[geeks] Wow, PCs are cheap...

[Lionel Peterson]

Sorry, I had to tell someone - I just bought a new desktop for my father in law, he decided not to go the repair route, since he wanted to get a flat panel anyway, he would be looking at about $250 to get his 7 year-old P4 desktop back "on the air", when for a few hundred more he could have some "new hottness" with all brand-new parts.

In the end, he got a Dell Vostro 200 spec'd as listed:

E7200 CPU (2x 2.53 GHz, 3 MB cache, 1066 FSB)
4 GB RAM
250 GB HD
22" Widescreen Analog flat panel
16x DVD-R/W
Vista Home Basic

All for $599 with free shipping (they have a $100 off promotion, along with free shipping at Dell), $641 w/tax. I'll likely blast Vista off the HD and go with Windows XP Pro SP3, and this thing will likely *scream*, and be more than adequate for years to come. The base system has integrated video (Intel GMA 3100), but will accept regular PCIe 16x video cards...

I'm amazed at the price for a nicely-equipped desktop (the E7200 is a nice CPU,a nd the 4 Gig of RAM is good as well). A second year warranty would have been another $39, but to be honest, until the power surge took out his power supply, I think his previous Dell machine had another couple years in it...

Anyway, I thought some would find it interesting...

Lionel