Cheap computer deal through 8/15 - new deal!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

The 2400 deal is back again, and even sweeter. Its $320 after rebates, and includes a cd burner. Monitor is not included this time, but you probably already have one.

$470 out the door with a $150 rebate.

Anybody missed the last 2400 deal, dont miss out this time.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

If you need a printer, and dont mind a little less disk space and a few smaller frills, and an AMD processor instead of Intel, check this out:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...computer_store

If you customize it and bring everything back to minimums, its $350 after rebates, and includes a free printer.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

If you need a cheap monitor to go with the machine, amazon has this 14" proview for $219 after rebates
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...672879-4798556

Has good ratings, a 14" lcd is ~ the same screen as a 15" tube.

Also available at circuit city for $199 after rebates.
http://www.circuitcity.com/detail.js...87&c=1&b=g&u=c

You can get a tube for under a hundred bucks, but the LCD draws a lot less electricity and makes a lot less heat. Worth it over the long haul in my opinion.

Plus it makes an excellent extra bit of space for a cat to sleep. Although I may shortly move my printer back there to make more room on the desk. Which will make me extremely unpopular with the cats. A vote I believe I lost for life when I brought home two dogs.

I've assembled several computer set ups with bits and pieces and castoff parts picked up at garage sales
flea markets, etc. When I say assembled, I mean
I just bought the stuff and plugged it together.
Sometimes it was junk, but if I only paid $2 I didn't care.
The system I am using was cobbled together, although
the monitor and software are pretty up to date.

My wife recently brought home an old Mac system she bought at auction. I have no idea what she intends to
do with it. Doubt she does either

John Galt

[Hyperborea]

IYou can get a tube for under a hundred bucks, but the LCD draws a lot less electricity and makes a lot less heat. *Worth it over the long haul in my opinion.

LCD is also much easier on the eyes for reading - I won't go back. *After long stretches of time the eyes are less tired with an LCD. *I remember reading an article a while back (early 90's?) that this was because the eyes jiggled with the scan line of a CRT-based monitor (the reset of the electron gun to the beginning of the next line of pixels). *Though perhaps this was one of Th's "fake" studies? ;-)

[Bayfield40]

While you all are on this topic... I recently bought a Panasonic Toughbook on e-bay (should be good for that boating environment... ). But I'm going to have to get rid of my (too large) multi-function printer. Anyone have a suggestion on good portable printers?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

LCD is also much easier on the eyes for reading - I won't go back. After long stretches of time the eyes are less tired with an LCD. I remember reading an article a while back (early 90's?) that this was because the eyes jiggled with the scan line of a CRT-based monitor (the reset of the electron gun to the beginning of the next line of pixels). Though perhaps this was one of Th's "fake" studies? ;-)

Yep, there is that too, they're a lot softer on the eyes.

And excuse me? Fake? I never faked anything. I simply used a highly discriminative process of reality selection to determine a preferred qualified end state.

Just like everyone else does.

However, I was really good at it. You'd never know I was changing your perceptions until you felt that vaguely uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach that maybe, just maybe, you should pay just a little bit more for that next purchase...

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Portable printers...

For cheap and not a lot of printing, try
http://www.shentech.com/sia6mopousbs.html

Hard to go wrong for $20. Takes thermal paper though, and if you leave that near the sun or any heat, it'll all turn dark on you. I wouldnt touch this sucker unless I was only printing a page or two every now and then and it was temporary output. Nice for quickie work though.

For a little more, look for a canon BJC-85. They havent made them for a year or so, but I've seen them all over ebay and on some of the overstock/leftover type web sites. Pretty good printer and the ink is widely available. Figure on spending $30-80 depending on condition, whether it includes new ink, and all the accessories.

If you want new, are going to print an awful lot, and dont mind spending more, get the canon I70 or I80, either of which will probably run you $210-230.

[BigMoneyJim]

Hey,

I've got a Perfectly Pristine Canon BJC-80 that I'm not using that I will sell for $25 + shipping. Let me know if you are interested.

LOL, welcome to ER-bay.

[yelnad]

I have the Canon i80 which I bought both for it's use as a portable printer and for printing good quality color photos. I'm happy with both aspects.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Cheap flatscreen LCD's at Dell this weekend only. I'm currently using the 17"...its a good one.

$249 for 15" (equiv to 17" crt)
$299 for 17" (equiv to 19" crt)
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topi...tTkF0038386869

The current cheap deal is a pentium 4 2.8 with 256MB ram, 40gb hard drive (a little small) and a free color printer for $379!
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/prod...=04&l=en&s=bsd

[wabmester]

The good thing about computers is that the longer you wait, the cheaper they get.

I haven't had the urge to upgrade in a *long* time, but since Doom-3 came out, I've been kicking tires a little bit. None of these amazingly fast and cheap boxes make very good game machines, unfortunately. And I'm not about to spend a grand to play a first-person shooter for an hour.

So, I'm sticking with my perfectly good 366 MHz laptop until the cheap-o boxes can handle Doom-3 and kin, which will probably be in about 3 months.

[dex]

I have an IBM G40 - from work - that has all the features of a desktop but in a laptop configurations
2.8 processor about 1,500.
A bit heavy at 8 - 9lbs and I would be concerned about repair costs.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

So, I'm sticking with my perfectly good 366 MHz laptop until the cheap-o boxes can handle Doom-3 and kin, which will probably be in about 3 months.

Did I just hear a glove hit the ground? Really the only thing holding down the above 3000 based machine is the lack of an agp slot for a better video card.

However, try this:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...0903f&x=2&y=10

Pentium 4, 2.8GHz, 256MB ram, 40gb hard drive. Technically a server platform but good to go as a workstation as well. Need to bring your own OS as one is not included. As configured, $349 after $100 rebate. VERY expandable as this is intended to be a small business server and can handle RAID, SATA, plenty of memory and disks. Make sure you select the free keyboard and mouse options, they're off by default.

Add this to it:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-331&depa=1
9600xt agp card, $163

Or better still, one of my current very favorite cards:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-352&depa=1
the all-in-wonder 9600xt, $189

The all-in-wonder version brings a high quality tv tuner, fm tuner, encodes and decodes mpeg2 in hardware, has the new remote wonder 2 rf remote, supports dual monitors, and runs both the core and ram at a slightly higher clock rate than the base 9600xt. Oh yeah...use the s-video out to put it on your big screen or, like I do...to your infocus projector for a 10' picture on the wall.

Both will run doom 3 at 1024x768 in "high" quality mode at very reasonable frame rates. Higher resolutions or quality settings buy you no visually perceptable enhancements. Off the top of my head I think you'll get about 25-35fps in this mode, and 60+ in 800x600 "medium" mode. The current ati catalyst 4.9 drivers have doom3 optimizations with more planned for the next couple of releases. Haunting a few of the doom3 enthusiast sites will also give you some great doom3 .CFG optimizations for specific cards. Add another 5-10fps@1024x768 and 10-20 in 800x600 with full optimizations.

Roughly $500 for a machine that can be topped on paper, but probably not in real use.

Half-life2 and Halo2 are both supposed to have more efficient engines than doom3...

Kick butt machine for video work as well.

[wabmester]

Pretty tempting. The price approaches $800 as you add a little more memory, bigger disk, and the MSFT tax, but it's approaching "cheap enough."

What I'd really like is a laptop with something like the Radeon 9700 for around $1000. They're getting pretty close, but I haven't found one yet.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

What? You dont have a copy of XP laying around? Add a copy of XP home OEM from newegg (must be bought with hardware, but the video card counts as 'hardware'). Its a full copy, not upgrade...but cant be moved to your 'next' machine like a non-oem version of xp can.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-151&depa=0
$94

You'll only need more ram if you're doing extensive video editing. I've got 1GB in mine and the charged use is <256MB for everything I do, including light video work. In fact, too much memory can be a little counterproductive...when I reboot I have to wait an extra minute or two for the system cache to be written back to disk. :P

Fry's and outpost.com run regular sales for 160-250gb seagates (my recommended drive) for $49-69 after rebates
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/4008252

You could also just order an extra drive with the system...curiously you can buy a 120GB disk from Dell for <$70 but installed in the system, its more. I believe both of these are retail Seagates which carry a 5 year warranty instead of the lousy one year most drives have these days.

You're still only about $650...

However Dell does have their Inspiron 8600 with the 9600 pro turbo chip for $999 and the Inspiron 9100 with the 9800 chip for $1150. The 8600 is nice and light compared to the 9100. I'm not sold on the mobility chips as being good for 3d shooters though...

[wabmester]

However Dell does have their Inspiron 8600 with the 9600 pro turbo chip....

Now you're getting very close, but my price went up to $1399 by the time I added the 9600 and a few other goodies. I might leave it in my cart and come back around xmas to see if the price has hit $1000 and the chip got upgraded to a 9700.

What almost sold me was that this particular Dell is one of the few still on the market (other than IBM) with an eraser head -- my favorite pointing device.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

But...do you realize you can get that hot doom3 desktop machine for $650 AND an inspiron 1150 laptop for $679...?

Or just get the desktop, and by the time you stop DOOMing yourself it'll be past the holidays and I'll probably have found another sub $400 laptop deal like the HP 1.6GHz P4 machine I got late last year for $325...

I like the eraser head pointers too. All we ever used at the old workplace was ibm stinkpads. I think I still have a little spot of callus on my right index finger.

[wabmester]

Alright, TH, you can tell your old employer you sold another chip

I pulled the trigger on a Dell Inspiron 9100 after I found a coupon for 25% off, combined with a $200 rebate, free shipping, and another 2% for signing up for a Dell credit account. I went a little crazy on the config, so I paid a little more than my $1000 threshold, but I'm happy with the price.

It's basically a portable desktop with a 15.4" WSXGA+, 3GHz P4, 60GB drive, 512MB RAM, and a Radeon 9700 w/128MB. That makes it an order of magnitude upgrade over the Toshiba on