Old computer is DOA.

[The patriot]

My computer died about a month ago. It was a HP, and about 1 month out of warranty! Totally unexpected.

Can anyone reccomend a brand, or what to "look for". The old one was a 466 Celeron, so I guess just about anything will be faster. This time around, I'd like a CDRW, and DVD.

I went a couple thousand $$$ in house upgrades, and well over $2000. 00 in "toys"(ammo, injectors, pistol, etc etc) last month, so this has to be on the cheap!

I was checking into the refurbs, and theyre looking pretty good right now.

How is the AMD Athlon processor? How does it stack up to the Pentium III ??

One that I've been looking at is a HP Pavilion 8860, 1 Ghz Athlon, 128 MB, 60GB, CDRW, DVD, 56K modem, Win ME. $649. 00.

Second one (out of stock until next week) is a HP Pavilion 8766, Pent III @ 900Mhz, 128 MB, 40GB, CDRW, DVD, 56K modem, Win ME. $599. 00

Monitor's are extra, and shipping is about $30. 00.

Being that I had such bad luck with the last one, I'm getting the 3 year warranty for $80. 00.

I was looking at the refurbs at computersurplusoutlet.com, but being my harddrive is shot, I'd have to purchase windows, so this adds almost $150. 00 to the price. Not economical.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

TIA

Eric

 

[DRR-24V]

Patriot,

Check your E-Mail.

 

[Bob Wagner]

hey patriot

they prices that you posted seem like great deals

 

[illflem]

Eric, I bought a brand new Pavilion 8766 w/ Windows etc on e-bay for $425, might want to give it a look, it was from a dealer.

 

[The patriot]

Bill, can you send me his e mail address?

Are you happy with yours?

TIA

Eric

PS I shouldnt have answered your poll on what brand computer we use. I think that was the last thing I got out of mine!!

 

[dmurdock]

what's wrong

before you go dropping a wad a cash, what is wrong with the one you have to make it "doa"

 

[The patriot]

Ok, about a month and a half ago I was doing a scan disc, and defrag. It kept re starting, so I decided to let it go over night.

Next day it wouldnt respond to any of the usuial things. Mouse, esc, ctrl-alt-delete... . nada. Like it was in a sleep mode permidently. So I did the only thing I could. I shut the power, and re started it. All was OK at this point.

Fast forward a few weeks, I'm here (just about the only site I go to regularly) writing about my 370's from Piers I just got done installing and BAM. Blank screen again. Again, it dont respond to anything, again, I unplug it. OK, were back running.

From here it rapidly declines. Every time I boot it up, the time before it "blacks out" gets RAPIDLY SHORTER!!! Until it dont go to windows (OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MATTER) AT ALL. Black screen, and monitor light goes from green to yellow.

The lights are still blinking (differently than usuial though) but it's dead.

Right now I'm at my Mother in Laws house after a 16 hr day. Can this get worse??



Don Rogers is giving me help through e mail, so we might get this thing running.

It was an older model, and probibally considered slow, but it was fine for my purposes. Besides I really didnt want to lose all my stuff on the hard drive.

Any help/suggestions are greatly appreciated. It may take me some time to get them though... .

Eric

 

[Gray Ghost]

Been looking for a new machine myself. Giving the old one to Grandkid. I have been working on them for 30 yrs. Go to Dell.com or Compaq.com. You can build a good one for about $1500. I want a Dell, but they aren't offering XP loaded just yet. You get an upgrade cert. Comes with ME on it. If I upgrade from ME, it won't load as fast and it's a dog. Me sucks anyway. Compaq offers XP now. I have worked for them and had several of their machine. Buy the 3 yr warranty. All Name brands are good, but they all fail. Try to get XP. It's whats comming. It is replacing Win2000 and ME. Min 40gig HD. Every thing else is OK the way it comes configured, unless you are into games. Then get the best video they offer along with sound.

Sorry to be so long winded. Just my 5 cents( inflation you know)

 

[JConley]

If you can work on your Ram, you can build a computer from scratch. Trust me, everything is keyed inside so you cant plug something in the wrong way. To get things on the cheap, buy a standart ATX computer case for around $50. 00. Get a new ATX Motherboard that will accept the Celeron processor you already have, and the reuse the same memory, processor, and drives. If the hard drive is going bad, you can get one of these for around $79. 00 If your video card was on the old motherboard, (most HP and dell units are like this), you can get a good 4X AGP card for about $50. 00 Put them together, and reload your software from scratch. This will be cheap, and it would last you for a few more years. The bad thing about the Dell and the HP computers are the way they are built. It is really hard to upgrade these computers since everything is built in on the Motherboard. The reason the companies do this is because they dont have to deal with many support issues since you are buying a package deal. Bad thing is that you have to throw the thing away when any part goes bad.



I can't tell you if any computer is any better than the others since they share 90% of the same parts. Look at what is inside the computer and not who built the thing. Chrysler doesnt build the parts that go inside the Ram, and neither do the computer companies. They all get the cheapest componets they can find, and slap them together.



Oh Yea... to answer one of your questions, the AMD processors are really nice and you wont have any problems with one. More bang for the buck in my view.



E-mail me if you have any questions.

 

[CCahill]

Check the fan... Somtimes the fan goes out and the HD starts heatin' up and soon ... ... BLINK!!! it shuts down, and won't respond... this is a common malady, and way easy to fix... ... ... .



Colin

 

[The patriot]

Colin, the fan on the CPU was working fine. Also the one in the power supply. I was thinking possibly the CPU itself??? Do they even go bad? I dunno.

I was looking at the deals at Staples, and the one with the 1. 3 Ghz Athlon looks pretty decent to me. It's pretty well hooked up with a 17" monitor, the new "fireport" thingy , Windows XP(and all the regular HP software),and is $1100. 00. They also have a 6 month defered payment thing that I'll opt for. I spoke with the salesman, and tried to chew a few bucks more off it, and he told me they'd take $110. 00 off the 5 year service agreement. I think that makes it about $ 170. 00 for on site service!!! This will cover the monitor too. Last year a cutting edge system like this would have been about $1600. 00 minimum. They might go down even more, but I cant wait for that.

I'm probibally going to get this tomorrow. It comes directly from HP, so it'll be 1-2 weeks.

After I get this all set up, I'll have the time to futz with this old one. I pulled everything out again this morning (twice) to check connections etc. and nothing changed.

I tried to use the boot disc, and nothing. I'm thinking the hard drive in shot too.



Eric

 

[dan_gilson]

I would give EMachines a try. They are on the web. I picked up a 466MHz about a year ago for my little girl and it was just $400. It had a DVD. You could add a CDROM-RW for maybe $100-$150 more. The ones in the paper now are PIII's around 800MHz for $400-$700. They are pretty had to beat in price.



The catch is that they are not very expandable. Adding the CD-RW is a no brainer but it only comes with 2 PCI slots. This was fine for what my daughter needed. It was also great for my linux web server/firewall.

 

[The patriot]

UPDATE:

I bought the new computer. I'm real happy with it. It's VERY FAST!!

It has a CD-RW, DVD, 1 serial (on front, not sure about out back) 2 USB's on the front, 2 out back, 2 IEEE 1394 "fireports", 40 gig Hd, 512 Mb Ram. Oh yea, it's a 1. 33 Ghz AMD Athlon processor, and the 17" monitor. I also got the free year of MSN, but it dont work with the new Windows XP.

I spoke to about 1/2 dozen different people, and all said the Athlon will perform a severe whoopin on the Pentium 4.

Never owning a P-4 I dunno, but it is much faster then the old 466 celeron.

There is a computer show here in a few weeks, I'm going to see if I can get this fixed, and give it to my parents for e-mail.



I'd like to thank Don Rogers for his time and effort to repair the old one.



Eric