Re: Low end desktop for EE tasks?

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:26:00 -0700, Joerg wrote:
Rich Grise wrote:
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:44:49 -0700, Joerg 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.

Have Fry's build you one to your spec. http://www.outpost.com

Oh no, definitely not. Seen too much DOA stuff.

I've found that they have a very good return policy - if something
doesn't work, they'll swap it out and sell the old one to somebody
else. ;-)

But, admittedly, taking stuff back can be time-consuming, and also
admittedly, I've never had them assemble a system for me - I've always
just bought components and assembled them myself.

Cheers!
Rich

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