Re: Advice pls: buying a new PC

[mike shupp ms44278@xxxxxxxx]

On Sat, 18 Sep 1999, Eric Van Tassel wrote:

> With apologies for exploiting the wisdom of this group for my own ends ...
>
> I'm shopping for a new PC, probably a (slowish) Pentium III. I need
> reliability, but the price has to be as low as I can safely get (because
> PCs here in Europe/U.K. are priced way over their U.S. equivalents).

If cheapness is an issue, why insist on a P-III as opposed to a P-II?
There's very little software which will see much difference, and the
Pentium series is going to be made obsolete within a year or so by
the 64-bit Merced processors. No one is ever going to see much software
specially crafted for P-IIIs.

Also, while prices continue to drop, you will always pay a premium for
a well known name. The reality is that a "white-box" system built of
standard components and slapped into a package bearing no label at all
will perform as satisfactorily as a system from Gateway or Compaq or
even IBM-- at 2/3 the cost. Even better, dealing with some "manufacturer"
who puts these things together in his garage in his spare time, you may
be able to request options the standard on-the-shelf systems made by
the majors lack-- large disk drives, for example, a hardware modem that
will operate with Linux and DOS as well as just Windows, a heavier duty
power supply, more capable sound and video cards.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ms44278@xxxxxxxx  
  Mike Shupp
  California State University, Northridge
  Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology
  http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm