(no subject)

[cellio]

Where should I buy a new computer quickly? My ideal machine will be here in a few days, will work out of the box (I don't have to install an OS and drivers and crap), and will come loaded with Win98 or Win2k but absolutely will not have been infected with XP. I probably also need some peripherals (printer, scanner, maybe USB hard drive), and if I buy all that stuff from the same place I want the configuration to have been done for me. It also, of course, has to come with an installed network card. Oh, and this is a desktop machine, not a portable.

I suspect that the OS requirement will prevent me from just going to Circuit City or whatever on Sunday.

Note that I haven't really mentioned price. It shouldn't be way out of whack, of course, but I'm willing to pay to (1) reduce my effort and (2) reduce my downtime. And I do not personally do any hardware installation that involves opening the case.

Suggestions?

Comments

[seanmcguire.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Buy a Mac. I can get you a discount. :>

[beegle.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you said that. I was sorely tempted, but I wussed out at the last minute.

There are real questions beneath the smart-assed response: How do you use your computer? Why do you want a Windows machine?

You may have luck calling up one of the smaller shops (like Kevin's Computer in Sq. Hill, but there are tons of them around here) and telling them what you want. You get a machine built to spec quickly and you develop a relationship with a local business. That's good both from a warm fuzzy economic perspective AND it gives you a name and a face to yell at if something goes wrong. :)

Oh, should you decide to go with a local shop, give A2Z a wide birth. They'll size you up and charge you as much as they think you can afford.

[cellio]

Thanks for the local-shop suggestion. I prefer to support smaller, non-chain businesses when I can (especially local ones), and I should have thought of this.

There are real questions beneath the smart-assed response: How do you use your computer? Why do you want a Windows machine?

Fair question. I actually have no love of Microsoft (boy, is that an understatement) and would prefer to have a Bill-free machine. However, I don't really want to have to pay -- in dollars and in learning curve -- to replace the software applications that I currently own licensed copies of. In some cases, I would have to learn new apps because there are no Mac versions of the ones I use. In at least one of those cases, there is no file-migration path, and I have years' worth of work. That program is my music-composition software, Rhapsody (a member of the Encore family, in case that means anything to Sean). They didn't do Mac last I checked, so it's not even a case of spending another $200 or whatever. There is nothing else out there that can read these files except by going through MIDI (losing typesetting, lyrics, etc -- it'd just transfer the raw notes). I have hundreds of pieces of music that I have composed and/or arranged, and I don't want to have to re-typeset them.

Other programs would probably just have a money or time cost -- I need Word (sigh) or something that can read its files (again, due to a large accumulation of stuff I need to retain access to), and there are some lower-cost apps that I'd need to replace. Some minor ones just plain don't exist for Mac, like my Hebrew calendar program. Has someone ported emacs to Mac? What about pine? They're minor utilities, perhaps, but their absense would be near-fatal for me.

A possibility, I suppose, would be to continue to run Billware on a spare machine and only use it when I don't have a solution under the new desktop OS. But that sounds like a pain; I'd have to convince msyelf that the new OS is so much better that it's worth that effort. I had actually been hoping that Linux would be that OS (thus retaining hardware flexibility), but Dani and I have utterly failed so far to get Linux up and running on a spare machine we set aside for that purpose. (The idea is to use that machine to experiment with Linux before either of us has to make another desktop decision.)

Real question, not meant to be snarky: are there real options these days in peripherals for Macs, or do you have to take the one keyboard and the one mouse and one of these two printers and so on, like you did many many years ago when I made my initial Mac/PC decision? I gather that many of the UI isses I hated in late-80s Macs have been fixed, so I assume the peripherals problems have been as well, but I would want to make sure.

inventory

[cellio]

Ok, I decided I should get a better handle on the scope of the software problem.

On a near-daily basis I use: Netscape, SSH, PC Pine, emacs.

In the last week (leading up to the power surge), I also used: FTP, Visual Thought, Rhapsody (music software), Kaluach (Hebrew calendar), Photo Impact (low-grade graphics program, kind of like Paint Shop Pro), and the software that talks to my digital camera (name temporarily forgotten).

In the last month, I also used: Word, Sim City, Internet Explorer (don't know which of these three should most embarrass me), Hebrew Now (language-learning software, appears to be Windows-only), and probably a couple other things that I can't remember right now.

I have a laser printer (HP LaserJet 5L), a SCSI scanner (older), a fairly-new external USB hard drive, and the aforementioned digital camera. All of these required special drivers or other software installations; I don't know which can talk to Macs.

[cellio]

Enough of a discount to cover the installed-software-base problem? :-)

[steven.livejournal.com]

www.tigerdirect.com?

Not sure if they can skip the XP, but they're reliable, cheap and fast.

[cellio]

Thanks. The crisis has passed (it was just the motherboard and power supply, so the machine is being repaired), but I'll want to shop for a new machine in a more controlled manner later.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

You might want to consider building your own. You get to pick out the components, and the resulting system will be both better and cheaper that way.

I'd go poking around on the net for stuff -- http://shopper.cnet.com is one of my favorite sites for doing price comparisons.

[cellio]

Thanks. There are some elements that I want to be able to specify and others where my answer amounts to "whatever's normal" because I wouldn't know the difference among, say, brands of hard drive anyway. I don't want to physically assemble my own because I'm not good with small parts with my vision.