Our 12 year old Dell desktop is inadequate at this point.
Bonnie uses it for Internet and email. I don't use it except that is has an old parallel printer attached. The printer will go away with it.
I need to get her a new computer. She wants a desktop. I haven't been able to talk her into a W8 tablet. W7 will be better for her, maybe, because it is more similar to XP.
I have no idea what to get. Cheap would be nice.
> Our 12 year old Dell desktop is inadequate at this point.
If I were in the market now I'd buy another Dell. I'm on my third Dell workstation, and my son's home desktop machine is also a Dell. It's not that their hardware is inherently superior, it's just what I'm used to, and the purchase and repair experiences have always been hassle-free.
All that said, the one thing I'd do with a new one -- and this is based on recent experience -- is wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall the OS right out of the box. My son's Dell was finicky from Day 1, and after a couple of years it got so bad that Windows wouldn't load. I put in a new disk, loaded the OS, and it's been running like it never ran before, fast and problem free, ever since.
Whatever you buy, make sure you get the OS install media so you can reinstall it as desired/required.
Yes I've reinstalled XP three or four times over the years and it has always improved it.
It's to the point now where the 30gb HD is nearly full and I can't remove anything else. I can't upgrade the memory enough to make a difference-it's at 756mb and the most I can do is 1gb. I upgraded the ram in my hp XP laptop from 1 to 2gb and that made a huge performance difference.
So I think I've gotten my money's worth out of it and I'll replace it. The cat is going to lose her perch on top of he warm monitor :-(.
David,
I picked up one of these a couple months ago and am real happy with it so far.
I added another 4 GB of ram from crucial and stuck in my old video card and have a nice little workstation that does everything I need for a little over $400.00.
I have had so-so luck with HP computers in the past, but this one i really like. Very quiet and no issues to date.
FWIW,
Matt
> Bonnie uses it for Internet and email. ... I haven't been able to talk her into a W8 tablet...
Not a tablet, but a laptop that will free up a lot of room and blow your 12 year old boat anchor out of the water. Cheaper than an ipad.
In a month or two MS will release Win 8.1. It's going to be free to Win 8.0 users and will address the user interface issues that people have objected to.
I've got one similar to this, and I really like it.