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Tom's Hardware has a great web page just for cpu doubters. It allows you to choose the two cpus to compare, the task you are wondering about and then you get an exhaustive list of how fast several dozen processors would be, with your chosen two in red.

I have been using the charts to compare various CPUs that PCClub.com offers across their various families of computers. The Q6600 looks to be, as they themselves said when I visited the store, the sweet spot as of March, 2008.

I think you should realize that quad+ cores are not going to offer as visible a performance increase as you are used to. In other words, unless you dig out three or four stopwatches and run your test tasks on both single and multi-cpu setups, you aren't going to see the differences.

For what it is worth, I think your mistake is when you say you are looking for "*major*" differences. These are not at all necessary for the user experience to be improved. Try typing on a 110cps teletype into a mainframe to see what I mean -- plenty of raw power goes wanting because the PBKAMainframe. Multiple cores reverse the situation -- average core speed is often lower, but the average task no longer pulls down the whole system.

Consider the following trivial test I did at the store. Open a cmd.exe window, change to root directory, type "DIR /S" and press enter. On my 3.2gHz HT Pentium, I get 100% cpu on at least one of the cores (I can't test my own system at the moment, sorry). So, my fan kicks in, my ears get deafened and I don't like it. On the Q6600, two of the cpus get zero load change, and two get a 35-50% increase. So, thermally, there is little to no change (.LT. 25% increase in overall cpu usage) -- half or less of my system -- and so the fan may not even kick in (I didn't hear it in the store, anyway), I don't get my ears blasted, and I am noticeably happier (because I am a simpleton who only types DIR /S all day long).

I create unique e-mail addresses for each place I do business with online.

The one other place that leaked my e-mail address was PC Club in Southern California. I had given them an e-mail address in-store at one time while making a purchase.

I routed that address to /dev/null, and would think twice about giving them any personal information ever again.

Guess you have never heard of PC Club. They do all of that. They don't always have everything in stock but if you are patient you can get a custom built machine with any specs you desire and 99% the staff knows what they are talking about.

You're forgetting something... this is America. We spend five minutes driving around the parking lot hunting for the closest possible parking space which will save us one minute of walking. Then when we want to go to another store in the same shopping center, we drive. At the ball park, if the stadium parking lot is $20 and the lot 2 blocks away is $10, we spend the extra ten bucks. People fight for the closest parking space everywhere... even at the gym. We drive our kids to school because the news media has convinced us there's a child molestor around every corner. We use counterfeit handicapped stickers to avoid walking 100 feet. We ride the elevator to the second floor. In case everything I said is not clear, this picture just about sums up the state of fitness in America.

If you want a crappy computer, why would you force yourself to use aol for a year? They are not giving any sort of extra discount on this computer.
Look at this. This computer here is $15 dollars cheaper, and has the following specs:
- Celeron 2.0 G
- 128 MB mem (which is less, but an extra 128 is what, 30 bucks?)
- 40 G harddrive (western digital)
- Then some crappy on board hardware.
Of course, this does not have a monitor, but those are also very cheap at this size (and I actually have a hard time not collecting free ones at this size somehow.)

I've used my laptop under linux for about 6 hours on more than one occasion. I currently own Xnote Friday from PC Club, It's a nice laptop (I do work at PC Club btw). Everything works great under linux and I can throttle it down to 600 Mhz and the damn thing just runs all day. 600 Mhz is fine for everything I do, dvd's, programming, web surfing and bzFlag.

I got a Lite-On LVD-2002 for $100 and I really like it. I can play my DivX MST3K movies on it. :)
There is a LVD-2010 out now for $200, but the last word is that it is not available.

Linky linky

The math ( (12*23.90)+299 ) seems to suggest that you can get a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges.

More like More like $399

$699 will buy a P4 3.0GHz that's better in most other respects too

What year is whoever submitted that in?

Jason
ProfQuotes

The math ( (12*23.90)+299 ) seems to suggest that you can get a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges.

More like More like $399

$699 will buy a P4 3.0GHz that's better in most other respects too

What year is whoever submitted that in?

Jason
ProfQuotes

Personally, I'm really fond of Alienware's selection.

a modem that cost a whole ten bucks less! That's 5 blank cd's fer chrissakes.

After I found out about their 'MS on all machines' issue, I just stopped buying from them all togather.

And how did you manage to find a vendor that did not do this?

I would think most screwdriver shops would do this...they're already using whatever processor, RAM, HD, etc. you specify, so the logical extension would be that you could specify the OS to be installed. I've bought parts for complete systems at PC Club and not had to pay the "MS tax" along with those parts. I've never had them assemble a system (I can do that myself), but I would think they'd build a "naked PC" if you asked.

Sometimes I'd like a real tactile keyboard, the ones that click, but I don't know where to find those anymore. I actually have one in my basement, but many years ago I spilled a plastic bonding agent on the keys, and while the board still functions, the keys are all grimy.

I picked up a Focus FK-2001 a few months ago...it's nice and clicky. PC Club had a stack of 'em one day...don't know if they still do, but if not, Price Watch had a couple of vendors that were selling them for around $20. This keyboard model has been around nearly forever, and for good reason.