ALLRIGHT!! Finally got a new PC!!!!

ND13

I went to Fry's for their Labor Day sell to look at computers, because my home pc has had a viral infection that I just couldn't seem to find the right prescription for. Well, my intention was to just get a new pc, no Monitor, just the tower. They had a one-day only special on a Sony package deal.
For $1249-$350 instant-$100 mail-in-$50 mail-in-$50 mail -in=$699 .
I looked all day at variuos other retailers and wholesale clubs and just couldn't come within $200 of this deal unless I went with some generic off brand or a refurb and even the refurbs weren't within $100.

I got a P4 (3 Ghz) with HT, 512 ram, 200 gb HD, DVD RW+/- drive, DVD drive, video with up to 224 mb ram, 17" LCD, and Canon photo printer. That's alot of computer for $699, imo. I'm sure that someone is gonna tell me that I paid too much, but I couldn't beat it in Indy. Maybe online or something like that, maybe???

SBC DSL is getting ordered for installation, today. They have it for $14.95 for the first year. That's about half of what I've been seeing as of late. I would like to go with the cable modem, but it's $30 a month and I just don't see it being "that" much faster as to justify paying double.

Anyways, I'm stoked and I should have all the computer I'll need, for what I use it for, for a few more years.

cfrizz

Congrats Noel!!! Now just don't get anymore viruses!!!!

brettw22

That is a good price, but experience with Sony Laptops has made me avoid Sony computer products like the plague. Good luck to ya.

ND13

I read up and from what I gathered the Sony home pcs had well above average ratings for reliability, for the mass produced name brands. I'm not sure about their laptops, though. I know several people that have the Vaios and they're all happy, so I hope I get the same service from mine. The computer rep at Fry's actually knew something about computers and said that of all their name brands they sell, the Sony's were the least returned and they only get a small batch of refurbs, once or twice per year. He said that nothing compared to the Great Qualitys, Compaqs and HPs. They even get Dell refurbs now and then.

I'm going to go home and hook it up this afternoon , but can't get online til SBC installs the DSL.

Does anyone else use SBC's DSL? How much slower is it than cable??

danger boy

that is a good price Noel. and a heck of a lotta comptuer. get a anti virus program. and run it all the time. it's good to get a spam blocker as well, and don't forget a pop up blocker too... you might need a firewall also. Whew! i'm done.

cfrizz

If it comes with windows XP, you can use thier firewall protection that's built in.

ND13

I think it has all that now, but only for the first 90 days, then I have to subscribe. SBC says that their DSL service provides most of that also, but I will be securing this one as well as I can for sure. Rich(SCompRacer) said I should also put a router in between the DSL and the PC with a firewall, also, even if I'm not going to have another PC in the house, so I'll be getting one of those this week.

Mike682

A router will give you a "hard" firewall which is good to have. Also, check with your ISP, as some of them give you free antivirus and firewall protection. My provider actually gives us the EZantivirus and EZarmor programs (pretty good pgms) for free for up to three computers. Most firewalls have pop-up blockers built-in

PolkThug

ND13 wrote:

I ...said I should also put a router in between the DSL and the PC with a firewall, also, even if I'm not going to have another PC in the house, so I'll be getting one of those this week.

This is excellent advice.

IMO, hardware and software firewalls are even more important than virus protection.

Sounds like you don't have an independent video card. Might want to check into that if you're a gamer.

Have fun!

ND13

PolkThug wrote:

Sounds like you don't have an independent video card. Might want to check into that if you're a gamer.!

Not much of a gamer, but the boys will be eventually, since they have 4 game systems, PS2, GC, XBOX, and N64, so it just a matter of time til they move on to the PC games . I think it just has the Intel video set-up and can utilize up to 224 mb of ram for that. I can add one of the nvidias or the like with 128 mb of it's own ram for probably $150 or less, I think .

Now I'm by know means a computer guru, but i'm not computer illiterate, either. This set up will be more than enough for what I/we do with a PC as of now. I do think that I will be adding another 512 ram, though, as it's only about $39 installed nowadays. I can remember when that would have cost $400 or so. My how times have changed.

SCompRacer

If you eventually intend to do some gaming with that PC, look up the Response Time specs of your LCD monitor. Response time is basically the amount of time it takes for a liquid crystal cell to go from active (black) to inactive (white) and back to active (black) again. It is measured in milliseconds, or ms. Lower numbers mean faster transitions and less visible artifacts, or 'ghosting' of the image. An LCD with 16ms or less response time is great for gaming, while one with 25ms will show some ghosting of images.

aaharvel

No, you did not pay too much.
CONGRATULATIONS! On the 200gig hard drive. That sumbitch'll hold alotta ****.



DAMN THESE CELERON PROCESSORS! :mad:

heiney9

Congrats Noel......and hindsight is 20/20 you should have gotten a Dell, IMO
Could have gotten a bit more for your money. But hey you'll enjoy what you have just treat her right and absolutely get WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL....do not get the Home Edition the extra money is WELL worth it in my experience. Get a good firewall and AdAware or Search & Destroy for spyware. DO NOT I repeat DO NOT get share ware for this application it sucks compared to the 2 I mentioned.

This is all my opinion of course.... . My bro is a computer admin for a company here in town and has been setting up/working with computers since he was 10 years old and he know's his stuff and I have always taken his advice (which is hard because he's the younger one by 9 years) and I have never ever had a computer issue. And his rec have saved me in the long run. I didn't want to purchase all the software or pay extra for Windows professional but he has told me some horror stories. Anyways I'm rambling on I'm sure you are competent when deciding what you need, congrats on the new purchase.

One last issue I have the same chipset, mines HT also, and my fan runs very fast all the time. Over the weekend it sounded like a leaf blower. Those new P4 chips run very hot it seems so if you notice that...it's normal. My bro actually has a water cooling system for his computer at home!!!

Dennis Gardner

Nice buy. Let SBC/Yahoo do the antivirus and popup work. It is now provided free from them. The 2Wire products from them are nice for router/wireless/firewall duty also.

DG

michael_w

It's always fun to get a new computer. Congrats Noel.

As for programs... I also recommend both spybot search & destory and ad-aware, which are both free off the internet. For firewalls I use a router, built in one from xp pro and a really nice one called sygate personal pro. I really like the sygate one because it shows you practically everything that trys to access the internet and if you get someone trying to hack you can backtrace and find out all about them. Last week my friend had some hacker try to access him computer and the firewall told him about it and now my friend has the hackers address, phone number, ip address and a whole wack of info. Also make sure you get a decent anti-virus. I use NOD32 and pc-cillin but as for that it's usually pretty debatable on what to get, just make sure to keep it updated.

If you want to make "backups" of dvds with that fancy dvd burner all you need are some blank dvd-r's or dvd+r's, two programs and a wack of hard drive space. Most people use the two free programs called dvd decrypter and dvd shrink. If you want or need details of how to use them lemme know.

Good luck!

maggiefan

I've had my Sony computer for three years now and have been very happy with it, no problems at all.

ND13

Okay, SBC doesn't offer DSL in my neighborhood for some strange reason, only dial-up :mad: . So I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and get the cable modem , which is what I really wanted in the first place, but to make the wife happy, I looked into the DSL. I pick up the DIY install kit in the morning, then I'll get er going tommorrow evening . $30/month for the first year with 4+mb speeds, not bad at all, not bad at all, indeed!!! That's more than twice the speed than the DSL was going to be. Earthlink offers two different DSLs in my area, a 1.5 mb and a 3.0 mb, but they were gonna be even more than the cable.

AsSiMiLaTeD

and absolutely get WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL....do not get the Home Edition the extra money is WELL worth it in my experience.

What is it tat you do with WinXP Pro that Home won't do for you? Unless you're connecting to a domain or needing to control advanged configuration, I don't see the need for Pro.

I use Pro at home, but only because I'm running a webserver off one machine and need my domain access stuff in order to run that sucessfully...

ND13

XP Home came with the computer and I had no issues with it before. I might look into the upgrade package down the road, but for what we'll be using the computer for, I'm not sure that we'll need to upgrade to Pro or not.

Jstas

cfrizz wrote:

If it comes with windows XP, you can use thier firewall protection that's built in.

Highly ill-advised. There are several viruses that will compromise the Windows XP firewall and in my experience, especially with DSL PPPoE connections, the Windows firewall causes nothing but problems.



If you want a good firewall, McAfee has an entire suite of software that includes VirsuScan which is a Virus Checker, McAfee Firewall (used to be know as Guardian and is one of the best on the market) It's a firewall of course. It also includes a Spam Killer for your email accounts and a privacy program that keeps data-mining software from trying to sift information out of your website visits by tracking your movement through the Internet. It also keeps your Windows installation fully up to date by incorporating Microsoft's Instant Update software into the system. It also includes a pop-up stopper. However, virtually all Virus Protection Software companies require a yearly subscription fee to keep virus and other definition files up to date. They are usually a nominal fee of $40 or less per year. Given the protection they provide and the number of times the files are updated, that is honestly a bargain. Most people think they don't need it but it's the viruses that you don't see causing problems that cause the REAL problems. Get the virus protection software and get teh yearly subscription. You won't need to buy a new computer because of a virus problem again.

For other anti-Internet software, there is Spybot Search and Destroy, Lavasoft's AdAware SE, Spyware Blaster (patches some holes in the Java Runtime Environment that can be explited by spammers) and Panicware's Pop-up Stopper. All are anti-spam, anti-adware, anti-spyware.

Also, Mozilla's Firefox browser and thier Mozilla Suite have many controls for such spyware/adware problems already built in. They add an extra layer of protection.

As far as a router/firewall, that is a good idea. Wireless or wired, either one will work. My personal best experiences come from Linksys equipment, especially the Wireless-G equipment from Linksys. It's secure, stable and fast. It is relativly easy to set up and once it is set up, it runs on it's own until you need to update your firmware. They come with a huge amount of support both in online help and customer service. They are a good buy in my opinion and worth the money you pay for them.

Oh, BTW, Earthlink is a rip-off. Always has been.

Jstas

ND13 wrote:

XP Home came with the computer and I had no issues with it before. I might look into the upgrade package down the road, but for what we'll be using the computer for, I'm not sure that we'll need to upgrade to Pro or not.

If you plan to network multiple computers and share information across your network, you will need XP Professional. XP Home does not have the tools needed to network the computers. If you don't plan to do that then don't worry about upgrading. You can still network the computers but you will have to do some work with TCP/IP networking that is usually beyond your average home user. It also requires your ISP to service you with more than one IP address in most cases and that will run you extra money every month and really not worth it. Aside from some remote admin stuff, XP Home is the same product as XP Pro just doesn't allow Windows Networking to be turned on and is missing some distributed networking components, both of which most home computers have no use for.

heiney9

Polkmaniac wrote:

What is it tat you do with WinXP Pro that Home won't do for you? Unless you're connecting to a domain or needing to control advanged configuration, I don't see the need for Pro.

I use Pro at home, but only because I'm running a webserver off one machine and need my domain access stuff in order to run that sucessfully...

Personally I've found it to be much more stable (YMMV). I believe the Home edition does not have the restore function which literally saved my butt when I had a problem. It certainly all comes down to preference and $$$. Like I said my brother has made some good recommendations which I agree with.

My Dad runs his business from home. He is a designer (mechanical engineer) and runs very powerful CAD programs and had some serious stability issues with the Home edition & has now switched to Pro. I know others who don't use their computer at the limits like my dad might, and they still have had some stability issues with the Home edition. That's the only reason I mentioned it. When I got my new computer around x-mas time I was looking for all sorts of ways to keep costs down and in the end I'm glad I spent the extra money for the Pro edition.

YMMV

H9

P.S. Noel I also highly rec. Firefox for your browser (if you don't already use it) its a free download and is a pretty slick browser with it's own pop-up blocker plus many other nice features (FWIW) anyways.

AsSiMiLaTeD

XP Pro will allow you to connect to a domain controller and offer you some advanced networking features over XP Home.

However, you can still network via Home simply by setting up a workgroup and having all computers on that same workgroup. This is easy to set up, and will work for most situations. Both of my parents have Home on their PCs, and I walked my mom through setting up their network over the phone...

heiney9

Jstas wrote:

Highly ill-advised. There are several viruses that will compromise the Windows XP firewall and in my experience, especially with DSL PPPoE connections, the Windows firewall causes nothing but problems.

+1 use a good Firewall program not the one that comes with any version of Windows XP....I use Kerio which works very well and if I remember is very inexpensive and can be dl'd very quickly. Or go with ones Jstas recommended.

FWIW

H9

ND13

Thanks for the info John. Yeah, I knew about EL, but they were the only DSL provider in my area, so I had to check it out before I could tell the wife I was getting cable(Insight). The Linksys router is the one I was going to get. That's the one that Rich(SCompRacer) suggested and uses. We also have been using Mozilla for quite awhile now. The wife is pretty good at this type of ****, she worked for an ISP for several years and wrote web pages among various other tasks. Luckily, most of the protection devices will be included with the cable service, but I don't see anything wrong with being redundant, do you?

I could have had the other PC repaired, but imo it wouldn't have been worth it, considering I sold the tower only, for $150 as is, and I still have the monitor and printer.

Speaking of printers, I was also told that a virus could be in there. If that's true, then wouldn't the new PC's protection and the cable's protection devices find it and destroy it if there is one in the printer??

Jstas

Polkmaniac wrote:

XP Pro will allow you to connect to a domain controller and offer you some advanced networking features over XP Home.

However, you can still network via Home simply by setting up a workgroup and having all computers on that same workgroup. This is easy to set up, and will work for most situations. Both of my parents have Home on their PCs, and I walked my mom through setting up their network over the phone...

That worked out ok? I had nothing but problems trying to get that set up. All kinds of goofy stuff was happening. I ended up pushing my laptops back to Win2K and using the networking tools built in there and that worked fine with the other two PC's running XP Pro.

AsSiMiLaTeD

As far as I know, Pro and Home are built on the same core and should have equal stability and application support. Pro is a good product, but I don't think it's worth buying if you already have Home unless you need the enhanced network support...

AsSiMiLaTeD

Jstas wrote:

That worked out ok? I had nothing but problems trying to get that set up. All kinds of goofy stuff was happening. I ended up pushing my laptops back to Win2K and using the networking tools built in there and that worked fine with the other two PC's running XP Pro.

Worked fine for me. Now I'll admit that I've never tried this prior to SP2, so there may be something in that service pack that addresses this issue, but it worked fine when we tried a couple weeks ago.

AsSiMiLaTeD

If that's true, then wouldn't the new PC's protection and the cable's protection devices find it and destroy it if there is one in the printer??

I suppose that is feasible, as many printers today have some type of volitle memory (RAM). The good thing about volitile memory though is that you can usually erase anything contained within (including a virus) by just cutting power to the device.

I don't know about the virus software detecting any virus in your printer. Again, that sounds feasible, but not likely at this point...

heiney9

Also in the long run you'll be much happier with the cable connection than DSL....but I doubt you'll reach the 4MB download speed they advertise. There are too many other factors involved to consistently if ever reach that speed. There are several free web-sites that will test your download speed after you get things up and running. It's kind of a cool exercise and it will vary from time of day and other loads on cable resources in your area. Fastest I've tested mine is 2.9MB and they advertise 4.0MB or more in my area....ya right. Slowest I've seen it 0.5MB when the system is at peak in my area.

Again FWIW

H9

AsSiMiLaTeD

www.2wire.com and www.toast.net are two good sites that I know of for measuring bandwidth...and I agree on the cable internet comments...