My boy Freeper, BadBill is here and he is a 'puter' guru. He says go with the latest and greatest which is the P4.

Oh my God! A BadJoe and a BadBill in the same place at the same time. Head for the hills!

Celerons are fine for normal stuff, like typing papers and surfing the web, Pentiums are good if you want to play computer games or work with making graphics.

It sounds like you're fine with a Celeron.

BadBat checking in also....!!!

I've saved all that info and am getting close to pulling the trigger, thanks to the help I've been getting from Lelah up in Mudville, Washington (he's snowed in today).....

the one thing that confused me is several comments about getting too much memory....a few folks said don't go over 256. How come??

You can't have too much memory, just like money. I wish I had more money and then I could trade Lucille in on a new version Cad SUV, allthough they dont make them Pink and don't make 'em droptop no mo.

I'm still not sure of the real differences between the PIII and the P4..except in terms of price (and I think probably max. GHz that each can hit -- P4 can obviously go a bit higher.)
Actually I just hit Dell's website and configured a Dimension 4300S with a 17inch monitor, 40Gig Hard drive, P4 1.4Ghz and 256megs of RAM for $1,300...

Doesn't look like they even offer a PIII model any more...

I've never heard anybody encourage anybody to get LESS RAM..

Get all that you can afford! 128megs is the absolue bare minimum you want nowadays. 256megs will be the standard shortly...and consider 512 if you're going to be doing high end 3-D rendering, 3-D game playing, or photo manipulation

If you have a local builder, get them to build you a system - you'll save so very much on the shipping costs to "get it right." Good luck, JL

My vote goes to a home built system, using:

AMD Athlon XP (any speed), $110 - $225 depending on speed (Prices in Dallas, TX)
Epox MB, or Asus, or Abit (I use Epox the most), about $120
512 MB or more DDR memory, was $45 in Dallas last month
an nVidia or Radeon card (I haven't worked with the new drivers enough to compare), plan around $75-$100
7200 rpm IDE drive, Fry's has a 40 gig 7200 ATA 100 for $99. However, try to get only ATA133 drives and MBs if you can.
CD-RW, or a DVD/CD-RW, if you have the money, $110 - $450
a second CD ROM or DVD player, $35
a good CPU fan, $15 - $35
Another 4" case fan, $5
Use only 80-pin IDE cables, $4 each.
Get a mid-tower case with a large power supply. I generally spend either $40 for a mid tower, or I'll spend about $70 for a slightly larger case with a 350 watt power supply.

Your memory needs depend on the operating system. Get a legal copy of Win 2K for about $125, or use Win XP Home for about $88. You can buy a packaged Linux of several flavors for $25 - $79.

Generally, I recommend that Windows OS's need 512 megs of RAM. If you use an older version of Windows then there may be an issue with too much memory, since Win 9x does a poor job of memory management.

Why do I use AMD instead of a P4? Better motherboard stability, faster speed and more CPU cycles for the buck. P4 requires the use of RAMBUS memory, which is more expensive. Only in the last month has a P4 chipset been released that allows the cheaper DDR memory.

Of course, this info is worth exactly what you paid for it!! Opinions are my own.

Tom's Hardware Guide

AMD Motherboards

Both of the above site can give a good review of the hardware issues involved. Remember, check the date of an article. A 6 month old article may be hopelessly out of date.

If you don't want to put this together yourself, a BBQ brisket seems to work wonders with most of the techs that I know!

To get the best bang for your buck and end up with the best possible computer, build it yourself from parts. Buy all the small stuff like motherboard, memory, drives and so forth online. Buy the big stuff, monitor, case etc from a local retailer to save shipping costs. The single greatest factor affecting system performance is the system bus speed (233 mhz now). Drop down one or two levels of CPU performance to save some bread since most clock cycles are wasted anyway in a gui environment unless you are doing highly unusual CPU intensive tasks like computer modeling or intense graphics manipulation. Advantages of a generic home-built machine are ease of maintenance, overall lower cost, and fewer headaches down the road. You will also avoid peculiar proprietary hardware issues common with namebrand stuff like Dell and Gateway, and if a part craps out you simply go down to your friendly computer superstore and replace the offending part. If you want about a 10-15% throughput boost on I/O use a SCSI adapter and drives. If you only plan on casual use, stick with IDE. Building PC's is easy and a trained chimpanzee could do it.

My $0.02.

The most important piece of equipment is your monitor. Put all of your money into the most expensive monitor you can afford; the rest of your computer is garbage that will be obsolete (and worthless) in six months. I suggest a 24" flat screen Sony GDM-FW900:

They can be had for just over $1700:

http://queen.pricewatch.com/search/searchcat.idq?cr=GDM-FW900&qc=%22GDM%22*+AND+%22FW900%22*+AND+@ctd+34&catd=34&ct=Computer&cn=Monitors

Don't settle for a cheap monitor like a Viewsonic - pay a hundred dollars more and get real Sony quality. The second and third most important pieces of equipment are the keyboard and the mouse, and both are DISPOSABLE! If you're a power user, you'll go through a keyboard every three months or so. Radio Shack has really nice Compaq replacement keyboards for $19.99:

Finally, invest in a really comfortable chair, and a big, wide table that doesn't have any hidden obstructions that hit your shins.

PS: Don't be a cheapskate. Spend that extra $45 a month for a cable modem connection to the internet.

I have a question too!!

When I went to insert a picture in my Microsoft Word program like I always do... I got this error:

The server application, source file or item cannot be found.
Make sure the application has been properly installed and that it has not been deleted.

SO, I reinstalled it and now when I boot up, I got an error box that says "I have to reinstall my application from the same place I installed in the first place".

I can use the basics in Microsoft Word, but it won't insert my pictures anymore...and God knows what else I can't do that I haven't tried yet.
Does anyone have an idea where I am supposed to install this from? First I reinstalled it, theni deleted everything and reinstalled it clean. I did it from ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS. THAT, I thought was the correct way.

EEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKK...........I wouldn't think of logging on without my MS Natural Keyboard and my Logitech Marble!

I can use the basics in Microsoft Word, but it won't insert my pictures anymore...

That specific problem that I haven't heard of before.

I sounds like you have a bad entry in the Windows Registry, or in an Office .ini file. MS will code, into the registry, the drive location from which programs were loaded.

Since I am always adding hard drives and other toys to my system, my first CD ROM may be the E: drive or even the L: drive, depending on the day. It can be a pain for the rest of my family.

My *guess* is that you did not reload the ENTIRE MS Office program, but rather accepted the defaults. MS Office is then looking to the CD for the rest of the files it needs to load to enable MS Photo Editor to run.

1. Try and remove Office (or Word if that is what you have)
2. Reload and check every option EXCEPT foreign languages that you don't want. Also unselect Fast Find.
3. Try it again.

You can also go into the Office setup and just try to reinstall all components of MS Photo Editor.

A little unsolicited advice: If you keep having stupid problems like this, backup all the data from the drive, reformat and reload Windows and all of your applications. If you are not a geek, make friends quickly with one and ask for help. Windows seems to work better for me if I reload every six months or so.

Hi, lady, good to see you out roaming! I hope the relocation program has gone well, and is over and done with!

You're correct about the MS Internet Natural Pro keyboard - I love it! Mice are another subject. ;-)))

Last week Batvia raised a question about which model Del computer was best and I noticed there were a lot of helpful answers to his question. So if I may, I too am looking for a new machine for home. There was also some mention that P3 might be faster and use less memory than the new P4. I guess my question is my wifes computer is not Pentium but run by Celeron(sp) and not sure I have right word but was differnet than the Pentiums. Is there an advantage to the Pentium or is the other better. Thanks in advance and hope I posted this is correct place, I am kind of a newbie here.

If you want my advice, get a computer based on the AMD Athlon. It beats the crap out of the Pentium IV in pretty much every known benchmark around. EVEN with a lower clock speed. Here's an example:

Tom's Hardware - Athlon XP meets P4

Quote from the article:

We've got our performance winner in this extensive CPU test - the AMD Athlon XP 1800+ tops the Intel Pentium 4/2000 in most of the applications benchmarks we selected. The Athlon XP's strengths really lie with 3D games that use DirectX 7 or DirectX 8.

'Nuff said.

I live far enough away from the Big City that my local computer guys go out of business usually in 1 year or so. I would like the idea of building myself but don't know enough about it. I have used Del at work and was always impressed I could call them up,day or night,rain or shine and they would take care of me. The only message I get from locals is :"I AM SORRY,THIS NUMBER HAS BEEN DISCONNECTED" then I would be up the brown muddy foul smelling creek,with out a paddle. I appreciate everyone helping here, its great,thanks all. Delmont PS If anyone here lives in San Clarita, I drive around in my Pink Cadillac with the top down most of the time, her name is Lucille, so if you see me honk!!

I just picked up a P4 1.8 Ghz Sony Vaio w/512Meg; 80 Gig HD, Read/write DVD Read CD for $1.7k; love it.

Del, the guys suggesting building your own have some real good ideas and suggestions. Your remoteness and local computer supplies going out of buisness can be overcome by using the internet and UPS. Two free periodicals (Computer User www.computeruser.com and Micro Times www.microtimes.com) have ads from several agressively priced computer supplies for both systems and components. I built my own first system and it worked out well and cost me about half. P4 1.7, Asus P4T, 1gig ram, 200gig RAID array, Win98SE W/memory managers. All manufactures web sites very informative and had good tech help. Best of luck.