Computer for college

[daveshoe]

Daughter is going to college and works in an office. She asked the computer guy what he would recommend. He said ''do not get a Celeron processor''

Dell has a 300 dollar computer with a Celeron. I am thinking get one with a Pentium IV with 256 K and it should be good for four years. The only other advice we got was to not get a lot of software with the computer because college bookstores have really good prices for enrolled students. we are also looking at flat screen monitors

Any advice and the reasoning behind it would be greatly appreciated

 

[DHayden]

What will she be doing with it? The Celeron is an ok processor for doing word stuff. The real benefit of the Pentium is seen when doing high end stuff like intensive gaming and graphics. If your looking to save the money theirs nothing wrong with the Celeron, if you don't care about the money get the Pentium.

 

[GFritsch]

If she is interested in using it creatively for more than data processing get her an Apple, the computer of choice for science and arts. If it just for writing papers and e-mail just a cheap pc would be fine.

 

[TboneMan]

As memtion the Celeron is fine for most applications.



However, I would strongly suggest that you add a bit more memory to the system. While 256M is twice what MS "recommends" for the operating system, in practical situations, 512M is likely to make more sense.



Here's why:



Windows alone will gladly take 128M of RAM if it is there to take. Now add a virus monitoring software, a firewall (assuming they college will have fulltime ethernet connections in the dorms), a word processor, email client, an internet browser, and a chat session or two and the system will like grind to a halt.



Student rarely uni-task, they are usually working on a paper, using the internet for resources, checking their email, and carrying on a chat or two all at the same time. Plus, MS will likely never make the OS footprint smaller. SInce you want to make this system last, your are better of getting a bit more memory and not worry too much about the processor.

 

[Txredneck]

Me being a college student I would suggest a p4 and at least 512mb a gig of memory would be plenty and schools do have a really good software packages but right now my school is sold out so there are pros and cons to buying and not buying. Also a pentium will hold for a while right now i have a celeron in my laptop and when i load our online class its very intensive on my machine.

 

[jandtjil]

just went trough this myself. I subscribe to the theory of buying the most you can afford when buying a PC. I think she ended up with 512k, a gig of memory, and a celeron processor. Ditto the virus/firewall software and a good surge protector.

JJ

 

[daveshoe]

Thanks, guys

I found a Pentium 4 with 512MB and 3. 2 processor clock speed,and a 200MB hard drive. I traded up to a better flat panel monitor. With rebates it was a shade over 700 bucks. The mistake I made was ordering this thing over the phone for pickup at the store. When I traded up ,the phone jockey that was located in India did not have the capability to retain the rebates after substituting a better monitor. While my wife and daughter were shopping for college essentials, I stayed busy trying to verify that the promised rebates would be generated at the time of the sale. The situation was corrected at the store after I suggested cancelling the entire order and re- doing it to obtain the rebates. This caused Murphy to raise his ugly head because of out of profile use of the credit card. It took 15 minutes to verify the card.

The situation was resolved not by the manager[a guy] but by a nice young woman who understood that I would not do the deal unless the rebates came with it. She put up with my growing frustration and exibited speed and competence at the keyboard ,very rapidly generating 5 rebate forms. This was no small matter in that rebates total 320 dollars.

I hope this is a good choice because the way kids use computers today is to have E-mail open, Music playing, 4 other internet sites open at once ,and doing research and homework going all at once.

Only suggestion I have is that good deals can be found on the internet, but do not use the 800 number to buy over the phone. Trying to save time by having everything ready to pick up at the store just did not work for me. Buying a package with out substitutions or upgrades would probably work fine.

Store in question was Circuit City. I would buy there again