the new box

[thoreau]

I took the advice from the blog post yesterday, several online articles I read, plus price and value comparisons both David and I did - and marched into Best Buy today to buy a new computer tower. For the 2nd day in a row - the advertised model on the floor was "not in stock" - so I decided now was the time to talk to a manager. He agreed that it was pretty stupid to have the display cards out for models that customers could not take home - so - - we looked at the computers in my price range and needs - and he set me up with an HP computer - with an upgraded video card and 4M of Ram - and sold it to me for the price of the model they didn't have in stock. I got an amazing deal - this thing has like a 500G hard drive - and video and stuff works on it super fast. Streaming on Hulu is like watching television - - very cool. I installed the CS4 suite and can have Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver open simulataneously with no drain on resources. In one fell swoop - I've doubled my processor speed, doubled my RAM - and upgraded on sound and video. Yay! Thank you to everyone that contributed comments on the machine choice yesterday - I feel like I got not only a great deal - but an expandable upgradeable machine as time and other needs require it.
Awesome!

Comments

[tonethbone.livejournal.com]

I have such an HP...dont know if its the same model...but the same memory /hard drive size/etc

I love HP customer service..probably the best

[shirtlifterbear.livejournal.com]

Every now and then, someone restores my faith in customer service!

The manager?

AWESOME!

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

The scary thing is, 500GB is pretty much an average size for a drive now. Last month I bought a 1TB external one for about $230 from the Apple store. Considering their generous markup, plus the fact that Canadians get screwed on everything retail, I imagine it could be had for half of that in the USA. How long until we have 1TB thumb drives?

I remember when -- oh gawd, I'm sounding like such a geezer now! -- years ago, a co-worker travelled all over town trying to find a whopping 9GB hard drive that was fast enough to do video streaming (and back then, you needed expensive custom video cards that cost two grand just to do video capture). He finally got one and it cost about $1000. We were all impressed... such a huge amount of space... who could ever use that much?

[wescobear.livejournal.com]

I bought a 1TB Samsung internal drive last month for $90.00 US at my local MicroCenter store. They had an external Western Digital 1TB drive for $10.00 more.

Unfortunately by the time we have affordable 1TB thumb drives, Word documents will likely have bloated to 1GB each. [g]

[cogitoergozoom.livejournal.com]

500GB?!? Holy Crap! I remember when we were in awe of 2GB!! :-D

[dewittar.livejournal.com]

And the magic price point was.....?

(I'm outfitting my design department with Macs but a few will stay on PC with peripherals, so I'm just curious.)

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

I spent $521 after tax :)

[dewittar.livejournal.com]

!

[oscarlikesbugsy.livejournal.com]

$521 ... and then you can sell or donate your old box, maybe?

:-)

Enjoy the new skids!

[pagerbear.livejournal.com]

[insert box-related rude comment here]

[r-pity.livejournal.com]

When my computer drown in the hurricane I got my new one at Best Buy. It is an HP with 750G hard drive and a lot of other bells and whistles. It plays pornography beautifully, which is what I requested of the salesperson. They did kind of look at me funny, but oh well! I also got a 24 inch flat monitor which I LOVE. Since I don't have a tv I use it to watch movies and such. Congrats on the new system for you!

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my laptop around for writing projects, etc.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

above my desk at work I have a "goodbye present" from friends at Boise state - starting with a floppy square TRS80 5" - then the firm 3.5" with a whopping 100K, and onward - the "evolution" of the disk. I'll have to remember to take a snapshot. It's ubergeekness MAJOR.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

[snarky 'well, smell you' comment here]

A Senior Geek Moment

[ozdachs.livejournal.com]

... and 4M of Ram...

Yes, I understand the cognitive dissonance involved in typing "6G". Fingers just won't work.

The first computer I worked on was a $1 million PDP-11/70 cherried out with 1 MB of core memory. The programs, streets, and 30-day transaction history for dispatching cops in a city of 450,000 were stuffed into a 67Mb disk drive. Or, was it 65 MB?

But, sadly, us assembly language programmers are left to mumble to ourselves about code efficiency as we put our dentures into the glass by the bed.

Re: A Senior Geek Moment

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

oh you are right - such a TYPO :) LOL 4G of RAM

Re: A Senior Geek Moment

[ozdachs.livejournal.com]

Right "4" not "6". My own fingers were still recovering from the shock of the "G"-word.

Re: A Senior Geek Moment

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

the machine is upgradable to 8G RAM and teh 500G is insanity!

Re: A Senior Geek Moment

[ozdachs.livejournal.com]

I suppose that I shouldn't admit that I recently bought a 1 Tb data drive for my home machine so that I could store pictures, etc.?

(It had to be internal, because Carbonite backs up via the Internet all data on internal drives.)

So far, I have have used 101Gb.