Re: ot- buying a new name brand pc with xp

["Leslie Savan" lsavan@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia, Jon, Harry, et al.

Thanks, everyone, for your advice on my monitor problem and on buying a new
computer. I'm going to return the new monitor to Staples, probably today,
but of course I won't buy anything there since they're unlikely to have
anything in XP Pro.

Everyone's advice seems to boil down to a desktop XP Pro, as Patricia
suggests here:

> You can get a Vista box with "downgrade" rights to XP Pro. Most
> of the refurb XP boxes are sold woefully underpowered. You need
> to be sure you can add RAM to at least 1 G and add a discrete VGA
>  card with at least 256 Mb RAM. XP Pro will crawl in anything less.
>
But before I shop online, a few questions:

1) In stores and online, I see that a lot of machines have XP Home--but I
should definitely go for Pro over Home?

2) This VGA card: Is this something I order from the company and they
install it before shipping, or is this something I buy separately and add on
my own?

3) I've been looking around online and I'm completely overwhelmed. Can
anyone help me narrow down a few desktop choices (under $1000 with monitor
and keyboard), preferably, I suppose at CDW, which Jon said had some of the
better tech support, or Micro Center, where the closest store to me is
Paterson, NJ.

And, btw, I've (pretty much) decided on a desktop rather than a laptop,
because laps seem more expensive, since I'd have to buy a larger monitor to
work with. (And as alluring as netbooks seem, from what I've heard here and
elsewhere, there are too many kinks yet to be worked out.)

Lastly, and the least important: Since I packed up the new monitor, I've
been working on the old one: m working on my year 2000, 16" Dell CRT that
came with the ME. With all the fiddling on the new monitor, I lost whatever
original settings came with the system, and now the legibility is even worse
than the poor legibility that drove me to start this whole search in the
first place. (That is, the legibility is blurry on Windows; but Xywrite
looks beautiful on this oldie, as ever. Still, the text on this old one at
least has consistent thickness of letters--so thanks everyone for pointing
out the mismatched res problem.)

By trying out many combos of onscreen adjustments with different resolutions
and font size on this old screen, the best I've come up with is: 1280x800
TruColor Bit 32, and a font size that reads "125% normal size (120 dpi)."

Would anyone out there know what "native" settings should go with this year
2000, 16" Dell CRT that came with the ME? Since I'm using this system only
until I get a new one, please don't waste too much energy on figuring it
out. But if anyone knows what to do offhand, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks all,
Leslie