Forum Overview :: American McGee's Honda Civic :: Wherein I finally ask for computer help

[quote name="junior allen"]My main computer -- a laptop -- melted down on me just before Xmas. Which is neither here nor there, except that it's the motive for these questions. I've decided that using a laptop as your main computer is Pretty Fucking Gay, really, and so sometime here in 2003 I need to get myself a new desktop, and to use the laptop the way God designed it, as, ah, a laptop. Anyway. I'm hardly a computer whiz -- I'm lucky if I can close my html tags. I'm aware that building your own is the cheapest and best way to go about things, and I'm sure it can't be that hard, but I don't really have the time right now to figure out how to do that: I'm moving to a new apartment in a couple of months and have other things on my mind, as you might imagine. ( In fact, I'm still going to have to rely on my laptop for the next few months, anyway.) What I want to get, I think, is a Dell. Something decent, reliable, with good service/tech help. My demands are fairly humble: what I want is simply something reasonably powerful that I can essentially order off the shelf. Price is a factor: I'm not starving the way I was, but I ain't exactly rolling in cash, either. I've seen Dell ads selling some systems under a grand -- are they decent? I haven't researched this enough to know -- in fact, the research is starting right here. Any suggestions for Dell systems -- or any good mail order systems like Dell, I guess -- would be appreciated. I know enough to stay away from Gateway. My last couple of computers were Acers, for long complicated reasons (essentially I lived in the country and I knew people who bought them for their business). They were decent enough, but their 3D chips blew (my laptop has an ATI Rage Pro) and their tech. support was awful. Like I said, I won't be buying this until April at the earliest, so if there's any other advice anyone can have -- like particularly good times to buy, when systems are discounted, or particularly good places to buy from -- that'd be appreciated to. Much thanks. junior allen [/quote]