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Computer Recomendations
All right all you computer geeks, it is time to pony up and make a recomendation.
I have an old Dell PIII that takes about 20 minutes to boot up. Unfortunately, it has now started booting up to my desktop but will not run any programs. About one in every ten boot ups I can actually use the computer. I recently bought the kids an inexpensive eMachine to run games and let them surf the internet. Now it is time to replace my old Dell.
Here are my system requirements that I want:
P4
512MB Ram
DVD +/- R/RW
CD-R/RW
Windows XP
I use my machine for internet, turbo tax, excel spread sheets, etc. I will start using it to burn DVD's from our digital video camera. It seems most machines have the same specs in the $1,000 price range. The big question is build quality and customer service. I will not buy another Dell because of the horrible customer service provided by their reps in India. eMachines build quality is not high enough for the data I will be storing on this machine.
What other options are there? Sony, HP, any others?
Any recommendations on brands would be great. I am going to use my old 19" behomath monitor and old speakers, sub-woofers. I do have a new iPod I just got for my birthday so I will be downloading music files to use on the iPod.
The good news is I was pretty good about backing up all my digital pictures to CD so even if I can't get another boot out of my Dell, I won't lose anything other than my old data files.
One last question. I have the two machines on a wireless network to access the cable modem. I am assuming that if I get a new machine the best way to transfer some of the old data files from the Dell to the new machine is over the wireless network? The network is an 802.11b so I know it will take some time, but it seems to be my best option. I guess my other option is to use my iPod and copy files onto that and then transfer them over to the new machine. Any suggestions on this?
Sorry for the length, but I really appreciate any help.
JT
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