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BIOSTAR P4M80-M4-COMBO35 Intel Celeron D 315 Micro ATX Motherboard/CPU Set - Retail $88.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813138024

PNY Optima 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory - Retail $39.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820236111

Western Digital Caviar 80GB 3.5" IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM $44.49
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822144102

Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail $23.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811164057

BenQ Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache ATA/ATAPI 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With exclusive SolidBurn Technology - OEM $33.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827101010

UPS 3 Day Service - $25.82

Total - $257.27

2.66GHz Celeron D 315
512MB DDR400 RAM
80GB
DVD Burner

BIOSTAR P4M80-M4-COMBO35 Intel Celeron D 315 Micro ATX Motherboard/CPU Set - Retail $88.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813138024

PNY Optima 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory - Retail $39.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820236111

Western Digital Caviar 80GB 3.5" IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM $44.49
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822144102

Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail $23.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811164057

BenQ Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache ATA/ATAPI 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With exclusive SolidBurn Technology - OEM $33.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827101010

UPS 3 Day Service - $25.82

Total - $257.27

2.66GHz Celeron D 315
512MB DDR400 RAM
80GB
DVD Burner

BIOSTAR P4M80-M4-COMBO35 Intel Celeron D 315 Micro ATX Motherboard/CPU Set - Retail $88.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813138024

PNY Optima 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory - Retail $39.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820236111

Western Digital Caviar 80GB 3.5" IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM $44.49
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822144102

Linkworld 3230-02C2222U Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - Retail $23.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811164057

BenQ Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache ATA/ATAPI 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With exclusive SolidBurn Technology - OEM $33.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827101010

UPS 3 Day Service - $25.82

Total - $257.27

2.66GHz Celeron D 315
512MB DDR400 RAM
80GB
DVD Burner

While all OEM RAM is a lot more expensive, it's not as bad as the difference you are seeing. If you go with bargain basement RAM then the price is really that low, but if you want any gaurantee that the RAM will work in your MacBook(or at all) then it's more like $360.

If you are going to go the cheap route then I recommend using a reputable dealer and buying respectable brand(Transcend, Corsair, crucial). NewEgg is a pretty good place to buy cheap RAM. Dealing with shoddy RAM from a shoddy dealer over the internet just isn't worth it.

No problem. You just need to buy a bunch of hard drives. If you get a hundred 300GB drives (that's 30 TB) per day at retail price it would only be around $10,000/day.

Your are wrong there. I've used my 12in Powerbook to play a few games, and as a Mac user I can say that I am seriously disappointed in losing the Pro version at this form factor. I bought a 12in laptop for a reason, I wanted a true laptop computer. I don't want a mobile desktop (17in), I want a powerful machine in the 12in/13.3in range that does what I want. By dumping an integrated graphics chipset into that machine it sort of takes it away from me. Now I will just grab ths: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16834117158

No low end? Newegg.com has 11 AMD processors in stock under $100. That's fairly low end. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Bran d=1028&N=2010340343+50001028&Submit=ENE&Manufactor y=1028&SubCategory=343

Sera.

Some pretty cheap headsets.

Not to burst your bubble but dual layer burners cost approximately $40 to $60.

This one in particular: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827152060 rates especially well.

Umm.... what?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827106014 - dual layer burner: $35.99, free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16874100001 - low end xBox 360: $399

Maybe it's time to upgrade that DVD burner of yours, and tell the rest of us where you got an xBox 360 for so cheap :)

Umm.... what?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827106014 - dual layer burner: $35.99, free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16874100001 - low end xBox 360: $399

Maybe it's time to upgrade that DVD burner of yours, and tell the rest of us where you got an xBox 360 for so cheap :)

$300? Where have you been shopping? NewEgg has NEC, Lite-On, Plextor, and other drives for about $40. TigerDirect has a good selection too.

I have two dual-layer burners that, with enclosures and shipping, probably cost me $200 max.

Might as well get 'em while they're hot. Here, linkage: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827152059

I bought this fanless 7600GS a month ago, and it works great in my quiet pc. Combined with my passively cooled Rev E. Athlon64 3000+ it plays Q4 at 1600x1200 without dropping frames.

7800gs. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=20 10380048+1305520548+106790717+1069609639&Submit=EN E&SubCategory=48

I thought this way too, until I found two key things:

1) PCI express cards cost about $50 cheaper than the AGP version fo the same card
2) A PCI express motherboard can be found under $50

Check out NewEgg's video card subcategory and compare the AGP and the PCI x16 sections.

I bought a relatively high end (at the time) gaming PC from ABS Computers (December 2004).

I spent $2600.00 on it. I've glanced at the price of individual parts (at their parent company which happens to be the geek shopping haven known as Newegg.com) and based on my preliminary findings, yes I could indeed have gotten the parts for less money than what I paid having them put in a PC they built for me.

For example, I noticed my video card (NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT) was about $80.00 less at Newegg. But here's the deal: Are you ready, willing and/or capable of building your own PC? I'm not. So, I'm willing to spend more to pay someone else to do it. Heck, a year later, I ordered more RAM and extra hard drives from an online retailer (not Newegg) and then took them and my PC to a local shop for the installation. I'm a software person, not a hardware person. I'll reformat your hard drives and install two Linux distros, FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows XP and and additional software for you, but don't ask me to pop the cover off and do anything there.
I'm all thumbs in that department.

I am music to the ears of the online PC retailers. There has to be a lot of people like me out there.

People seemed to be getting worked up about the NSA keeping records of which number they've dialed. Let's do a little math and see how many conversations we could record in a year for a paltry $10 million. Your cellphone uses a digital vo-coder that operates at 8kbits/sec. That's 1k bytes/sec. Over on newegg they've got a 300GB Seagate hard drive selling for $99. So $10 million buys you 100,000 drives or 30 petabytes (30E15) of storage. At 1k byte/sec, you'll be able to record 30E12 seconds or 5E11 minutes of conversation. The average phone call lasts somewhere around 6 minutes. So we could record about 83E9 conversations. There are about 300E6 people in the U.S., so 83E9 conversations is 270 6-minute phone calls for every man, woman, and child in the country. I'd be surprised to find out that my calls haven't been permanently recorded for many years now.

Ok, you remember how easy the Celeron 300 overclock to 450 was? Well, this is just as easy. And THAT's why it's news.

You don't have to take it to the M4d extreme and go to 4.1ghz. If you have a good motherboard and some good memory, you can up the FSB on your motherboard and easily get to 3.2ghz (from the stock 2.6ghz). And you don't need to touch the voltage to do it or watercool. Just change the setting and there's a damn good chance you won't have a problem.

It's a $130 processor that, with a minor tweak, can perform like a $1000 processor.

Ok, you remember how easy the Celeron 300 overclock to 450 was? Well, this is just as easy. And THAT's why it's news.

You don't have to take it to the M4d extreme and go to 4.1ghz. If you have a good motherboard and some good memory, you can up the FSB on your motherboard and easily get to 3.2ghz (from the stock 2.6ghz). And you don't need to touch the voltage to do it or watercool. Just change the setting and there's a damn good chance you won't have a problem.

It's a $130 processor that, with a minor tweak, can perform like a $1000 processor.

Look into building (or buying) a MicroATX based machine.

I got mine for apartment living, but the case is small, light, and even has "cool" windows cut into it (with Blue LEDs on the exhaust fan :) )

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811144109

Oh, and it also has a handle for easy carrying. Yeah, you still need a monitor and keyboard/mouse to go with it

That's awfully expensive when the Anycom HS-777 costs $40 including shipping and works just fine with my 650.

Now, for something this big, why not get something that's cheaper and just better like say, the Dell Inspiron B120 for $499, with free memory and wifi upgrades?

However, after using both for a period, I switched back to iTunes because it just works all-around better, and with the Multi-Plugin you can set it up with a foobar passthrough and through some mysterious setting drastically reduce the memory usage when it's minimized to the tray. If even this isn't enough for you, I'd say just man up and throw down a little under $70 to get another GB of memory. It's way more than iTunes will need and it will make your system snappier anyway.

Once you know, you Newegg.
Seriously. If you have a little patience, they have better parts, better inventory, better information and a great return/exchange policy.

I agree, it is viable. I'd be 100% on ubuntu at home except for the fact that linux has crap for usable, "professional grade" video editing software. No other reason. So I'm still on windows (and not mac, my hacked together windows/amd box is cheaper) because I can get this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16832317009

$24 AGP8x nvidia cards http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Orde r=PRICE&Page=1&N=2010380048+1305520548+1069609639& Submit=ENE&SubCategory=48 $36 PCI-E nvidia cards http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Orde r=PRICE&Page=1&N=2010380048+1305520548+1069609641& Submit=ENE&SubCategory=48 you may be able to find them for cheaper elsewhere.

$24 AGP8x nvidia cards http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Orde r=PRICE&Page=1&N=2010380048+1305520548+1069609639& Submit=ENE&SubCategory=48 $36 PCI-E nvidia cards http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Orde r=PRICE&Page=1&N=2010380048+1305520548+1069609641& Submit=ENE&SubCategory=48 you may be able to find them for cheaper elsewhere.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16814150098. Try that. If you're willing to spend twice the price, (and have an SLI-capable system) I hear they perform very nicely in SLI, and still less than the price of a $300 card.

Where can you get a motherboard for $25 with onboard video, sound, and the works?? You're looking at at least $75-$100 just for that.

Alone - $25 - no. $35, yes.

Newegg has the PC Chips M851G, with onboard video, 6ch sound, and 10/100 LAN for $35.50. They have 40-50 boards under $50 meeting similar specs, for both AMD and Intel CPUs.

If you get them as combos with CPU and RAM, then subtracted out the price of the CPU and RAM... I suspect that yes, you could probably push $25 for "just" the motherboard.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?

I've had similar problems at other retail stores. I don't set foot in Best Buy. I've never had a problem with Newegg. They are very good about RMAs and usually respond to emails the same day. Oh ya, and they sell things for the low low.

That incident with your friend definately sounds illegal. Did he talk to the Better Business Bureau? Or do they not do anything (I really don't know)?

Disclaimer: I do not work for Newegg, just a happy customer :)

Looks like 160gig (the new perpendicular recording) is as high as laptop hdds go at the moment:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822148073

But you could just get a normal 3.5" drive and shove it in a USB case.

For that matter, you could have one 160 gig laptop drive inside, and one outside in a USB case, sometimes laptop hdds dont need externally powered USB cases, they can be powered by the USB port. And they are pretty tiny and easy to carry. Using two 160 gig drives would be over your 250 gig desire :)

At 6.8 lbs, this is a porky laptop. Perhaps it's not bad for 17", but right now there is no sub 6 lb. Apple Laptop.

Too bad...

Not like it's impossible, just look here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16834220021

$.02

I still stay with intel because their chips are all on one socket.

Semprons & Athlons are different sockets, you can't turn a budget AMD box into something more powerfull without replacing the motherboard.

I still stay with intel because their chips are all on one socket.

Semprons & Athlons are different sockets, you can't turn a budget AMD box into something more powerfull without replacing the motherboard.

I still stay with intel because their chips are all on one socket.

Semprons & Athlons are different sockets, you can't turn a budget AMD box into something more powerfull without replacing the motherboard.

I still stay with intel because their chips are all on one socket.

Semprons & Athlons are different sockets, you can't turn a budget AMD box into something more powerfull without replacing the motherboard.

I'm very close to ordering a ViewSonic VP2030b. 20 inches and 1600x1200 native resolution.

can be had from newegg for $472
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16824116371

it's about $120 more than the VP930 which is supposed to be one of the best all around 19 inch lcds. hopefully this one is similiar. i haven't been able to find any reviews besides customer reviews which seem to say that it is good.

if the price is too steep remember that it also comes with a build in USB hub!
I'm trying to refrain from looking at how much a usb hub actually costs. in my dream world they average in at $200 making this monitor practically pay for itself.

This is NOT a breakthrough design. Looks adopted from the Samsung 970P to me.

Yes, it should considering that according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS [wikipedia.org] states that the maximum volume size for an NTFS volume is 16EiB. One exibyte is 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes, so 16 exibytes = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes. Since a 750GB hard drive should hold approximately 750,170,112,000 bytes, an NTFS volume should be able to handle 24,590,081 of those 750GB hard drives in a RAID array. Now assuming a RAID array can handle that many of these drives, and that this new 750GB hard drive merely takes the price spot of Seagate's current finest offering of a 500GB hard drive (priced on newegg as $295 each) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822148108 [newegg.com] rather than debuting at a higher price point, which it probably will, that many hard drives would cost about $6,147,520,250 before tax, and not including any of the massive discounts one might expect to recieve for such a massive purchase. On top of that, at a sales tax rate of 7.75%, the tax on those drives would cost you $476,432,819.38. So I don't know about you, but I doubt this is going to be a problem for either XP or Vista for a long, long time (assuming you use NTFS partitions).

According to some comments on New Egg, the Pentium Extreme Edition runs fairly hot as well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819116246

It does run extremely hot. I replaced a 3.73 Pentium 4 EE (single core) which would regularly give me between -4 to 0 celsius on my peltier cooler but this Presler proc averages around 2 to 8 celsius ... More depending on idle or load (not overclocked).

While I don't think it's a big deal for a desktop processor to run hot, when you put a hot processor in a cramped case like that of a laptop you can easily run into overheating problems. I've seen several laptops that can overheat regularly because the Pentium 4's they had just ran to hot, even with the fans running full blast they could sometimes overheat and shut off. Yes, some of this is due to poor designing on the computer manufacturer's part but I still think that heat can hurt the lifespan of your processor.

As for price competition, take a look at this Newegg page. The 30GB iPod costs $289. The cheapest competition, the iAudio X5, is $259 (there is also, of course, more expensive competition). A 10% price premium over the bottom of its class does not constitute "extremely expensive", especially when the iPod is 30% slimmer than the iAudio.

The iPod is not the best MP3 player for everyone. It probably wasn't the best one for you, judging by your comments. But when I was looking for an MP3 player, I didn't want a giant beast that could could record live TV, play Doom 3 and solve complex equations. I wanted something that would organize my music library, play music, and not get in my way. And my iPod does that better than any competitor I've ever seen.

Or I can get a new Acer or similar PC system with all the bells and whistles, running a Dual-Core 64-bit AMD processor at 3.2 GHz, a Gig of memory, a 300 GB HD, for about $700 at my local Impress Computer store.

From the link you provided, that system only has a single-core CPU:

"CPU CPU Type Athlon 64 Installed Qty 1 Max Supported Qty 1 CPU Speed 3500+ L2 Cache Per CPU 512KB CPU Socket Type Socket 939"

AFAIK there is no such thing as a 3.2GHz dual-core AMD CPU. There might be an FX model Athlon coming out (or just came out) that might reach that speed, but unless you overclock your CPU you won't get that high.. not to mention that the FX chip would probably $1000. Maybe you are referring to AMD's speed rating, so maybe a 3200+ ?? Even then, if you were to get the lowest price dual-core AMD chip, it is still going to be almost $300 just for the CPU. Intel Duo chips are cheaper, but in my opinion Intel is a piece of shit. I'm an AMD fan I guess.

P.S. - Even though I am an AMD fan, and not really into Macs, I would buy a Mac over a piece of shit Acer anyday, even if it costs more.

1. Power supply. The Dell (at least Optiplex and Dimensions I've used) power supply is not standard. You cannot mount an off the shelf power supply because the power cord connector will be blocked by the Dell case.

For starters, http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/dellconverter. html fixes the pinout problem. PC Power and Cooling and a number of other manufacturers also make native dell power supplies. For space concerns, ok, you'll have to get a dell or dell-style replacement, but... it's not a blocking issue. My local tiwanese-run bars-on-the-windows PC store sells 'em.

2. Case connector. The connector that attaches to the motherboard for power switch, reset, speaker etc. is in one solid block which plugs directly into the motherboard. Now the ordering of connectors on the block will not plug into an off the shelf motherboard. So you are generally out of luck if you want to use a non-Dell motherboard with a Dell case. You CAN cut the block off and rewire seperate connectors to allow connection to a different motherboard, but it's hardly worth the effort.

Agreed. But, that means that the dell case / motherboard are mated. It's not the end of the world. If the motherboard dies, throw the case away with it - you're down what, $40 these days? If the case dies... whatever, get a real case, put the dell mobo in it, and pin it out. Read the PCB.

3. Fan. The fan connector that plugs into the motherboard is not standard. Replacing the fan with an off the shelf generic one will not let you connect the fan connector to the Dell motherboard. This means that the Dell bios will think the fan has failed.

F1 -> halt on... -> no errors. Plug fan into molex connector.

You are correct in that add in boards and drives are not proprietary but you may find that Dell skimps in some ways on their motherboards. For example, the mid range Optiplex computers have no AGP slot and no PCI Express X16 slot. So no way you can add in a video card, you are stuck with onboard. Also most Dell desktops have only 2 DIMM slots compared to 3 or 4 on most standard motherboards. You also will need to pay a bit more if you want to get say 1 512MB DIMM versus 2 256MB DIMMS - in order to leave a slot open for future expansion.

You are comparing machines with vastly different purposes. This is probably better than the quality of motherboard you'd get in a standard dell cheapie business machine. Granted the one in the link has a PCI-E x16 slot, but it does only have 2 ram slots. Business people don't upgrade their graphics card. Those machines are the kind we buy for our computer labs here at VT - we need a fast processor, a good bit of ram, and then anything that will display 1280x1024 - 3D not required. And we buy 100 of them, plus monitors, at a time. Onboard graphics are great because they save money in these circumstances.

The high end motherboards you're talking about - ones with one, or even two, PCI-E slots and 4 ram slots - have you priced them lately? What's an SLI motherboard run? At least $115, and upwards of $160 to $200 if you want a good one or really good one. By comparison, that motherboard I linked to was made by intel, has onboard lan/audio/video/sata and only costs $65.

When dell makes a gaming machine (XPS or what have you), they use a motherboard with two PCI-E x16 slots and 3 or 4 ram slots. Dell is actually one of the only OEMs with advance access to motherboards which have FOUR x16 slots, and can do quad-sli.

So, in short, I'm not sure what you want them to be. You say their business support is fantastic, but then you say there are cheaper gaming PC's out there. Well... some gaming PC's suck, dell's high end ones don't. And Dell's high end gaming PC's come with the same support their shitty business PC's come with, which has to be paid from somewhere.

Dual core technology. AMD was the first. 20 dual cores for AMD, 14 dual cores for Intel.

Both are probably going to ship quad cores in early 2007.

Not sure where you're getting your data.

Dual core technology. AMD was the first. 20 dual cores for AMD, 14 dual cores for Intel.

Both are probably going to ship quad cores in early 2007.

Not sure where you're getting your data.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820171103

or how about $140?

It's not a 7900, but the 7800GS is AGP.

6800XT (an XFX 6800 Xtreme) at newegg.com for $135.

I just got it last week. Kicks ass with all my games at 1440x900 all settings maxed out and 4X anti-aliasing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16814150130

Have a good one.