kids computer is dead, 12 years old upgraded 2 times! not fixing again.
so the kids get our computer and we get a new one.
but what to buy?
I have always bought HP, my brother in law (was IT at NASA) hates HP says buy Dell.
my computer guy says buy Dell!
my only experience with dell was a company computer (laptop) and our corp. had a contract with Dell. so they bought the cheapest stuff and added warranty, that pos was broken all the time! the repai guy spent more tim on my computer than I did! so I have never liked Dell but honestly that is my only experience.

Idon't need any gaming stuff.
I need it to be able to stream and play the vidieos for my wife's online portions of her school.
I do want the tv tuner in it.
I do want a fast computer.
so throw your recomendations at me and why you recomend it.

P.S. not ready to go mac, the colege stuff doesn't work well with mac.
P.S. forgive my spelling, no spell check with this laptop.

 

Any PC I or my family uses here at home, I build... Newegg is my friend lol... They're gamer boxes and I found it's easier and cheaper to build them to our specs...

I've used Dell's at work and they seem to be a pretty decent machine. I've got 3 Optiplex's in my office - 1 is my desktop PC, 1 is for the access control system, and 1 is a dedicated DVR machine that monitors and records input from 6 different cameras...

I believe you can order a custom PC through Dell - just tell them what you want and they'll build it for you...

I've been told Dell's customer service leaves something to be desired - I do all my own fixing so I don't bother with customer service lol...

Not overly fond of HP - I used to be, but I've been sorely disappointed by the quality of their newer stuff - everything really turned to crap after they absorbed Compaq...

There's pro's and con's to all of them - it gets to a point where it boils down to what you want; the price to get what you want; and the level of customer service/support offered by the supplier...

 

dell, or maybe get a barebones kit from tigerdriect.

 

Four plus years ago I bought my GATEWAY pc...at the same time a friend bought a DELL...virtually identical specs. Right out of the box he had lots of issues...knock on wood...I've only had one problem with mine...about a year ago. I like it so much I bought a GATEWAY lappy also!!!

By the way...he also owns a GATEWAY now!!!

 

I can tell you firsthand that Dell's Customer Service leaves a LOT to be desired.

I bought a Dell for my wife, when she went back to college.
Yes, it's a decent machine. However, she had a problem with it (ahem, kids and maleware), so, I decided to 'restore' the pc to original configuration with the 'supplied' CD.
I opened (for the first time) the software envelope and to my surprise, the programs were there, but, the operating system CD was NOT.

I called Dell, and they said that I had to pay for the CD.
The paperwork, including the receipt, said that the CD was included.
I wrote Dell an e-mail and sent them a scan of the receipt and asked for the CD.
They refused. . . and even stopped replying or even acknowledging my correspondence.


So, I paid for the CD, and told them that this was the last time that I'd spend ANY money on a Dell.

No more Dell(s) at my house.
I'm just sayin'. . . . .

 

technical support won't be an issue for me as my friend is the local tech for dell and does all the warranty work around here.

 

My laptop is a dell and works well. I have had it for four years now with no troubles. My internet is a sprint usb to be truly mobile with my laptop. I just bought a router by cradlepoint that uses the sprint usb card. My wife can now log on the internet while I am on the dell. I can also log my xbox 360 on at the same time. I have no need for a dedicated home internet source with this router now.

 

I didn't think Dell supplied OS CD's anymore - most of the ones I've seen had a recovery partition on the hard drive that had all the OS files on it for re-installation/recovery...

 

I found that partition after I bought the CD.

This whole issue was three or four years ago.

Along the same 'lines', why didn't Dell say that the recovery partition was on the hdd?
Also, IF the hdd had gone 'bad', not knowing that the partition was there, and not making a recovery CD, I would still have had to buy the CD.

My entire bad experience with Dell is because the CD was supposed to be in the 'package' and wasn't, PLUS the lack of support when I needed it.

Unfortunately, I don't have a friend that is a Dell 'tech', and has access to 'stuff'.

 

I've gone a couple of different ways over the years...I've built my own systems, but back in '04 I bought a new Dell because I couldn't build one with all the features that were offered on the Dell for the same money. It's been a great computer with very few problems and the only times I had to deal with Dell customer service didn't leave too bad a taste in my mouth. When the floppy drive died, they set me up with the local tech to come repair it, but I told him it was a waste of his time to drive all the way down here to put it in, something that I could certainly do myself so they just sent me a new one, done deal. Bought a Dell laptop several months ago and it's been great as well.

But the desktop is pretty obsolete now and a month or so ago I bought a new HP. Happy with it so far, we'll see...

I have a few friends who do IT work and they have HPs at home and I really liked them, so that was in part what I based my decision on.

 

Been using PC's since the 70s, back when you had to solder them yourself, IMSAI 8080, still got it still works.

Of all the PCs I have used at work or home the only ones that ever died were several HP/Compacs. What can I say? Every one told me HP was very reliable and good support. Not my experience on reliability anyway.

Right now I have 2 dead HPs that died late last year and haven't gotten around to fixing. One is probably user(wife) abuse. All 3 Compacs I bought for my company in the past 4 years died after about 1-2 years, minor repairs, got a 1+ year old now limping on the powersupply fan, arrgh. My latest home HP desktop died just before the 1 year warranty expired. The US support desk was very helpful and got me thru the first problem. The Indian based support desk was "by the book" , rude and unhelpful, and said I had to return the defective part the day before my warranty expired, even though I reported the initial problem a week before, tried to sell me a support warranty, yeah right. This is the reason for my mini HP rant here. I was too lazy to post last year when I had the problem, but this post triggerd my memory.

So I guess it depends on who you get for support whether your experience is good or bad.

PCs that have done well for me, included old IBM desktops, 1991 Noname store brand(still have it still works). E Machine, IBM/Lenovo laptop for my kid who is rough on it, but still works.

Companies I worked for had good luck with Dells, so so with Gateway, didn't They buy E machines? And Sonys.

Best one so far is my Sony laptop I am using right now. 6+ years of abuse including two boys pounding it during games when I am not watching. Never had a bigger problem than blowing out the dust.

Had good luck with Toshibas too.

Next desktop I buy probably will possibly be Dell, or Acer(I hear they are good, they used to make them for everyone else) or maybe even an E Machine, or even Sony. Not an HP if I can help it.

Just my opinions,

Jim Henderson

 

My rocmended specs for your needs would be.

you may not need a quad core processor and most things dont take advantage of all cores as of yet. Although i would recomend at least a 2.2-2.4 ghz duel core processor, 4 gigs of ram if your going to have multiple programs open at once and are streaming from a tv tuner.
Depending on how much space u will need (music, movies ect...) a 320-500 gig hdd should suffice. As for brand i would say go with HP. i have an HP dv7-1245dx laptop. with a 2.1 ghz amd turion x2 4 gigs of ram and a 320gb hdd and im happy with it.

 

One thing going for HP, at least they include the OS discs. Usually, you can make "recovery discs" and that'll have the OS on it.

What I do when buying a new PC is spec out what is inside of it. Intel motherboard for an Intel processor. AMD chipset, and a good brand-name motherboard for AMD processor.

I bought a Gateway about 3 years ago, it has an Intel motherboard, and NEVER had a crash or hiccup except when I got infected with something I was playing around with for a customer. Had to reload from scratch. But I didn't buy it for the Gateway brand name, I bought it because it had great parts in it.

As hard as it is to figure out what a machine has inside, I can't say a "normal person" would be able to do much.

Dell, I've heard plenty of bad stuff about, especially customer service. But then, I hardly ever use customer service anyway

If it were me, and I had to go on brand-name alone, it would be HP.