I had a Dell Gen 4 in the shop. It ran off of 4 gig of RAM. And you know what? There are no programs as users that we can run that would come even close to that. I have just one gig (dual sink, mind you) and it's perfect.

But the one thing about Dell I will never get over... Everything is freaking Proprietary!!! If something goes wrong with it, you HAVE to get that part from Dell, and only from Dell. And because of that, they jack up the price. If you look close enough, you can even tell that their motherboards are backwards! No lie. Facing the front of the case, your motherboard should always sit aginst the right side pannel. Newer Dells sit on the left... Makeing the case and the motherboard something ONLY dell can replace.

And for mac... I just finished working on a mac with a prefectly round motherboard... just sick. And flat pannel motherboard was attached to the system. What happens when that monitor goes out!!! GRRRRrrrr...

...anyway, custom builds roxxor...

[quote="Lantis"]
...anyway, custom builds roxxor...[/quote]

Totally.
But with the Dell, they actually made that motherboard backwards? Like you said, it's to fit their market. That's just asking for a lawsuit, but everyone knows Dell would always get off scotfree.

Mac's are made entirely different, and again, their market gets tons of money because you cannot, in any way, buy a non-apple product for your Mac (well, except for certain games, programs, and the obvious).

I honestly wish I had a Mac, but they're way too expensive (although that Mini-Mac is looking awefully tempting).

I don't much trust Mac. Not only are they a minority, they are just as proprietary as Dell.

Actually, the only thing I can really say Mac has going for it, is graphics. Besides that, I don't think I'd ever buy a Mac.

I've had about 4 Mac using customers come through the past month and 3 if not all 4 said they will never buy a Mac again. That's more than enough for me to never want a Cr-apple...

But if Macintoch is something you are actually use too, by all means, go fot it...

K, borrowed a digital camera from my boss. I took a few pics but, I'm just putting one up for now... (due to laziness).




I opened the front panel door half way to get a better shot so if it looks off centered... that's why. And here's the specs again...

3.0 Ghz pentium 4 proccessor
2 SATA (alot better than IDE) western digital hard drives (a 80 gig and a 160 gig)
A sony DVD+-/RW+- and lightscribe
intel motherboard with ddr4 and sata support
1 gig of DUAL SINK corsair RAM
550 wat thermal take powersuply
256 Meg GeForce Invidia video card (pci express)
XP Pro Corporate edition w/ SP2
Wireless keyboard and mouse
and a 19 inch flatscreen monitor

=Þ

Once I figure out this blasted camera, I'll post pics. But mine is an HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop.

ATI X600 Video Card
Pentium 4 Processor
I forget how big the HD is supposed to be, but I have it down to 4 GB.
512 RAM

Those are the specs that matter to me.

Mac's are school friendly it seems. Since most schools seem to use them for their own stuff (like courses and students and attendance and whatnot) there are MacSchool programs but they have windows computers for all the students because windows isn't really school friendly >_>
In my school they had Mac's for photoshop to cus they have the graphics thing going on. Iunno, i don't think i would ever get one im just too much used to windows.

Hewlet Packard Pavilion a705w
40gig HD
515MB RAM (504MB available)
Wireless G internet connection (which has a max connection to the hub of 56 Mbps)
5 usb 2.0 slots (4 in the back, one in the front )
Aditional slots for Compact flash I/II, SmartMedia/ xD, MMC/SD, and MS/ MS PRO.
A CDRW/DVD-ROM Combo drive (dont know the speed)
And a 2.93GHz Intel Celeron processor
Running Windows XP SP2

I have no idea what my graphics or sound cards are, but I'm not a total "phone it in" guy when it comes to noodleing with my computer. when i got it, it only had 256 MB of RAM. I instaled a second stick all by myself! *is lame, but proud*

well to discuss the problems of both dell and Apple, they have simply realized a business stratagy the Auto makers have known for decades.
"Planed Obsolecence." Basicaly, they COULD build a product that was infinetly repareable and/or upgradeable, that used or was compatable with any and all software and/or hardware, but see, that would put them out of business.

Take Car manufactures for instance, The could build a car with frames or bodies and Exhaust systems made completley out of stainless surgical grade steel, and engines with Titainium blocks, Tungten pistons, and Ceramic headers, but if you did that, then the car would last FOREVER and noone would buy a new car from you. So they make the car so it is DESIGNED to rust out after 20 years. Any cars you see at car shows have eather been heavily restored or are annomolies that some how cheated fate. (I'm talking about cars from the late sixties on ward BTW, before then Automakes haden hit on that "revolutionary idea")

So that children, is why Apple and dell make their computers the way they do. So that when (not "if") they breakdown, you'll have to patronize the manufaturer agian and that makes them twice the money off you.
(this also explains why Windows is usualy full of security holes on the first build. Oh thats right, Microsoft knows about them before Windows ships, you can bet on it!)

Next Week I'll get a Sony DVD RW and a 180 Gig Hard drive. If I can find a good cheap video card then I will have everything I need.

Staffy, you hit the nail on the head! With today's techonology you can put together a machine that will last anyone ten years and need not one upgrade.

...but that's why there's custom builds!

Anyway, I heard somewhere that if dell/apple doesn't sell you a part for you're computer within a year, they would go bankrupt. In other words... if you buy a manufactured computer, you are without a doubt have trouble with it before the year is over. And warrantees only last 90 days now.

My warrantee=3 years.

At any rate, we had some problems when we got it. The desktop wouldn't show up for some reason, or the toolbar. So we took it back to Circuit City the day after. Turns out the computer didn't like Zonealarm.

I don't know how to build my own computers. I should learn.XD
I also don't know anyone around here who does, really. I mean, there's a guy that put together my friend Brandi's "free" computer from parts, but it blew up once. So yeah.>_>;;

My warranty is also three years, I did have trouble with it the next 2 days after I got it, but I didn't have to pay for the new memorystick(512), the motherboard and a new processor. Well I have a class in college that teaches me how to build computers or just know the parts of it. Just on monday we had to install everything into a custom made pc. So thats always a good skill to know

*sigh* Ya know there's a pretty good since of accomplishment whenever you turn on a computer that you just put together for the first time. The fact that it comes on rocks in the first place... there can be so many reasons why it shouldn't... Like wrong jumper settings, short on the motherboard, bad motherboard, bad powersupply, bad RAM or DIMM slot, CPU conflict... There's more, but that's the more common ones. Then after you get the thing to come on you have to worry about software. Does it recognize the hard drive or any other device like CD rom, floppy, zip or whatever. If the drivers for your SATA hard drives work properly, if everything in your BOIS is set up right (you'd be suprized how many times hardware would work because it was turned off in BIOS).

I do this on a day to day basis... but it's fun.

well. specs on my new comp:

AMD 3200+ processor 2GHz
ASUS A8V-E SE motherboard
Geforce 7300 Videocard
512 DDR (for now)
DVD-R/RW
MGE Silver 17" case. kinda crappy but eh.


annndd..thats aboot it.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR......

^ I wanna trade video cards.....

I GOT SO MUCH RAM! XD .... and yes it is SDRAM... shove it! i have lots of it. enough to run THREE COMPUTERS! (the third one being the one im kind of putting together for Regal, in a slow and plodding way as i get parts here and there) Either way i have 7 or 8 hundred megs in mine now ... all mine *does something weird* and poor lone has the exact problems you are talking about Lantis - he just got an amazing crazy new XP or higher OS only to run all this crazy hardware that can go at a million billion everything per second and a shiney new SATA hard drive 3gigs per second he says and of course he can't get it to work... personally i don't know much about SATA and have never had to set up a brand new computer so i am of no help. more of a hardware person that software so i don't know sh*t about installing drivers <__< never actaully had to do it i don't think - everything has just magically worked except for that wireless ethernet card >____> but ANYWAY.

I envy you people with over 512 RAM and nice vid cards. Then again, my stuff works perfectly, so it'd be greedy to want anymore.

But I always fantasize about having over a gig of ram and like, the newest ATI video card. In a desktop of course, since installing new things in a laptop is like suicide.

lol I'm getting a stick of 512 ram, that will give me a gig of ram, also I have to get a new video card. I need a good one to play FEAR for the pc.

Sumisem:

SATA isn't too hard to figure out. The drivers for the SATA hard drive should be on the driver disc that came with your motherboard (assuming it's custom). You need to get a floppy disc and go to another working computer and run the driver disc to your mother board. Go to the driver section and you should see a "make disc" option. Insert your floppy disc and go with the proccess. This will format the floppy to run your drivers for your SATA hard drive. Go back to your computer and run your windows XP disc. Notice right when the blue screen comes up that at the bottom it say something like, "press F6 in install third party RAID drivers"... so press F6. Then insert your floppy with the drives and press "S". This will give you a list (from the floppy) that has diffrent drives for diffrent OS's. Select the one for XP and press enter. Then press it again and you can install the OS on your new HD with the Serial ATA Drivers... what fun...

<b>Uber Computer</b>
<i>I got it today.</i>

10.5 Ghz pentium 10 proccessor
10,000 GB total
3 SATA (alot better than IDE) western digital hard drives (a 80 gig and a 160 gig)
A sony DVD+-/RW+- and lightscribe
intel motherboard with ddr24 and sata support
12 gig of DUAL SINK corsair RAM
1000 wat thermal take powersuply
666 Meg GeForce Invidia video card (pci express)
XP Pro Corporate edition w/ SP2
Wireless keyboard and mouse
and a 85 inch flatscreen monitor
Processing Fan: Ceiling Fan
V12 Gasoline Engine
Replacable Oil Sticks
Comes with Maid Robot

Awesome.

Did that come with ground FX?
And does it give you oral sex?