Can you build it?

[IrishEyes]

Or should I buy it?

 

My oldest daughter has it in her head that she needs a computer all for her very own. This would actually be ok with me, as I wouldn't have to kick her off of mine all the time. :)

 

So here's the question... Should I have it built, or should I just go out and buy one?

 

She's leaning towards a Mac, but I think that's only because she saw one of those clear ones and thought it was really cool. I don't know that she really needs a Mac though.

 

Basically, she'll be on it to surf the web, do e-mails, write out homework assignments, and edit pics and video. She doesn't do a whole lot of gaming, except the generic stuff that comes with Linux. Also, she'd like to be able to watch movies on it, and burn her own music cd's.

 

Suggestions? Volunteers to build her something? She's already started saving her babysitting cash to pay for this, and she wants to get something soon. I'll take suggestions for the OS, the actual hardware, or any name brand box that you can think of.

 

Thanks to all!!

[Mercenaryend]

aye , its me again , and no im not stalking you irish , i simply found this one 2 , but as far as computers go , what kind of price are you looking at , becuase there is 1 option you may want to consider , the mac's with far greater ability than any other computer are coming out , and what you want to do mabey is give her your computer , and invest in on of these new macs ( i dont know if they r out yet or not , they have intel proccesor or sumthing like that that should make them best on the market)for yourself!

honestly in my dad's point of veiw , buying a whole new computer for a kid is overdoing it a little. :)

[IrishEyes]

Not stalking me, eh? lol

I'm already getting a new Mac, as soon as we are in our new home, in a few weeks. My current computer is going to be the movie server for the kids (we have 6. kids not movie servers!). She currently has a very old laptop, but wants something that works a bit faster and 'better'. We homeschool, and she does a lot of research online, so I can understand her point.

And since she's paying for half of it, price is really not an issue. :)

I'm hoping that alex will volunteer to build one for her... :)

[Mercenaryend]

umm then i dont understand lol what do u need awnsered for you?

[Mercenaryend]

lol and who is alex....heh

[Mercenaryend]

hey , irish , i am quite literally going to go make a sword ,a little project of mine, so anyway ill be back later.

:)

[pgrmdave]

Well, Irish, I am of two minds on this. On the one hand, I would recommend Dell - they're good, and they are very cheap. However, you said that she would be doing video and picture editing, which I've heard that Macs are better at. The only real problem with Macs is the price, which tends to be quite a bit higher than with most PCs. As for building your own, I don't think that you'll really save much money building it unless you are going for a top-end machine. The money that you would save by only paying for exactly what you need would most likely be saved by going to a large distributer, who is able to pay less for the components.

[alexander]

heh, well here I am Irish ;)

 

Should I have it built, or should I just go out and buy one?

it all depends on how much you want to worry, if you want the best bang for your buck, then absolutely, build one (if you need me to spec it out, i will have no problems doing that), if you want something that comes with a warranty and tech support well, then you will have just that.

 

Hey i actually have a very good solution for you Irish :) (as i always do)

you said that she has an old laptop, well i am thinking about it and here's what comes to mind:

Wouldn't it be great to give your kid a top of the line laptop that is cheap and will last her for at least 3-4 years without being depricated? well, there is a company called Averatec that produces awesome-looking laptops for a very reasonable price. Here's what i'd get:

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?price1=800&price2=1200&btnP=Go&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&tab=wf&scoring=p&q=av6240+laptop&price=between

here is the spec for this line: http://www.averatec.com/notebooks/6240series.htm

you want the amd 64 version.

 

So why averatec? well their hardware is good, the video card, no matter how absurd of a chipset, has native linux drivers, dvd writer, wireless (might need ndiswrapper, but I'm sure your daughter wont run kismet, so), good screen. it comes with a 3000+ processor, 80 gigs of memory and 512 megs of Ram, which is more then enough for today, and it is upgradable to 2 gigs.

 

Pice ranges from $850 to 1500 bucks, depending on where you look, so follow that froogle link if you want to buy it :)

 

As to Linux, my friend runs that laptop with linux on it, no problem, just be sure to set it to 32 bit mode in the bios, that way anything you do is crazy fast and it is still compattible with all the binary packages built for amd procs. (dont know if all of them work, my friend, just like me, runs gentoo where everything is compiled, but he runs openoffice(2) out of a binary, and there are no problems, so i dont think you should have any as well...

 

And macs are cool and everything, but the hardware is waaay too expensive for my pocket, so i run OS X on my g4 400 for playing around purposes, actually trying to install it again, but its a pain in the butt trying to install that with Ubuntoo....

[alexander]

No, no, no Dell, dell stinks beyond your wildest imaginations, i had to manage a school that ran and still runs all dells, and trust me the hardware is not the greatest. Dells are the cheapest computers because they use the cheapest parts, and cheapest parts != the best.

 

Another plus with that laptop is that when its off, you can go into play dvd mode, so if you are taking a trip, it says that with a full battery you should be able to play 3 dvds, and it comes with a remote control, that is neatly tucked in the laptop's side....

[alexander]

I don't think that you'll really save much money building it unless you are going for a top-end machine.

one, you get everything you want to in your system and two they are usually a bit cheaper; $350 top of the line motherboard with an amd64 2800+, $100 ram, $150 HD, $70 DVD writer, $100 case and power, $whatever you want to spend on video card, and there is an almost top of the line PC...

[IrishEyes]

alex, you're a gem, as always. Wanna be adopted? You can have your own room at the farm, and I'll even cook! :) All you have to do is keep the network running, which is something nemo rarely has time to do anymore.

 

I'm going to check out that link and see what nemo says next week.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, Dave. I'll keep them in mind. I have a few friends with Dell's. They are fairly happy with them. But then again, all they do is browse and e-mail.

 

And Merc, I understand what your dad is saying, but she's hardly a kid. Ask Tormod or Yvonne, she's really quite grown up for her age. Plus, as her Daddy is a hacker of sorts, she really wants a machine that she will be able to learn some tricks on. Maybe she can turn it into a profession, just like Daddy did. I mean, she's already a 'penguin' freak! (But that's not unusual at my house. My 8 year old son sees MS's butterfly and gags. :) )

[GAHD]

Macs are THE BEST for video and audio editing. the have an awesome, user-friendly OS in Tiger, and with the release of the Mighty Mouse they have revolutionized the point & click world. OSX, Being Unix Based, would be fun for you daughter to learn to 'hack', but she's probably had almost the same experiences with Linux.

That being said, macs should generally be left to editing studios because their small user base has driven their price sky-high.

My favorite brand up untill recently was the Thinkpad line by IBM, which was recenly sold to LENOVO (an asian multi-national corporation). I don't know how they're doing since them, but it's only been a few moonths so there can't be that much of a change. They even have a Clearance Corner for Laptops where you can pick up some pritty sweet macheines.

[alexander]

No problem Irish, sooo, umm, when do i move in? :)

[alexander]

Gahd, as sweet as a AMD 3000+ 64 bit laptop for $860, besides i really hate the way IBM's look, i deal with them every day in orders of dozens, and can tell you that they are durable, but dont really perform all that great, although they do have quite a large user base...

As to macs, they look great and run awesomely, and are generaly ok for the general public, but its a proprietary front end that is closed source that runs off of BSD kernel, which i dislike for a number of reasons: 1 they are pain in the but to configure, and generaly come with everything built in, leaving tons of room for performance, and that is not the case with Linux machines, Linux kernel is 100 times easier to configure, and it has help built in, as well as numerous tutorials, and people that will help you. But, of all the things i disagree with BSD licensing and thats why i prefer GNU over BSD; just that there's something about "well, you can tweak my code and destribute it as a proprietary piece of software, close the source and sell it" that kinda turns me away from it, except for OpenBSD there is nothing that BSD does that is not done on Linux, and even in OpenBSD, its just easier to set up things (like transparent bridging with pf is way easier then iptables), not necessarily a question of whether or not it can be done...

[alexander]

I have a few friends with Dell's. They are fairly happy with them. But then again, all they do is browse and e-mail.

For your daughter who would eventually want to start playing around with stuff and try to hack things, dell, is probably not the best choice... (cheap parts and all) If you are considering that option, you are better off buying a prebuilt system through like pricewatch or something, with an overclockable AMD processor in it and things, just so when she gets to the point where machinery matters, just saying overclocked commands certain respect raising the 1337ness factor :)

[Jay-qu]

I had a PC made for me only about a month ago and it was far better than buying one from the stores - not only was it nearly half the price of the equivilent retail I was able to customise all the parts. :) But if you really dont no much about the inside of computers it might be better to just go off the shelf... :)

[CraigD]

My experience with personally owned (as opposed to those an employer gifts one with) computers is that the best course is to:

1) look for specials such places as http://www.pricewatch.com, http://www.shopper.com, and local store adds for retail stores like BestBuy and CompUSA for machines that are close to state-of-the-art, but for some reason suffering poor sales, and thus deeply discounted;

2) Google the specific machines for any dire complaints (buggy motherboards, NIC cards, etc.)

3) Buy one.

4) Spend an extra $100 or thereabouts to up the memory above 1 GiB.

 

I’m this moment typing on a Toshiba A65-126 laptop purchased at CompUSA for $400 (after rebates), with $160 in added memory to max it at 1.2 GiB, and a $200/2 year accidental damage replacement warrantee (I’ve never dropped or sat on a laptop, but the peace-of-mind this affords feels well worth the $200), for a total cost of $760. It’s an awful nice laptop for that price – my only regret its short (typically 2-3 hr) battery life, and a single annoying feature of its keyboard layout – the lack of a right-side Ctrl key, making 1-handed Ctrl-Home/End etc. impossible. Sometimes I wonder if laptop designers are required by some weird secret society law to include at least one idiotic keyboard design flaw in every laptop – I’ve yet to see evidence otherwise.