Help me choose a new PC

[Keyser Soze]

you can run windows on 63meg?

[Goatweed]

you can barely walk it, let alone run it.

[Mad]

Amazing Gonzo was able to post over twenty thousand times with that thing.

[HedCold]

you can run windows on 63meg?

its windows98, so barely...

[HedCold]

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Windows 98 SE System Requirements
Submitted by storm on Tue, 06/15/2004 - 22:47. 98 SE
Processor: 486DX/66 MHz or higher.
Memory: 24 MB of memory; more memory improves performance.

gonzos comp should be flying!

[Goatweed]

him smoking around it is what's slowing it down!!!

[GonzoStyle]

which, the 63mb of ram or that I still use windows 98?

[Jack]

You actually have 64MB of ram. Your video card is part of your motherboard and uses 1MB of the 64 to display video on your monitor.

The emachine you are getting will be similar. It will come with 512MB of ram, but you probably will only see 384MB because 128MB is used by the onboard video card.

[Goatweed]

ew - onboard video sucks

[GonzoStyle]

I spoke to the guy who my boss reccomended to build my PC.

When I told him I had 64mb of Ram, he laughed at me for a solid 30 seconds.

But anyway, he's basically charging me pretty much the same as far as money wise. But with a few upgrades and some extras. Plus the fact that I can call him anytime if I have issues since he lives 2 mins from me.

The only thing is he said he didnt reccomend an AMD, he said I should go with an Intel processor. He said AMD is good if I wanted a gaming system, which I don't cause I don't play games ever on the comp. I just have heard conflicting shit on AMD and on Intel, some say AMD is the best and others say it sucks unless you play games.

So is he correct?

Also he said to go with Windows XP Professional Edition.

But anyway all in all he said it'd be about 800 bucks, thats with a 260GB HD, 2GB of RAM and all the other good shit like the dvd, norton corporate edition so I dont have to worry about paying for upgrades, plus all the trimmings and tech support.

sound like a decent deal? I figure it is since i'd end up paying close to that if you factor in tax, then factor in if I buy a 2 year tech support/warantee plan thats an extra 150-200 bucks so i'd be spending closer to a grand on the other machine. Plus he is so fuckin weird and frightening, that he has to build a good PC cause he obviously never leaves the house.

I mean he said he could build me a decent office comp like the ones we have for like 300, with 512 memory, smaller HD.

But i'd rather just lay out the extra cash now and have a decent PC.

[Goatweed]

that sounds really good, and he's right about AMD - the thing with AMD is, as I've read, they're better for gaming because theyre substantially cheaper than Intel - the problem is theyre also more apt to have issues. Not many, but the basic idea is to pay a little more for Intel & not have to worry about stability issues. I've been using Intel for years and have never had a problem.

XP Pro is better for netoworking than XP Home but via Windows updates you're supposed to get shit that makes both OS's the "same" - yet some places still charge you more for Pro over Home so I'm not sure if thats them gouging or if in fact there are still subtle differences between the two. I've used Pro since day one, and also no problems with it since.

That sounds like a really good deal, good luck with it.

[GonzoStyle]

thats basically what he said to me. He said with pro he'd also be able to access my comp from his if I ever needed help to fix something. Though that kinda freaked me out, I know he does it with our work comps but does that mean he can access my comp anytime he wants? But he also said they were pretty similar as far as the home and professional edition, only diffrence is that they fixed up some bugs from the home edition and just called it a professional edition.

He said the same thing about intel, that they are always upgrading and fixing any bugs, while amd rarely updates anything. Plus he said intel was more expensive but I thought AMD was more expensive, so I guess he isn't bullshitting me as much as I thought.

[Goatweed]

he'll only be able to connect if you let him, and even then he'd have to use an app or web interface - unless he's a cool hacker type, but I doubt that - no need to worry.

Also, not sure if you have one, but if not you'd be wise to drop $40 on a router & use that as a firewall.

[GonzoStyle]

yeah I have no clue what a firewall was but if you'd have met the guy you'd understand why I didn't go into more questions with him. Talking to him is like competing in the special olympics, get it!!!

But I never took care of this computer, in 7 years I never once had a firewall or even nortons or some shit like that. I never defragged my drive, I never did shit.

So I wanted to ask him what I should do to like keep up maintenence. I asked him as far as a virus protection program and he said Nortons Corporate was the best way to go.

I didn't ask about firewalls, etc.

[HollywoodJewMoses]

ive never had a firewall, its for pussies

[Goatweed]

fine - have fun surfing porn sites w/o a firewall, then when your PC starts running slow, you'll know why.

Firewall = protection from spyware/adware/hackers (to a degree, but not much anymore). I know people think I'm paranoid, which I'll even say I am to a degree but of youre on a highspeed connection you're really needing a firewall to lock your shit down. You can use a software option, but a simple NAT router should work fine (I use both, but I'm paranoid, remember?)

[Keyser Soze]

no firewall, no antivirus. never had a problem.

people who get spyware and viruses just have poor common sense.

[HedCold]

he would be able to connect over remote desktop. if someone connects over remote desktop, you would get locked out, so you would know if he was accessing it.
xp pro is different from home in that you can have an IIS server for doing stuff you would never need to do. the only benefit would be the remote desktop. i use it to connect to my desktop when i'm using my laptop in bed.
amd and intels are different because of the chip architecture. i think there are some things intel is better at, like integer arithmetic, but what you would use it for the difference would hardly be seen.

[GonzoStyle]

sounds good, I don't go to porn sites or honestly many sites besides torrents, and this site. So I think the norton will be enough for now, maybe later on i'll look into the router stuff.