[SGVLUG] Shopping for computer for father-in-law...

[Dan Buthusiem]

Future-proof to me is a frame of mind. I know someone whose mother still
uses a P4. She only uses it for email and web browsing. Could she do with a
new PC? Sure, but she doesn't really need one; the P4 does everything she
needs. Same with my Celeron 430. Does all the small home server stuff I
need it to, and it's power efficient enough.

If you want something you're not going to have to play with much, I'd go
for an i3 from a major vendor, max the RAM, get a service contract so that
any failed components get replaced without too much drama and shopping
around for something compatible, then setup an automatic backup solution
like Ghost to take care of any, "I don't know why it stopped working," and,
"What do you mean the hard disk crashed? I can still get my pictures,
right?" kind of stuff.
On Aug 13, 2012 10:30 PM, "Dan Kegel" <dank at kegel.com> wrote:

> Goal: reasonably future-proof system for under $500 without monitor.
>
> There are plenty of crappy expensive systems out there
> (e.g. Celerons, Pentiums, A8's, ...).  I'm looking for an
> i3 or i5 that's a little future-proof.
>
> I'd consider a Chromebox, though they don't have i3 or i5 versions yet
> as far as I can tell.
>
> http://www.logicbuy.com/categorydeals/computers/desktops seems like
> it points to a few good deals (e.g. at the moment it points
> out that you can get a Dell Inspiron 620 MT with an i5-2320,
> 6GB RAM, and 1TB hard drive for $499... but Dell's own
> site kinds of finds that deal for you, too.
>
> http://www.logicbuy.com/categorydeals/computers/desktops points
> to an i7 for $600 (a bit over his budget).
>
> Looks like Dell pushes the i3-2120 and the i5-2320;
> the former is a 2 core, the latter has twice the cores as well
> as twice the L1, L2, and L3 cache, and is about 1.5 times the
> throughput on some benchmarks.
>
> Any reason to not just point him at the cheapest i5 dell?
>
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