[breakem]

mac and avoid all the virus and MS crap

[Leroy S. Mort]

E machines at Best buy

AAAACKKKK !! (Makes sign of cross) NOOO NOOOOO not E-Machines. Find a reputable local dealer who does his own assembly.

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[KellyAdmirer]

Find deals on the Dell outlet page. You will get quality at a fair price. I would not buy the ones you are looking at.

[I got the rope]

I really like the the Dells. Call'em up and they can tell you what you need.

[general_re]

How old are your kids?

[gitmo]

I've gone the E machine route twice with my kids. Don't go there. I just got them some Dells and they are doing well.

[IslandTrash]

E Machines...bad news. My mother bought one over the summer, and a week later the Hard Drive crapped out. It took over 2 months for the repaired computer to be sent back to her.

[martin_fierro]

I am thinking that 512K and 120MB would do it.

I have a great little unit, state of the art, with 512K RAM for ya.

Even comes with two 360K floppies!

$600, and it's yours. <|:)~

[The Great RJ]

E-machines may not be your best bet. Check your yellow pages for custom computer builders. For less than a store brand you may be able to get more computer. Definitely go with the Athalon --1.8 GHz or better. 512 MB of RAM, but be sure its DDR-RAM. You should also have a separate video card--with at least 16MB of video RAM. On board sound is OK. Be sure your mother board has a LAN connection--for eventual broadband ISP and I would get extra USB connections on the front of the case for connecting digital cameras, PDA's, MP3 players etc.

[dark_lord]

Basically any "one up from the bottom" machine from Dell is good. But you should buy the monitor separately. Go to Best Buy and look at them. Monitors are something that you have to eyeball, because the color and clarity vary even if all the "factors" are identical.

The MAIN thing to be aware of is to load up on memory. Since these are educational machines the CPU speed, hard drive size and speed, and all the ports and everything else are absolutely fine on a "second from the bottom of the line" type machine. Just add additional memory. Memory makes the biggest performance impact on non-gaming machines because the more memory, the less "swapping" the operating system does to and from disk.

The other thing about Dell is they normally have a "deal" every week for free memory upgrades, free or reduced cost printers, or other stuff. The quality inside the box is excellent. They are not the cheapest, but you open the inside of their boxes and compare -- they use metal where others use plastic, their heat sinks are oversized, the wiring is nicely tabbed down, etc.

[Unknown Freeper]

Do they still make computers with only 120 mb drives?

[fortress]

Make sure to check the Dell website: the refurbished page.
They also offer free shipping and some warranty.

[fqued]

a few very important suggestions:

Call DELL, they might give you a good deal on two, and their over-the-phone deals are good.

PCs (i.e., MS windows) are used by 90-95% of people, including the gamers, so go with that rather than linix, unix, apple, mac, etc. Almost any software and games you would want are made for PCs, but not necessarily for the others.

Most important, talk to your local phone company about DSL, broadband. I have MSN Broadband through Qwest, it costs me about $30-35 a month, and I don't need another internet connection. You get unlimited connectivity at quite fast speed.

[Manic_Episode]

I think E-machines use a celeron cpu, which are ok. E-machines are ok cheap computers and should serve you well as long as you don't plan on upgrading them.
You could add a better video card etc, but that's about it.
We bought one a few years ago and the fan on the power supply was noisy, but it still works.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I know one person with an E machine, and he loves it.

[July 4th]

Buy from Dell. Good machines, and service after the sale. But don't ask for something with 512K and 120MB, or they'll ask you the last decade that you purchased your last computer. (I'm guessing you meant 512MB of RAM and a 120GB drive, which sounds just fine for what you're doing.)

[Vladivostok]

I agree with the guy that suggested going to the Dell outlet area, you may also want to investigate the HP outlet for refurbed HPs and Compaqs. CompUSA's auction section also has some solid looking deals from time to time.

[Green Knight]

I've been checking out the Dell catalog, as I'm looking to buy a new computer, soon, and the Dell Dimension 2400 looks pretty good to me, and it's only $500. It has the following (Note that I'm a fairly computer illiterate guy, so I don't know what much of this means. I just know it's better than the computer I have, now):

- Intel Celeron Processor at 2.20 GHz
- 128MB Shared DDR SDRAM at 266MHz
- 40GB ATA/100 Value Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
- 17" E773 Monitor
- Integrated Intel 3D Extreme Graphics
- 48x CD-ROM Drive
- Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
- Altec Lansing ADA 215 Speakers

Like I said, only $500 (I plan on getting one with a flat-screen monitor, which'll run $700, instead). Just a thought. Here's the Dell number, in case you want to ask for a catalog or ask some other questions. 1-800-576-3355. Hope that helps.

[Iris7]

I believe any box running XP or W2k will have adequate support for multmedia, except if custom made, or intended as servers. Tell the salespeople they have to run realplayer and a cd, fire 'em up with some some cds. download Realplayer from the website and do the website's function test. This will show you what you need to know. Some sort of multimedia support is pretty standard at $600 or so.

Dells are nice because they give fine handholding, return priviledges (no shipping to pay), and will steer you to a good box. Athlons are OK, more bang for the buck.

In your shoes I would go with a fairly "slow" processer and a hard drive more like 40 gig. Also I would see my favorite used computer shop. I could go out right this second and buy a Pentium III with multimedia, CD, and 20-40 gig drive for under $200 (with likely more than 5 years of life left), or a good 17" Sony tube monitor for $80. Personally I'd load them with W2K.

Apples are very expensive for the performance provided. If you want a totally secure OS Linux or even OpenBSD.