HEY peoples... I have been seeing all these computer commercials on TV...Gateway is selling its computers for $599, Dell for $699, and Compaq for $799... FIRST i would like to know what are the differences in these computers... and SECOND... in your opinion.. which computer do u believe is best out of the three... thanx

1. well I would guess the difference in the 3 computers would be somthing like the cheapest one would have a 833 MHz chip, the second a 850 MHz chip and the third a 950 MHz chip, or it could be that the cheapest one only have 128 megs of RAM while the others have 196 or 256 megs. Could be hard drive size.

2. If you want to seriously buy a PC... none. Build it yourself and save muchas ýýý. if you wanted to go for one of the 3 you said, then its your choice. if the more expensive one has better performance, you would need to choose whether to spend more to get a good PC or spend less, but not get such a good PC.

Don't go for the $599 Gateway .It's not all that good unless used for a workstation. Lacks a graphics card (only has onboard graphics) small (20gb0 hard disk), only has CD-ROM drive. On the plus side, it does have a network card and a 1.2 GHz intel.

Build your own. I could build you a better computer than any of those for around $300

I wouldn't trust you to build a paper mache head codered.

Build your own if you know what you're doing because you have no warranty like if you bought it from a company. If you are going for cheap Wal-mart has computers without an OS so you can put Linux, BSD, or Windows on it. And if you are going for something that will last you as a gamer, programmer, graphic artists, or whatever check out a company like Alienware, they make a good product and have really good tech support.

I dont know how to build a computer!!!.... I need a computer that I could do programming on... such as c++

THose alienware computers are expensive!!!!!!!!!!... Isnt there a way that i can upgrade the gateway to make it a good computer... I dont really want ne thing spectacular... just a fast download... Programming... and a place to practice microsoft visual c++....
can sumone check out the gateway site for me and tell me if there is a way i could upgrade so that it will download fast.. www.gateway.com/tv

Download fast? That has NOTHING to do with your computer, that is dependant on your internet access

I wouldnt buy of any of the companies computers you have mentioned. They are all rip off merchants.

so what would be a good one then?

The one you build yourself. I would never buy an OEM, they use garbage components because the average user doesn't know the difference.

also most OEM's (specially for budget rigs) use the max component that the motherboard will support (ie if the motherboard has 4 RAM slots the and there is 128 megs of RAM, they will use 4 x 32meg sticks rather than 1 128 stick, or they would use the max cpu speed that the board supports) which makes upgrading harder and more expensive.

Are 8000z custom Compaq computers built like that? Just wondering...

most OEM pcs would be built like that, is saves them muchas $$$. Almost all OEM's would rather pay ý100 for 4 32mb RAM sticks than ý150 for a single 128 stick. same as most would rather pay ý79 for a mainboard that supports a cpu speed albeit as an upper bound, rather than a more expensive one that allows a faster CPU.

That's because their God Profit demants them to do that.

RedX

Yes, crack open any compaq, dell, HP, etc. and check the memory. I guarantee it will not say Crucial, or Kingston, or Mushkin. I also guarantee that if you check the board you will not see the word Abit or Asus or Soyo, or MSI, you'd probably see FIC, DFI, PCChips, or some other piece of crap. I was just looking at a Best Buy add and they don't even tell you the speed of the ram, it just says 128mb DDR, or 256mb SDRAM, well there is a big difference between PC66 and PC180 but they don't even bother to mention what it is. Also it says "16mb high performance 3D accelerator" Since when was a 16mb 3D card "High performance" LOL

what is a OEM?

OEM means Original Equipment Manufacturer

oh ok

I wish they would tell the mother board types... But I think on my PC it has 1 stick of 256MB, instead of 3 sticks. And I have no clue what kind of mother board it is...

So sticks are the number of MB(MegaBytes)on a strip?

System memory is packaged as DIMM's, dual inline memory modules, each "stick" of system memory has several memory chips on it, how many and how dense they are depends on the capacity of the memory, for example, a 256mb DIMM may consist of 8 32mb memory chips. But my point in my last post was that memory comes in different speeds. First, theres DDR or SDR, in the DDR category there is PC2100, PC2500, PC2700, PC3000, and PC3200 (there's probably more but I don't know them all). In the SDR category there is PC66, PC100, PC133, PC150, PC180, and maybe higher (anything above 133 is actually just 133 that is rated and tested to run faster, they are hand picked chips). Now, when you buy an OEM machine, you'll be lucky to be able to figure out if it is DDR or SDR, much less the actuall speed, and it does make a BIG difference.

big meaning a couple of 100 megs faster transfer speed

Here are some speeds:

SDR:
66 - 533mb/s
100 - 800mb/s
133 - 1066mb/s
150 - 1300mb/s
180 - 1440mb/s

DDR:
1600 - 1600mb/s
2100 - 2100mb/s
2700 - 2700mb/s
3200 - 3200mb/s

Rambus (RDRAM):
600 - 1064mb/s
700 - 1424mb/s
800 - 1600mb/s

The slowest, pc-66 SDRAM, can read/write data at 533mb per second, while the fastest, pc-3200 DDR-SDRAM, can do so at 3.2gb per second.

I DONT HAVE A CLUE... SOWRY BUT I GOTTA READ UP ON THIS STUFF IN DEPTH!

thanks codered, I now know that i'll definatly be using 2100 or 2700 DDR RAM for my pc