low budget build for my dad

[mokylim]

my dad needs a computer upgrade from his 4 yr. dell desktop. hell mostly use this for basic computer stuff such as surfing. e mail. some simple word processing. nothing heavy.. budget is at $300 after tax ( i know, he is cheap).

he wont be needing a monitor/mouse & keyboard. thanks for the input in advance

 

[BoomerD]

Just buy him another Dell. You can get some good deals at the Dell Outlet.

I get "coupons" in my email all the time. None that are current right now though.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

yeah. just buy a dell

 

[gmaster456]

Echoing everyone else and saying just get him another dell. After you factor in the cost of windows, its not worth building it from scratch.

 

[mfenn]

Fourth recommendation for a Dell. You're never going to beat them once you factor in the cost for a legit Windows license. For example, here's a system with an Athlon II X2 and 4GB of RAM for $270.

 

[BoomerD]

Mokylim, sent you a PM with a 20% off Dell coupon.

 

[frozentundra123456]

What are the specs of the 4 year old computer? If it has a dual core processor and a decent amount of ram, dont see why he needs a new comp at all. If he has a restore disk, maybe just back up the files and do a reformat. I am using an off the shelf system that is almost 5 years old, and it is quite adequate even for light gaming.

On the other hand, a new Dell for around 300.00 is a good deal also. I also believe Best Buy had an athlon II system for less than 300.00 on sale this week.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

yeah. maybe adding more RAM to it might help
i added 1 GB RAM (only had 512 mb)to my moms 2800+ pc and deleted all temp files and .log files
made everything run faster
also defragmented her HDD
now it runs so smoothly
also we disabled some stupid addons