Build your own. Much more rewarding, fun, and not nearly as hard as it seems. Not to mention cheaper. My Athlon rig will toast any of those, and it's worth about a grand less now [img]tongue.gif[/img] It's also stable as a rock.

[ 09-19-2002, 02:55 AM: Message edited by: Lharae ]

Sir G:

Experience with Gateway computers (at work) have been bad. Motherboard has died on several, which leads one to conclude that they were using cheap components. Supposedly Gateway has mended their ways, but I cannot verify that for you. This was about two years ago.

I am using a Dell at work now, and it seems pretty decent. (Pentium 4, 1.7GHz, 512M RAM, 20 G hard drive - Model Precision 340)

At home I have a Compaq Presario 7598 and have had NO problems what so ever. It's over 2 years old though. (Pentium 3, 600MHz, 128M RAM).

Have you looked at a Compaq or HP also?

Keep in mind, that everyone's opinion on computers is similar to their opinions of cars; love/hate and very slanted. Get what will work for you and fits your budget. What bells and whistles do you really need on the machine? Sometimes investing in a larger diagonal monitor is better than the extra cash spent on the latest processor speed. :D

[ 09-19-2002, 08:26 AM: Message edited by: Keraptisdm ]

DO NOT get ANY of the Geforce4 cards that have the "MX" listing. The MX version is a cheaper less powerful card. If you are needing this for Gaming, go with a FULL nVidia NV30 that is coming out in Dec! [img]smile.gif[/img]

As someone else said, go with Falcon or www.alienware.com --that is where I got my 2.4Ghz rig, and let me tell you; it SCREAMS!

[ 09-19-2002, 08:27 AM: Message edited by: Ziroc ]

General suggestions:

As Ziroc indicated... GF4-MX video is a joke, get a real GF4 or get a firesale GF3 ti500, which is faster than any of the 4MX cards last time I checked. If you're buying for gaming you might want to get the cheapest card you can get, then when DoomIII comes out buy whatever screamer is on the market then [img]smile.gif[/img] .

512Meg minimum

60 meg is fine for starters... additional hard drives are cheap.

Comparing first tier vendors to third tier is cheating Deathkiller [img]smile.gif[/img] , if you want price absolutely look at smaller shops (or better yet... build your own), but people looking at first tier are usually willing to pay a bit more for the assurance that they'll get service and support (which is hit or miss in the third tier) as well as a "known quantity"... established track record of quality (good or bad).

I've bought a LOT of computers, Dells, Gateways, Compaqs, etc... Dell provides the best purchasing/owner experience of the bunch, and has hardware that's at least equal to other tier one vendors. I'm typing this on my brandy new Dual Xeon Dell workstation that I just received... (2 gig ECC, 3x36gig 15krpm u160 Raid5, Dual Head Nvidia Quadro4 900XGL, 2 21" Trinitrons, Gigabit Ethernet) when I called to order I got directly to their Corporate Sales without 30 minutes of Gyrations (which I went through for the last Gateway I bought), Got the quote the same day, and the system was on my desk in two weeks (even though it was a custom configuration) Not just that but they knocked almost $3000 off the web site price. Just like every other Dell I've ever bought, unpacked it, plugged it in, turned it on and it ran. Gateway is also fairly reliable, but I did get a DOA hdd from them once.

[ 09-19-2002, 08:54 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

Thanks for the help! The trouble is, Deathkiller, my price limit is $2000 Canadian...I've customized these computors so they are in that price range....2 I added stuff, 1 I took some stuff away to lower the price (the middle one.)

I have looked at Compaq, but my dad says that they are a cheaper computor, and aren't that high quality....my uncle that works with computors agrees. They said to go with Dell or Gateway, because they are cheaper and still quite good. Any other help would be appreciated. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Take the second one, and make the following changes

Double the ram.

Get XPpro instead of XPhome.

Geforece 3 Ti instead of Geforce 4 MX.

Strip the HDD down to pay for it if you have to, or sacrifice some monitor inches if you really must. But you need that RAM and the graphics card. XPpro is not truly essential I guess, but it is a very nice operating system.

If I were you id get a AMD XP series processor - they perform equivalently to P4s (my figures are old so Im not going to give numbers) but cost far less.

I would but it just won't work in my price range. The lowest I got it went up $300 from about $2 300 to about $2600 including monitor strippage. And the only thing other than Geforce 4 MX was Geforce 4 Ti which jumped up the price approx. $150, and 512MB ram jumped it up as well.

Well the Geforce 4mx is not a bad card. It´s just that it isn´t nearly as good as the ti4600 as Ziroc said... I think you´ll survive with the mx though ;) You can always upgrade it later. Christmas isn´t that far away is it now? :D

I guess not, but then again, my birthday is only about a month away from christmas [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I've bought a Dimension 8200 from Dell in the last 6 months, and I would advise upgrading to 512 RDRAM, instead of 256, and upgrading to the Geforce 4ti series. TI not MX!!!!!!!!!

With my nearly brand new computer, these are the two upgrades I would make if I had to do it over again, and actually, am now in the process of upgrading.

The upgrade in RDRAM is pretty straight forward. As far as the video card goes, I wouldn't spend the bucks for the 4600. Instead, I would choose between the 4200 and 4400. I may be wrong, but I speak from experience.

Both at work and at home my experience has been that Dell is the better product!

The price may go up a bit with these two upgrades (but it shouldn't be more than $250), but I can promise you, it's a shame to open the box on a brand new, kick ass system only to be slightly/mildly/at all disappointed with it.

[ 09-19-2002, 07:37 PM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]