista with all the effects turned ON would seem lightning fast to her.

Even if it had the Celeron processor.

But I figured we'd try it with the available ram, and if it was too pokey, just add on more memory.

It almost sounds like the Compaq might be the way to go. Better brand, and since the most graphics intensive thing she does is play Scrabble on it, the Celeron might be okay for her.

middletree · #11 01-08-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Unknown Gomer

Coming from this computer, I'd think that even Vista with all the effects turned ON would seem lightning fast to her.

Even if it had the Celeron processor.

You'd think that, but Vista takes up much, much more RAM than Windows 98, or even Windows XP. I have had it running here at work, where we have access to all OS's, on a 1GB machine, and it was sluggish.