My Mom Needs Help

I know Chris hates Dells but I got a 599 Dell recently for my mother and its no frills, but a solid computer no the less. Say what you want about their tech support or other issues, but for bang for the buck, its hard to go wrong.
Other possiblities are, Gateway (ack), Micron (don't forget about #3 direct ship), Compaq, IBM and Sony who all now sell PC's at or under $1000 and offer some good service plans.
Flame as you must, but for my money, I'd build one, but for other's money, I'd go Dell before anyone else.

Uh, is that $55? Or $500? And … just a side note, I don't think ANY system will be good for the “next 10 years”. I mean, look at the computers we were using 10 years ago! I don't know about you, but I couldn't handle surfing on a 486; could you?
That said, we have had excellent luck with Dells at our office. We are in Houston, Compaq is 2 miles away … and we use Dells. Servers, CPUs, Laptops. We are using “business” equipment instead of home though, and I have heard that they tend to make those better, so maybe that's why?

C'mon Chris, would it really take you that long to peice together something for your mother and ship it t her? I've worked for “the cow” and have dealt with Dell on several issues and I can assure that the level of “customer service” will not be improving anytime soon. At least until I get my company going. ^_^

And contrary to what the spelling in my first post would indicate I did finish high school. My fingers just get a mind of their own sometimes. A hammer usually works for those situations.

One more thing before I decide to shut up. Chris, if you decide to look at my site and you happen to see a picture of your *** in my blog then I'm sorry. Please don't sue me or beat me up and take my lunch money or something.

I currently use a year old Micron PC, and it never gave me any problems, yet. Fast shipping, decent support. Only negative mark is they shipped with a recovery disc.
One thing, though. Don't buy the mini-tower from Micron. My friend got it, and it sucks harder than a two-dollar hooker on dollar night.

Ironically after all of my Dell rants in my blog last week, and a friend saying she didn't understand because she had a new one that worked “just great”, well guess who called us last night for the Dell tech support number because her CD-ROM flatlined! We tried to make it through the call without laughing…

for $55 she can buy a duron through price watch :)

Building PC's for relatives or friends is just plain dangerous.
Make sure :-
a) You have plenty of time to give to “Tech Support”.
b) Raise your tolerance if it is low to seemingly “daft questions”.
c) Always remember “replace user and press any key” if all else fails

The new iMac fits the bill perfectly. Surfing? IE 5.1 rocks. Email? Entourage for OS X is just gorgeous. Pictures and movies? Please. iMovie and iPhoto simply have no match in the Wintel world. Excel, Word, Quicken, all there, all for OS X.
Games? Buy an XBox.

I build my own PC's, at work I buy Microns, lately I have been pointing people to Dell for price. I have a few friends who work there. Micron is pretty good, fast shipping when parts break (heck they even gave me about 4 extra months on the warranty without realizing of course) I would recommend pci sound card, cause the one on board SUCKS.

My Sony VAIO is great and is specially made for DV stuff in case your mom ever wants to make you a movie or something like that. Also, I was able to get mine with an Epson Stylus 777 which is really good for its price. THe only problem I have with it is that it's really noisy.

ECS K7SEM Athlon 1600XP combo w/ case & all fans, drivers, cables, etc…$251 from http://www.acompinc.com
512MB PC133 Ram…$64 from http://www.icentral.com
WD 80GB Hard-drive…$154 from http://www.jazztechnology.com
24X CD Burner…$75 from http://www.jazztechnology.com
16X DVD-Rom…$42 from http://www.jazztechnology.com
ATI Radeon 7200 64M SDR…$62 from jazztech
Floppy Drive (if you must…)…$8 from jazz tech
Viewsonic 17″ Flatscreen…$178 from jazztech
MS Natural Keyboard…$22 from jazztech
Logitech PS/2 Mouse…$15 from jazztech
Total Price: $771
Stick it all together and give it to her. If she needs tech support tell her to read Lockergnome…lol

Forgot to mention… that mainboard has an onboard NIC. If she uses dial-up, you'll have to add a modem…

I visit your blog using Opera (Linux) and the KDE Konqueror (Linux). I have absolutely no problems.
I've liked IE from v3. But every web programmer loves Netscape. It has both an interactive Javascript window and a Java Console. (Opera and IE — oh, where are they?).
Netscape software can debug stuff you would not solve until Mac OS MXVII.

I made my Mom get a Dell P-3 550 for ~$900 CDN and it works just fine. I wouldn't go with anything except Dell as I don't want to spend my life fixing other folk's computers for free.
And as for the Macolyte who thinks that nothing compares to iPhoto and iTunes, all I can say is step out of the RDF field. XP's camera and picture wizard is just fine and there are loads of free MP3 programs out there in x86 land that spank iTunes.

Look at http://www.computersurplusoutlet.com for great deals. You can put together a great computer through their site for less than $1000 easily.

All I can say is that I am feeling Dell. I am typing on a Vaio that has broken once, twice, three times, … a lot. Sony tech support is great though. When they say “someone will be with you in 2 minutes” they mean it. On the other hand, I shouldn't be able to tell you this because my computer shouldn't have broken.
Big monitors are bad because they hurt the eyes if you sit close enough to your monitor to use the keyboard. Unless you get a wireless keyboard and sit across the room……….