Re: Low end desktop for EE tasks?

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:44:49 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Hello Folks,

Old iron horse here starts making creaking noises and it's tired. It only needs to do CAD, Gerber viewing, newsgroup, light SPICE sub-circuit sims (the kind that runs in a few seconds). IOW, I am replacing the grunt works PC.

Replacement should be <$500 sans monitor (won't give up my CRT, no way). And absolutely no Vista which excludes most lines. Anyone's got experiences with these lines?

Dell Vostro (desktop): Windows XP. 1GB RAM which is nice. No parallel port which ain't very nice, and the card from the old one won't fit I guess. Around $350.

HP Compaq DX2250: Windows XP. Has parallel port which is nice. 250MB RAM, well, that ain't cutting it. Price seems to pop right up if you deviate from pre-config. Otherwise around $350 as well.



Why go cheap? Your time to hassle with cheap crap isn't worth the
savings.


Never had any troubles with PCs. Unless they got really, really old and banged around a lot. Ok, this one is slowly going but it has been through a lot and it gave me 10 years of reliable service. Not bad.


And LCD monitors rock!


Somehow my eyes can't get used to them. A few hours of Gerber reviewing and they hurt. Not with the large Trinitron tube here.


The last few Dells I've bought have been increasing garbage; never
again.


I remember the story when you went to HP. But that was a different category, full blown servers AFAIR. I really don't need that for this desk. In the lab that's different but there I've got a fast laptop which works nicely.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
.

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