Girlfriend needs a computer...

[liquidboss]

My girlfriend is looking to buy a new computer and of course I get to help. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif I'm looking for advice on where a good $400-$500 computer can be bought at. She's not planning on using it for much more than school, surfing, and burning music so it doesn't need to be very powerful.

I always build my own computer when it's time to upgrade. That saves a lot of money when you are going for top of the line parts but I'm not sure that's the way to go with a lower end setup.

Right now I am leaning toward some of the deals through Dell on sites like www.edealinfo.com (http://www.edealinfo.com) but before I point her in that direction I thought I would ask. Any suggestions?

[nothumb]

Well, I just ended up going with a brand new Gateway. It was 500 bucks for the tower and it's got everything I wanted and a faster processor than some of the other CPUs I was looking at. Bought a cheeep monitor to go with it since I don't do anything graphics-intensive and brought the whole thing in for under 6 hunnerd.

I would recommend getting something like a middling Gateway before a budget computer like an eMachines. (I have seen the error of my previous intentions...)

NT

[fatmongo]

My mothers friend bought a brand new Dell off of ebay from some guy that has an ebay store where he sells lots of Dell stuff. Dell had it listed at $800, she paid $400 for the tower and the guy threw a printer in too.

[scotnt73]

for low end family members i just goto frys and find a noname pc with lindows on it for about 199$. then i bring it home and put windows 2000 and office 2000 on it for them. i did this about 6 months ago for my brother and for 199$ he got:

20 gig harddrive
cd rw/dvd player
2.2 gig celeron processor

i am a network admin by profession so i have all kinds of crap around the house and gave him a 17 inch monitor and a 64 mb graphics card.

if it wasnt a family member id go with the dell because you will wind up being thier personal tech support otherwise..lol

[DBowling]

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frys

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[ddollevoet]

Give her your computer and buy a new one for yourself.

[fnord_too]

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Give her your computer and buy a new one for yourself.

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I like the way you think!