Cheap ass computers
Filed Under (Tech) by Don C on 25-02-2008
The Kidz PC, an ancient Dell L500, caught a bug the other day so instead of fixing it I had the eldest kid pull the plug, literally. I made a deal that if each kid, there are two, put in a hundred bucks I would pay the balance for a brand-spanking new PC. I was figuring about $350 plus a monitor for a decent, Internet folly machine. I paid for the monitor since I was planning to get flat-screens for the remaining computers anyway.
For $459, which includes an $80 mail-in rebate, I got an Acer Aspire M1610 and a 19″ Acer wide-screen monitor with decent specs, and a Lexmark printer that I don’t need and will attempt to give away, if possible. In every way, shape, and form factor this PC is at least 10 times better than the Dell which it replaces. The Kidz are ecstatic, just like Christmas.
The Kidz had the satisfaction of exercising their purchasing power, along with the thrill of dickering with a moronic sales person, and slapping their hard-earned money on the counter when the deal was done. I think they are quite happy and proud with the transaction.
So anyway, I plug in all the bits and pieces and fire up the new Acer, which also came with Windows Vista Premium, and waited… and then waited some more. The machine came with a Gig of RAM but I think everyone who knows anything about Vista knows a Gig is not sufficient breathing room for the bloated operating system.
On the other hand, a Gig of Ram combined with an Intel dual core processor running Windows XP is blazingly fast. And WinXP is quite stable. I don’t need a fancy PC with a fancy operating system for an Internet folly device.
So I reformatted the hard drive, installed WinXP Pro, AVG anti-virus, Firefox, and Ad-aware and that’s my Internet-in-a-cheap box configuration.
