• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Best retail PC for "grandma"

GasX

GasX

Lifer
My MIL needs a new PC. She used word, email and the browser and stores digital photos. She has a pretty good 20" monitor so she is set there.

Who is the best retailer these days of basic reliable boxes?
 
Buy her a refurbed Dell Optiplex off ebay from a highly rated vendor with thousands of transactions.
A 3.0-3.2GHz P4 class machine running XP Pro on at least 1GB of memory should be plenty for her needs.
You can buy those machines all day long for less than $150 shipped.
 
no point buying xp at this stage, its getting close to end of support. win7 is easier to support for the future, and easier to use in general for grandma. p4 is a heat/electricity hog/loud and performs poor, any p4 class is bundled with a slow harddrive from that era, its just not worth the "savings". just get a dell, even a low end new one will beat the pants off any of those old xp ones. also, win7 scales fonts and gui correctly, so going to larger or higher dpi monitors or simply enlarging interface to fit grandmas old eyes works, whereas its botched in xp.
 
I can just hear Grandma now...
"I'm only averaging 72 fps with this old thing... I need to overclock!"
 
Blain said:
I can just hear Grandma now...
"I'm only averaging 72 fps with this old thing... I need to overclock!"
Click to expand...

no, but while the browser is grinding away because flash has bloated to hundreds of megs of memory usage, she will click and click and click and click with no response when the system hickups or stalls a bit and make things worse, or cause her to fear her choice of inputs etc. unresponsive systems are not user friendly to anyone, let alone grans. unresponsive systems lead to fear, uncertainty, and frustration, all bad things for a less tech savvy user.
 
0roo0roo said:
no point buying xp at this stage, its getting close to end of support. win7 is easier to support for the future, and easier to use in general for grandma. p4 is a heat/electricity hog/loud and performs poor, any p4 class is bundled with a slow harddrive from that era, its just not worth the "savings". just get a dell, even a low end new one will beat the pants off any of those old xp ones. also, win7 scales fonts and gui correctly, so going to larger or higher dpi monitors or simply enlarging interface to fit grandmas old eyes works, whereas its botched in xp.
Click to expand...

Would you recommend a Dell or are one of the other big shops giving better deals these days?
 
yeah lets face it grandma doesnt have much time left, and i doubt she wants to spend it waiting on a P4 just to save a few bucks... the major question here is how much does she wanna spend
 
I did something similar for my dad for father's day, if you watch the Dell site you'll see their "Studio Hybrid" systems drop to 299$ now and then. They're not especially powerful (probably less bang for the buck), but they're more than enough for a very casual user and my parents will get a kick out of it's little case and the included wireless mouse/KB. Plus they could use the extra desk room.

Actually, the deal is going on right now.
http://www.xpbargains.com/index.php/send_deal/147838

Edit: Original link wasn't working :/
 
Last edited:
Soulkeeper said:
Don't skimp on grandma's pc !
that P4 idea isn't gonna cut it
Click to expand...
This. These days you probably can't even boot into Vista with just 1gb of memory. I think we're at Service Pack 3 right now.
I have 2 Firefox tabs open right now and it's consuming over 100mb of memory just for this one application.

Obvious things are obvious
-do not build this computer yourself, no exceptions
-lots and lots of ram


What do people do with computers? They install lots of viruses while they run 3 different virus scanners at the same time. You need lots of memory to run this shit, and you'll need lots of CPU power to work around it. The quad core with 4gb of ram I built for my mom for Christmas was something like $600 CDN and it's a freakin awesome computer. I guess a regular dual core would work too.
 
ShawnD1 said:
What do people do with computers? They install lots of viruses while they run 3 different virus scanners at the same time. You need lots of memory to run this shit, and you'll need lots of CPU power to work around it. The quad core with 4gb of ram I built for my mom for Christmas was something like $600 CDN and it's a freakin awesome computer. I guess a regular dual core would work too.
Click to expand...

So sad but true. It's mindboggling the crap that gets installed on my parents' computers.
 
darkewaffle said:
So sad but true. It's mindboggling the crap that gets installed on my parents' computers.
Click to expand...

A lot of it is just accidental. Every time Java updates, it tries to install a Yahoo or Ask toolbar in internet explorer. You need to de-select that box every single time.
MSN Messenger installs itself to run when the computer boots up, so that's another background task running until you manually change it.
Windows OEM computers come with at least 10 different trial versions of things that all try to run when you log in.

Seriously, the worst thing is Internet Explorer. Everything wants to add toolbars to it. Would you like the google toolbar? Yahoo toolbar? Ask toolbar?

Even Microsoft Office has some bullshit that tries to start with Windows. Like why? Why do they think that would be a good idea? Does the average person use Excel and Word every single time the computer is turned on?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top