Printable View
Sorry dude, but HP/Compaq scares me...go build your own box...it's cheaper and you'll end up with more bang for your buck. Or at least consider a Dell...I've seen far fewer issues with Dell computers than HP/Compaq...HP/C is only a rung above emachines on the pc ladder (in my experience).
There is no good customer support. I went to fix a problem on my friends Dell laptop, and when I got there, the Dell custy support was on the phone with him for about an hour, trying to diagnose a problem(His window scrolling was choppy, in IE and such). I take it from my friend and start talking to the guy, to see what theyve done so far. The first thing I check was device properties- and see that the video driver was disabled(yellow !). So I ask the guy, "Have you checked the device manager yet?" he says "Uhhhhhhhh" I hung up and enable it. Problem solved.
Theres tons of free tech support online- if you can still get on the internet, or go to another computer, theres tons of forums everywhere you get get answers.
One thing you may want to consider is heat, the amds run quite a bit hotter than the pentiums. So if you are doing heavy duty work (rendering,compiling,gaming) and in a fairly hot climate you will need good cooling in the summer with the amds (more cooling= more noise or hassle). I recently got a athlon 2800 barton and it runs much hotter than my pentium. The benchmarks and such i looked at prior to going with the amd 2800 were very close to the p4 2.8 some most were just under (just over the p4 2.66) and a few surpassed the p4 2.8.
yeah i agree with VictorKaum, amd is better, and cheaper. dont buy hp stuff or bargain basement puters, they are nothing but crap. but something not from a company like that (hp, compaq, dell, sony, gateway) i have had nothing but problems with compaq's and their software, alot of those puters sell u software that u will never use. or extra software that loads at bootime. jus not worth any of the hassle :)
I must agree with allen, at very least *consider* a Dell. HP's still scare me. I had one about 5 years back, and ever since I first pulled it out of the box I had nothing but trouble with it. From Win95 (at the time) crashing 2 minutes after fully booting up, to the CD-ROM drive dying after being used no more than 15 times, to mysteriously loosing the himem.sys file (and rendering the comp. temporarily useless), I went mail order and never looked back. Granted all this was 5 years ago and they could have gotten better since then, but I still haven't touched them since.
Another thing to consider when purchasing a computer is service and tech support. Any store-bought box is going to have to be shipped out if anything goes wrong with it in order to *not* void the warranty. This can probably take a while...much longer than I'd be willing to wait. I had a Quantex box (mail order), which worked fine until I started ****ing with it, that, when the modem crapped out, Airborne Expressed me a new one the next day. Unfortunatley they're now out of business, but I'm sure Dell does the same. I haven't had any hardware problems with my Dell yet. Also, check to see if you'll be able to understand your tech support folks if you ever need to call them. Last I checked, Compaq's is done out of India. My roommate once called them for help and didn't get anywhere because he couldn't understand them. Now, I've got nothing against the Indians, more of the one's I've met are very bright, just the language barrier can be tough sometimes, especially in a stressful situation like trying to fix a busted PC.
Just some extra thoughts...and if you have the know-how, don't rule out building one yourself either.
alpha
well u definitly need a monitor...so maybe computer B??? at least u can see what ur doin...unless u have an old monitor laying around. Is it a flat screen or flat panel? i know it sais flat screen but maybe it could also be a flat panel? those r sweet...if its a flat panel definitly go with B.