Puter guys what do you think of this one

Grumpy

Krusty old SOB! Yes, I own Audiokarma
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http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2046240211

Found this one local to me. Seems pretty nice . I wrote the guy to find out what brand it is and he said Aztech. I just want something alittle (ok alot ) more reliable then this damn lemon HP I have. All I mostly due is surf (as if you guys didnt know that) play some pretty intensive diving games and listen to music. I know it doesent have a CD burner but I could add one for that price. I cant stand this HP any more everything is integrated (video,Sound) on the mother board. It crashes atleast a million times a day. And any time I add something new I end up having to take it off because of error this or error that. Any help would be great

Dave
 
looks good for the price. 1 gig processor is a good speed, most likely is really 512 meg ram (he's reading it off the GUI), quantum 20 gig drive is small by todays standards but still that's big, 52x cd screams, XP is the way to go for OS,and you will find the ZIP comes in real handy for storing and as a alternate harddrive.

So, whatcha going to do with the HP. I may be interested in it as a MP3 machine for the kids.
 
Curently I use a HP X1844. Its an

850Mhz Athalon
64 meg upgraded to 512 meg of Ram
30 gig
48X CD
CD-RW


When i bought it around a year ago I had to go back three times just to get one that worked. That should have been my first clue.
atleast once a month I have to reformat and I am sick of it ! Even after I wipe it clean as the day I got it it still gives me errors. Hell I have been on the phone with HP so much I shoulda had a direct line. Its still got two years left on the extended warrantee But I have to take it into Circuit Coty to have the work done. Those guys cant even insatall Ram without messing it up. I got spoiled with my trusty Toshiba. Its too bad they dont make Home PC's anymore or I would have certainly bough another. Any how back to the auction. I am still thinking about it and if I did pick up the Ebay puter most likely The HP will goto my kids to beat into submission.

Dave
 
The computer in that auction seems to have stuff integrated into it, at least the video is.

That machine seems not bad,

Pros
  • good processor - 1 gigahertz a good speed for thew use you'll give it.
  • nice CD rom 52X is fine.
  • a good OS. XP is window's best yet.
  • most computers like this one that are built use standard pieces, so expanding is much easier

The cons
  • No CD burner (but you can probably steal the burner from the HP).
  • No direct support... that really isn't that much of an issue, considering brand names rarely offer quality service anyway
  • This guy is using only 8 mb as shared video... i wonder if that's all the motherboard can take..?

Unknown

  • How many PCI slots are on the MoBo (so you can add external video/sound, etc)
  • What else is integrated on the motherboard (modem/sound/network).

For the price, it's pretty difficult to beat.

Chris
 
ya snooz ya loose.......Funny tho that the buyer of that puter also sells vintage audio gear :mad:
 
Never buy a machine which has integrated graphics and sound - period.

If you must, ensure that it is possible to disable both and that it has an AGP slot and sufficient PCI slots to add your own graphics and sound cards.

Storage is cheap these days - extra hard drive space is inexpensive.

Rip the CD burner out of the HP ... the secondary IDE channel should have 2 connectors - 1 which will be in use for the CD-ROM, the 2nd one can be used for the burner. Just make sure you get the jumper settings right on the drives themselves (primary/slave), otherwise they can be a bit temperamental.

Ensure the machine has sufficient RAM - at least 128Mb to run Win XP.

There are many other things I could add, but those are the main things to be aware of.
 
Thanks Walt

If I would hae done my home owrk the first time I would have made a much more educated descission. I did not even know that My HP had an intefrated this and that till I got home and tried to listen to my kids CD while I was surfing the net. It would slow things down and make everything all jaggedy. Hell My toshiba P133 had sperate Video and sound cards and its from 1996. Looks like I am stuck with the ole HP till another deal comes along.

Dave
 
850Mhz Athalon
64 meg upgraded to 512 meg of Ram
30 gig
48X CD
CD-RW

Grumpy you don't play games right?? Well what you have should be more than adequate for anything. I run:

PIII 500@700
256 Meg RAM
20 gig HD
40 gig HD
52x cdrom
4x4x32 cdrw
Geforce 3 64 meg DDR

And I can still play all the newest games with all the eye candy turned on, all you need to do is upgrade your video card, HP's are pretty good for mass market stuff and you should have a AGP slot or a spare PCI for upgrades. What OS are you running you mebbe should upgrade that as well to sumthin more stable for you like Win 2000. If you are not computer savvy find a tech who is good and won't cheat you and have your HP upgraded, an 850MHz Athlon and 512 meg of ram is nothing to sneeze at.
 
Come to think about it, thor is right.

Your machine should get the job done, get XP or Win2000, and you should be pretty good.

A separate video card with 32 or 64 mb, and you ought to fine.

The added performance of a 1 ghz machine wouldn't be all that much.

Chris
 
Absolutely - however his issue is stability not performance.

He has already said that he has tried a number of times to reformat and reinstall the OS, and he still has problems with crashing.

In the absence of a software problem he most likely has some sort of hardware conflict, either physical in the case of a card which doesn't gell with the rest of the system (there are thousands of known documented conflicts between pieces of hardware), or software in the case of shared resources (IRQ's) or corrupted/incompatible drivers.

In my experience conflicts of this nature are endemic whenever you have onboard video, audio, NIC etc. Inevitably the chips used by the motherboard manufacturers are of a lesser spec than what are used on the stand-alone cards.

In the absence of real support from HP, my advice would be to disable the onboard video, audio, whatever, and buy new video and sound cards (also a NIC/modem if required).

The settings will be in the BIOS setup if they exist (or if it is an old mobo, possibly a jumper setting on the mobo itself) - HOWEVER, the other thing I have found with "name brand" PC's is that most of the BIOS functionality is usually suppressed from what you would normally find in a motherboard/BIOS combo of similiar spec from an independent supplier.

So, Grumpy - if you can be bothered, buy a new video and audio cards, and disable the onboard, or (as is likely to be more $$ efficient), keep your eyes peeled for a new PC. Like the others have said, for your uses you won't need anything more than say, 1-1.5 Ghz, 128 Mb RAM, 20-30 Gb HDD ... get Win XP as well as it is very stable and reliable as an OS.

Good luck.
 
Thanks guys

For the advice. Once I did realize that everything was integrated I called HP to talk to about disabling the video and sound on the Mobo. They said No. Even if you could do it it would most likely mess something else up.

Thor

For what I use my puter for it should be just fine...Unfortunately its not. I do play a few games but they make the computer freak out. I am not a game nut like you but occasionally I enjoy a game of Descent, Mech Warrior or my favorite Test Drive 6. All of these games go haywire right in the middle of playing. Hell sometimes Test drive wont even load.

At one point I figure why not just max out the ram to 1 gig but I decided to try the 512 first. It made no damn difference that I could see. So you guys really thinks it windows ME thats screwing this thing up. I have hated it from day one but mostly because it is a memory HOG! So I should try XP huh ? maybe a trip to Bestbuy is in order. How would I upgrade to Win 2000. isint that backwards. I have heard it was suoer stable but can you upgrade backward. Thanks again for the help guys

Dave
 
Originally posted by grumpy
Thanks guys

For the advice. Once I did realize that everything was integrated I called HP to talk to about disabling the video and sound on the Mobo. They said No. Even if you could do it it would most likely mess something else up.

Thor

For what I use my puter for it should be just fine...Unfortunately its not. I do play a few games but they make the computer freak out. I am not a game nut like you but occasionally I enjoy a game of Descent, Mech Warrior or my favorite Test Drive 6. All of these games go haywire right in the middle of playing. Hell sometimes Test drive wont even load.

At one point I figure why not just max out the ram to 1 gig but I decided to try the 512 first. It made no damn difference that I could see. So you guys really thinks it windows ME thats screwing this thing up. I have hated it from day one but mostly because it is a memory HOG! So I should try XP huh ? maybe a trip to Bestbuy is in order. How would I upgrade to Win 2000. isint that backwards. I have heard it was suoer stable but can you upgrade backward. Thanks again for the help guys

Dave

Dave

Open the PC and check how many PCI and AGP slots you have inside, and get separate sound and video. Most of the time it's the integrated video that screws up a computer's performance, this happened on a friend's PC, he changed the video card and his machine was much better.

If these cards don't work you can use these on another system.

Upgrading backwards is a relative turn, much like in audio... the newest is not necessarily the best. This is especially true in software, where newer usually means more fat and the same or less meat. Win 2000 is based on Windows NT. This operating system is meant to work on networks, but is very stable too.

If I were to choose, I'd go for Win XP. I'll try to find a copy of W2000 in english (I have it, but in español).

Chris
 
Which version of XP would you recomend. The home or office. Either aint cheap but if you guys recomend it I will give them a shot.

Dave
 
just a word of caution. upgrading OS is not a simple click and go. you may need to find drivers for some of your hardware. they are different for the 98, 2000, ME(crap), XP. you can find them on the manufacturer's web site. you will get a report when upgrading of the items that do not support 2000. then you will know what to look for.
 
Walt...from my experience I would not recommend Win2000 for home use. It seems like it was more of a step than anything (for home use that is) What I have found is that the majority of my hardware does not have drivers for Win2000...same with some software. Heck...I had to actually talk to HP on the phone to see if they had any drivers I could use to run my scanner on 2000. At the website they have Win95,98,me,xp.

It almost reminds me of the earlier Cyrix chips...the chip ran fine when computing...or running thru tests...but match it up with software and it freaked out...that is...if you could get the software to load up with the Cryix chip. I actually e-mailed them stating that every piece of software I buy I have to WAIT for a fix to come out for the Cyrix xhip. Do you have any plans to better the compatability your chip has with the software/harware that is out and that is coming out...They wrote something to the effect of...The problem is not with our chip...our chip runs fine. You need to send this message to the various software manufacturers...they are the one who have the compatability issue.
My jaw dropped when I read their response...I wish I still had that letter.
One of these days I will re-install Win98 and get rid of 2000.


dang...maybe next month I'll do it ;)
 
GF -

I did not recommend Win 2k, I recommended Win XP.

Win 2k is essentially the next generation of Win NT4 so really it wasn't designed for home use ... however once MS found that many home users were going to 2k instead of ME, they started ensuring that more drivers were available for use with 2k.

You should be able to get support for 2k drivers for most devices etc these days.

Grumpy - the home edition of Win XP would be fine for your purposes. The next best OS for home use would be Win 98SE ...
 
Grump sumthin is not right those games you mention are old games and with your cpu power and amount of RAM even with a crappy shitty integrated video chip you should have acceptable framerates playing, your problem is that something is not set up right somewhere in that thing, I used to play decent on my old P166 with 32MB of RAM with a 4MB video card back in the day.
 
Ward could it be the amount of RAM the comp should be using for the shared video is not setup right in the bios??
 
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