BleepingComputer.com: Mom's New Computer.....

My mom has an old computer still running windows 98' with so much crap jammed on it from years of kids downloading music and games. All mom wants to do is get a new computer that she can surf the web and check her email on without having to wait forever or having it freeze up on her. The kids are out and noone else will be on it so she there won't be any more music downloads or even games on it.

We were checking out Dell today and she would like it order one from there. As we were going through all the options, I realized I really don't know enough to make these desciions for her, by myself, so I was hoping someone here could help.

This is the deal Dell is advertising right now and what it comes with..

PROCESSOR AMD Athlonâ„¢ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English edit
MONITOR 17 inch SE178WFP Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor edit
MEMORY 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs edit
HARD DRIVE 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cacheâ„¢ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD+/-RW Drive edit
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE Integrated Graphics GPU edit
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio edit
KEYBOARD & MOUSE Dell USB Keyboard and Dell Optical USB Mouse edit
FLOPPY & MEDIA READER No Floppy Drive Included edit
MODEM & WIRELESS 56K PCI Data Fax Modem

Any of these things can be motified.

I'll be waiting for your advice.
Thank You
-Cheryl

Edit: Moved topic to the more appropriate forum. ~ Animal

If that's all she's going to do with it almost anything out there will be OK. The more memory the better and the larger the hard disk the better. The more important thing is after you buy one is to set it up properly with a firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spyware. Not necessarily what comes preloaded on the computer. Nasties are still out there, kids or no kids. My kids are out on their own now and they're on my computer more now then when they lived at home As far as brands Dell, HP, and Compaq are pretty much equal. Stay away from eMachines
Mark

What do you think of what comes with the one i posted above, is it enough?

FWIW -

Mostly, I agree with garmanma.

Adding another 1 G RAM couldn't hurt especally at today's relatively inexpensive prices.

Honestly, based on the useage you suggest, she probably will never come near filling that 250G HD.

Of course, "never" may come sooner than one thinks. Especially if she starts receiving a ton of digital images from family and friends or, of course, her own digital camera.

Edit to correct spelling. Oops.

This post has been edited by JohnWho: 14 December 2007 - 07:55 PM

The Dell looks fine, like Jonwho and I said the more memory the better.
I have a wife, a digital camera and 2 new grandkids. I can tell you how fast you can fill 250G hard drive
Mark

This post has been edited by garmanma: 14 December 2007 - 08:23 PM

cherylisfun, on Dec 14 2007, 05:56 PM, said:

How about MsnTV, formerly known as WebTv, if surfing and e-mailing is all it's going to be used for?
No malware worries, updating the OS, or other hassels that come with a computer.
Got it for my aunt and she loves the simplicity of it.
Check it out here-
http://www.msntv.com/pc/

What is the Internet connection, Dial ,cable ,DSL...as you may want to change this

MODEM & WIRELESS 56K PCI Data Fax Modem

It seems like a good computer, mabye add another 1Gb Ram and possibly upgrade to a slightly larger Hard Drive, you will find you might need the extra space, and for what you said it was going to be used for, its perfect!

boopme, on Dec 14 2007, 11:19 PM, said:

o she has DSL through AT&T but they hooked that modem right up to the computer she had before so the modem she gets shouldn't matter right?

cherylisfun, most new Dells have an Ethernet capability built-in so you shouldn't have any problem connecting to a DSL modem.

If you tell us the exact Dell model number we'll be able to tell for sure.

I would suggest that you see if you can get a computer with XP rather than Vista, she will have less headaches and won't need as much RAM.

dc3, on Dec 16 2007, 01:03 AM, said:

She's used to 98, so there's going to be a learning curve no matter what. Might as well go with Vista. We all will, eventually. Kicking and screaming, but sooner or later we won't have a choice. Linux of course, but you know what I mean
Mark

JohnWho, on Dec 15 2007, 10:45 PM, said:

Dell Inspiron 531s
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+, Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic - English

It definitely has ethernet capability.
It got a nice review as well. Good one!

Just my 26 cents (adjusted for inflation here) but why not get a n Everex gPC for $199 from Walmart? It runs a custom version of Linux designed especially for the new user and Google's web apps. Being a Linux machine, you won't need to worry about virues and spyware at all.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614