your comments please

[mrugly]

what do the #'s mean and is this a good
computer

dell
Dimension
8100
Pentium 4
ps 1400 MHz
mem. 256
hd 80
CDRW / 32X
video ram 32

[bascule]

Perhaps some information on its intended use would help us gauge whether or not this is a "good computer"...

[mrugly]

net surfing ,multi programs running

[KeLviN]

it will be fine, but be prepared for it to need replacement in a couple years.

[ck3k]

Mem. is a tad low, 256 with the newest window bloat is not enough to run the games, or even keep the system up for longer then a few days. Also 80 gb is alot, but it depends what you are gonna do, that is only 80 gb of pr0n, which is kinda low. This "video ram" as they call it, is this a shared ram thing, or a standalone graphics card? I personally have every system in my house windows/linux running nvidia cards, just becuase it imporves the performance alot more. On your list I don't see unix-based alternative OS, the shame.

[skroo]

I can't say if this is a good machine or not for you because I have no idea what it's going to be used for ('surfing the web' and 'multitasking' are very non-specific). However, here's what I can tell you from experience: I always figure that any machine I buy or build is going to be one that I use for three years as an in-production box. What this means is that it has to go two years without major upgrades (read: CPUs, motherboard, outright replacement of components such as HDDs due to obsolescence, etc.), and one year with end-of-life necessity-only upgrades.

Example: in early 1999, I built a dual PIII/550. It had an 8.5GB drive, 128MB of RAM, Creative ModemBlaster 56K external (screw internal modems), 10bT NIC (DEC, I think), STB Velocity 128 AGP video (8MB, if memory serves), Creative 4224 CD-RW, and Creative DXR-2 DVD drive. Total cost was around $1250.

Things that got replaced or upgraded: the HDD (I added another 8.5GB unit) and RAM (to 384MB total); the modem was redeployed elsewhere when I went over to DSL. Not being a hard-core 3D gamer, the video card stayed unchanged. No other major changes took place.

This all took place between February 1999 and December 2001. Post that, the only major change was the NIC was being replaced by an Intel Eepro 100 when I went to a switched topology for my home network. That machine is still used as a generic workstation since it's still more than fast enough to browse the web, run an office suite, and play MP3s at the same time without major wait times. Even doing things like kernel builds aren't too horrible on it.

In short: buy as much machine as you can for the money so that you can use it as long as possible. Don;t succumb to the false economy of buying a lower-end box that'll be quickly out-of-date; you'll just end up replacing it sooner. Also remember that $1200-$1400 spent on building your own machine will generally get you in at or near the top end of what's available, whereas with most manufactured machines that'll only get you somewhere in the middle of the range.

In short: figure out what exactly you want the box to be able to do, how long it needs to be able to do it for, and what you plan to do with it after it's superceded by its replacement. Then buy accordingly.

[Gadsden]

How much are you paying for the system? Assuming you are thinking about purchasing this system, economics should play a part on your decision process. If it is cheap, and will do what you want, go for it. If you would be spending lots of $$$ for it, you might as well buy a new system.

[converge]

I love my 8100, it's a tank. Be warned, it weighs like one too. Runs slackware beautifully, just have to fix the usual pcmcia 0x820-0x8ff inclusion in card services. I wasn't aware the line had p4 chips though.. that would be the 8200. All the other specs rock, but I would personally not pay more than $1000 for an 8100/8200 these days.

ck3k: wtf? 256 is plenty for XP.. but who runs windows on machines that surf the interweb and multitask anyways? ... oh wait.. win3.1 can do that..

skroo has it nailed though, it ALL depends on what you're gonna do with it.. if you're hoping to play unreal2k3 and newer on one of these for your primary use, I can tell you now that you'll be disappointed with the geforce2go. 'Power User' has so many meaning nowadays, everything I do works great :D

[murakami]

Dell's are the biggest piece of shit ever, we have an 8100. Here's a sample of its suck assedness.

1. overheats playing dvd's in the car
2. We used a 70 watt inverter and it complained about it, which is fine. When we plugged it in with the power supply, it still thinks that it is on a 70 watt power supply. We replace the power supply, it still thinks its on a 70 watt power supply. Consequently the battery wont charge. There isn't a a way in the bios to switch this crap off.
3. It is fucking noisy, I've had quieter servers.
4. It is sloooooooooooooooow, running the same processes (mostly file reads, some calculations, and file writes) on a 800 mghz thinkpad ran 30% faster.
5. Its fucking heavy for what you get. There other laptops at the same price point with the same features.

Oh yeah, a disk on a 6 month old Dell server failed this week on me. The reason Dell has good tech support is because they sell crap.

Dell is not a computer company. It is a financial services company that uses computer sales to get your money and play with the float untill they deliver with the pos you orderd.

[jesse]

the only laptops I reccomend to people anymore are IBM, Toshiba and Apple. That way, six months from now, when the dell/gateway/hp/compaq/acer/emachines piece of shit craps out I can say "I told you so".

[converge]

oh.... just realizing we're talking about a box, and not the inspiron line... people still buy non-mobile, non-server boxes?? ... don't do it man. If you can nab it for a buck or two, itll work nicely enough.. but for a real machine pfff

[mrugly]

this is not a laptop ,a desk top -price around
$500 I want to add some hardware to increase the speed -any suggestions-
personal note -my gateway pesario crashed , I had down loaded a shareware trojan finder,found I didn't care much for the program so when the trial version died and the buy- this pop-ups
started, I clicked on remove program .The program left and took all my drivers with it ,I had to reformat :(
I agree WINDOWS SUCK , I 've never even seen a unix os ,where do you obtain software and is there a large supply ?

[bascule]

this is not a laptop ,a desk top -price around
$500 I want to add some hardware to increase the speed -any suggestions-

For $500 you'd be better off watching slickdeals.net for a few months. You'll get a much better deal. For example, here's was a $200 2.2GHz P4 system:

http://slickdeals.net/?fromMonth=11&...deals=Go#p3783

Or for $473 you could configure a 2.8GHz P4 system w\ 800MHz FSB:

http://slickdeals.net/?fromMonth=11&...deals=Go#p3807

[jesse]

I agree WINDOWS SUCK , I 've never even seen a unix os ,where do you obtain software and is there a large supply ?

http://www.linuxiso.org/

You can get pretty much any *free* unix on that page, mostly they're either linux or bsd. Some such as Gentoo, SuSe and Knoppix have "live" cds that allow you to test drive the distribution without installing it.

There's commercial unix distributions, but you probably wouldn't have much use for them, unless you were to acquire some Sun, SGI or Apple hardware.

[mrugly]

Thanks for the imput , I'm not going to buy the dell ,I'm going to build my own computer .Any recommendations ,I'm thinking 200gb
hardrive to start.Spend about $1200.00 on the hole thing minus the monitor.