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Date:	Sun, 19 Mar 2006 15:34:51 PST8
From:	Colin Campbell <cmcampb@adelphia.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: buyng a new PC

Content Type: text/plain

Zdenek Jizba wrote:
> I will be shopping for a new PC. Any suggestions
> as to brand, store, prices etc will be welcome.
> The PC will be for eCS exclusively unless it comes
> with a built in Window OS. I would also prefer
> to have a built in 3.5" diskette slot. Speed and
> memory as well as hard disks are subject to
> debate, although I am inclined to get a removable
> HD.
>
Having seen Gary's response, I'll speak up for the other side. I bought
a Dell Dimension 8400 in January, 2005. Dell was offering a free 19"
flat panel monitor at the time, and I think I got a very powerful PC at
a very good price.

I got the on board sound to work with Uniaud. I believe I could get the
on board NIC (a Broadcom chipset) to work, but I decided to make sure,
by buying an Intel PRO/1000 NIC. I ordered a floppy drive. I got both
a CD burner and a DVD burner - overkill, and the source of my worst
problem. The machine ran very slowly under eCS, and I had to contact
Daniela Engert to get her help to figure out what to do. I ended up
swapping the two burners in their bays, and everything was fine after
that. I added a second 120GB hard drive to put eCS on, leaving the
WinXP Home on drive 1 alone, but I believe DFSee can now help resize an
NTFS partition, to get free space for eCS.

Dell has discontinued the 8400; now they have a 9000 series as the
second most powerful PC in the Dimension line. (XPS is the most
expensive and powerful in the line; I think it is for gamers.)

I think the efforts that have been expended to make eCS install and run
on modern hardware have been pretty successful, and that you could buy
Dell, HP / Compaq, or other lines of commercial PCs with the expectation
that eCS would run on them.

Of course, all of them will come with Windows (as far as I know). It is
possible to clean Windows from the PC, and return Windows XP for a
refund, but I've never tried to do so, so I don't know how easy that
really is, nor what the refund amounts to.

I have found that once in a while, it is necessary or at least useful to
have Windows available to watch the latest comical / horrifying /
amazing video, processing the occasional MS Office file, or the like.
Buying a commercial PC will mean that the work of installing Windows is
done for you, although perhaps not in exactly the way you'd like (such
as partitioning a hard drive).

People say you can build for about the same price as buying; some say
building is cheaper, and others say buying saves money. My last three
PCs were (1) built by Simply Intelligent (a short lived OS/2 supplier in
Austin), (2) built by Indelible Blue (now known as Prism Data Works I
think), and (3) customized by Dell. All have been satisfactory for the
time when I bought them, both in terms of price and performance.

Happy shopping!
Colin

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