Need Recommendation on Cheap Retail locally available PC.

[Valvoline6]

My soon to be mother in law had her old PC fried by lightening. She wants it replaced right away which means no building, no mail order. We need to find something in Best Buy, CC, OD, OM, or Staples. No Fry's or CUSA here in Fort Myers FL. What is a good, reliable, relatively inexpensive, and stable system for web browsing, email, and occasional light gaming (grandson might play Backyard Hocky or something)? In general what brand is better? HP, Compaq, eMachines.. etc.? Thanks for your help.

 

[SoylentGreen]

First spend the dough on good surge protection, not the 6-plug $4.99 ones.
Just go to BestBuy.

 

[GasX]

does your mother-in-law do anything other than surf and e-mail? If not, then it doesn't matter what you buy.

 

[Christoph]

It's usually worth checking out Costco if you have to buy locally.

 

[human2k]

Another thumps up for Costco.

 

[Valvoline6]

I've seen cheap PC's crash just web browsing. I just want her to have something stable, she's not going to be able to do alot of trouble shooting. Her grandson plays some games like Backyard Hocky as I've said. She might do some word processing, greeting card stuff, color printing etc. I will check Costco too..

 

[Harvey]

If you ever venture out of OT, you're probably geek enough to start by figuring out what hardware setup you want to get her. Keep your mind open to good alternative choices of motherboards, vid cards, etc. Then, cruise the local shops for the best price on a combo you want. Pick a store near you that that will assemble the system and warranty it. Make sure they have been in business for awhile so you feel secure that they will be there when you need them.

The main advantages of this are:

1. You will get a good selection of components that don't use any proprietary form factors so you can easily replace anything that fails.

2. If something fails, your service will be a local drive, not a long time on hold and time shipping stuff back and forth.

3. If nothing fails, you won't be prepaying for online service you don't use.

Unless your local dealer also has great prices on peripherals, the office stores you mention are usually your best bet for items such as printers, scanners, and possibly monitors, etc., especially when you consider coupon - rebate combinations. Finding the best deal takes a little web and phone searching, but not much more. Here's a link to current Florida store prices.

 

[Valvoline6]

Thanks Harvey. You should be able to tell by my sig that I build my own... She wants this PC TODAY! lol She is in major withdrawl. I don't have time to build her one right now either. Wish I did, I love to do it..

 

[Harvey]

I searched BigYellow.com for computer sales in Fort Myers, Fl. There are a few. Here's one example, BCD 2000. that seems to have reasonable prices on motherboards, CPU's, etc.:

Retail Duron 1.3 GHz: $49.00

ASUS A7N8X DDR400 AGP8X: $132.00. A great board with onboard LAN, sound and SATA. Probably a bit pricey for your mom-in-law, but just an example.

Add a case, a $31 generic TNT 2 Vid card, and that Cendyne 48x12x48 CD-RW for $9.99 (after rebates) from Office Max, and your mom-in-law is rockin'.

That's just one example I found in 10 minutes of searching from here, in L.A. I'm sure you can find more good ones in your area.

 

[RossMAN]

We were at CostCo B&M yesterday and I saw some HP desktops for cheap which had CD-RW, DVD, USB 2.0, decent graphics, 10/100 NIC, XP Home, etc.

Check out CostCo B&M first.