Ugh, need Desktop suggestions..

[Fulmar]

So my father has convinced himself that he needs a computer for home, mainly for work use.  And he needs it within two days (long story, don't ask ), so building one for him is out of the question.  He's looking at probably $700-$900.  Now your basic emachine will probably run circles around what he's going to use it for.  At most, sending an email and typing a document.

I haven't physically looked at the pre-made desktop market in a long long time.  So brands whatever are most likely not what they used to be.  Mainly what I'm looking for is a brand that doesn't hose the system with proprietary software or hardware.  So if say his PSU explodes outside of warranty, I can easily replace it with any old aftermarket one.

And we'll be shopping at CanIHelpYouWithAnythingSinceI SoldMySoulToCommissionBuy.... I mean Best Buy.

[VonMessa]

If there is a Micro Center near you, it is my favorite place to go.

Their house brand is "Power Spec" and there is nothing proprietary about them, at all.

[Fulmar]

If there is a Micro Center near you, it is my favorite place to go.

Their house brand is "Power Spec" and there is nothing proprietary about them, at all.

Negatory.  Town of only 60,000.

[BaldEagl]

You can get a nice Toshiba laptop for that price.  Not sure if BB has them but some of the office supply places do (Office Depot, Staples, etc.), then just plug the desktop stuff into it (monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, etc.).

I recommended the same to my brother.  He paid ~700 and it runs MSFS10, AHII and other games surprisingly well.

[Fulmar]

I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible since we're talking about a 65 year old man who is pretty plain Jane tech savy.  This equates to less phone calls and less headaches.

[1701E]

Well if you want a Brand PC Emachines is reliable, cheap, and good specs for most things.  Just be careful if you get Emachines, not to get T6528 model, the Motherboard is prone to dieing (had one die twice).  Emachines has one of the simplest set-ups i have seen (used HP/Dell/Emachines).  They also come a lot less cluttered on the HDD than some brands.  I'm sure some people will suggest Dell, Compaq, HP, etc. but this is just the brand i have found to be one of the best.

[Fulmar]

Doesn't look like the T6528 is in production anymore...

[1701E]

No surprise it wasn't great at times, and the restore disk for it was screwed up, a few problems with that one.

[Reschke]

If he absolutely needs a desktop them grab an eMachine as others have said. Otherwise go look at Best Buy, Fry's, etc.. for a decent low end laptop and maybe toss in a docking station for him as well.

[humble]

truthfully any hp/compaq or similiar will be just fine. Most of them now have online support and onboard gremlins that idiot proof the box suprisingly well. Very frustrating for a seasoned user but great for non geeks...

[StarOfAfrica2]

Emachine.  Just make sure you do regular backups for him, the HD's have been known to crap out after about a year.  Long as you plan ahead for that, its not a big problem.  The computers themselves are cheap enough, just buy an external HD for backups.

[Fulmar]

Today's the day, I'll let you know what he gets.

[BaldEagl]

What did he get?

[Fulmar]

Well I tried talking him into a lower end eMachines, but he was convinced he wanted more of a workhorse.  There is no arguing with this man so we went with the HP A6530F or A6430F.  I can't remember which one, only diff between the two is 4 and 3gb of ram.  It was on clearance for $571 ($640-$620 online).  Found a cheap Westinghouse 19" LCD for $180 and a Canon MX700 Printer/Scanner/Fax for $130 ($180 online).

Of course within the first 3 minutes of being there, we were asked 3 times for help.  Sorry, I don't need your help pals.  Then when looking for the 'cheapest' monitor they had no more stock below the displays, they were all up above.  Of course all the sales reps were busy when I needed them.  So I ask one guy walking buy for help.  "Ahh....I really don't work in this department.  You'll have to wait until one of those guys is free."  Must have been too hard to ask someone else familiar with the department for help, let alone use your $%$# radio.  5 minutes later, another guy walks by, we ask him and reluctantly he is able to find the monitor from stock.

So we grab a cart and go to the front checkouts.  The register guy asks if they had talked to us about getting 'work' done on the PC.  I said, "Nope we're ready to check out right now."  And I think to myself...what work?  Do they really con people into thinking that once you buy a computer, they need to have Geek Squad charge $75 to update their Anti-virus definitions (AKA PC optimization!).

And yea...$36 for a 6 ft of USB cable.  $36!!!  Is it signed by Jesus himself?

God I could rant for hours about that store.  Much hate.

[Fulmar]

So I came to visit my dad and set up the computer for him.  Right out of the box I took the side panel off the HP a6430f.  And I was impressed for an off the shelf unit and about $600.  It had an onboard Geforce 6150 which is plenty for him.  Unless emails need Directx 10 in the future...

Hardware wise it looks good.  Plenty of plugs/options in the back, optional wireless antena plug.

......onto Vista.....this is honestly the first time I've used Vista for more than 15 minutes
I get into windows after the setup and I haven't hit a keystroke yet.  There are three windows open already.  1) Norton 2) AOL 3) HP Media Support Crap

So after about 30 minutes of disabling/uninstalling useless stuff, it's set up.  Now if you were to ask me about my experience of Vista.  Well I can say that I believe Microsoft thinks that home users have mittens pinned to their jacket, cannot score about 75 on an IQ test, and need to constantly second guess their decisions in life (see "Are you sure you want to do something on this computer without calling India?").

Yeah, Vista looks good, but really....we're putting make-up on a pig here.  I could install something like Window Blinds on XP to get a similar pretty desktop and wouldn't have to worry about annoying security questions or a considerable performance drop.  My old 800mhz p3 with 256mb of ram ran xp faster than this AMD Phenom 8400 and 3gb of ram can run Vista.