Re: Low end desktop for EE tasks?

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.

And LCD monitors rock!

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

John

.