Best Computer Purchase you ever made?

N

Nakamori

Gawd
Joined
Jun 11, 2005
Messages
530
The criterion here are: Cost, period of use, performance, stability, and

Mine would have to be the 19inch CRT I bought 6 years ago for 100$ :) great image quality, and I haven't even thought about replacing it.

I would think that some likely candidates around here would be 9700pro's, people who got the 300+ venice when it was released and still have it chugging along at 2.7ghz, or even for some of you a dell 2405.
 
I bought a 21 inch crt from a surplus sale like 5 years ago at least for 20 bucks. Used it like 2 years then got an LCD. At my family business it has been running on the sec's desk since then. She loves it.

Computer wise I got a new in box compaq 15.4 inch p4 notebook for my stepfather for 300 bucks total when it was 1500 new(was a current model). He has had it like 2 years or so now.
 
I've had my Dell 1801FP LCD for almost 4 years now....definitely got my $600 out of it. Great color and still faster than some newer panels like the 1905FP.

That and my DVD burner have probably been the most useful and the longest-lived out of any part. I still remember when I got my dell in 2002, even though my processer was a notch below my friends, it had a 9700 and tore through CS like a bat out of hell.
 
Voodoo II, been hooked on 3d gaming since.. Close second would be my upgrade purchase of an Athlon Classic 800/KA7-100 from a P75 PackardHell machine.. Talk about a leap in performance, it felt like I had just bought a supercomputer...
Paid around $300 for the creative labs voodoo2 and it is still in use today along with the athlon 800 in a legacy gaming rig..

Some of those old games are just easier to get going when you have a geforce2, voodoo2, and sb16 sound card running on an Athlon800 with384 megs of ram, with win98 installed..
 
I gotta say it's my Apple Powerbook Duo 270c. It was the pimp sub-notebook at the time with a 33MHz Moto 68030, 8MB of FPM RAM, 9" color TFT screen and an integrated 33.6k modem, and I still dust it off and use it once in a while. Hell, Office for Mac v4.2.1 is just as fast on it as Office 2003 is on my work desktop, and Netscape Navigator still works great over the VillageTronic 10Mb/sec PDS ethernet adapter! :D It's the only machine I've ever owned that works as good as new 11 years after I bought it. That's some serious longevity-per-dollar going on right there. :cool:

-Brian
 
Got my Dell 2405FPW for $550. Best purchase I've made. In a year or so, I'd have to say the rig that I just built if it doens't give me any problems between now and then. It's the most high end computer I've ever had. (see sig for details)
 
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. After 3 years of use and still going strong, it was definitely worth the price.
 
My first dual board, asus p2b-ds, got me hooked on duals and have been running them ever since. In fact that board is still rock stable 5-6 years later of almost continuous runtimes and man power outages.
 
The one thing that made me the happiest for the longest time was a router (BESFR41). Before that I had been using an old hub that worked when it wanted to, which wasn't very often. I also had DSL at the time and had to sign in until I got the router.
 
I hear ya, MJCfromCT

Definitely my 9800 Pro, I loved that thing up until my old (AGP) rig's PSU crapped out...
 
What I tried to order: GeForce 5700 AGP (needed a cheapish video card at the time)

What I received: Used HP system, with pentium 4 2.8ghz HT, 512meg ram, 160gig hard drive, geforce MX video.

What I paid: $70 was the price online, and what I was charged, never heard back from the company, and never complained about the mix up, heh. It's used everyday now...
 
Two recent ones which were decent:

Connect3D x1800xt 256mb : £160

Hanns.G 19" widescreen TFT monitor : £150
 
I should add some others in that I didn't list.

I would say my ms action pack service is a good one. 300 a year for all my machines to be legal with the ms software. Plus I get mailed all the disks. I really like that.

I've also bought a shit load of switches and routers at county surplus sales before. Pay like 10 bucks for an old 2500 cisco router(this was like 3 years ago) and sell it for like 200 plus on ebay. Same with switches. Buy for like 10 and get 100 to 190ish per unit. Had some good beer/party money.
 
My Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128...worked great until it bit the dust after 4 (or has it been 5) years due to a bad power supply.
 
Been happy with several upgrades I've made over time (7800GT from 6600GT) but probably the best move I've made was returning my 19" Samsung LCD (minus restock fee) for my current Spectre WS monitor. I just wasn't happy with that Samsung and gaming on a widescreen has been a joy.
 
WD 200GB 8MB 7200 EIDE :: $22 (dell f*up 3 yrs ago?) ... still running in my dual 733 p3 fileserver.

Slightly used (used for 1 month) Viewsonic P810 21" CRT for $100 in 1999 ... still being used for gaming.
 
Gotta be my radeon 9700pro. Bought it on release day for like $649CAD + tax. The only reason I upgraded to my x850 pro was because of a sale at best buy. Great card for the money and lasted a hella long time.
 
Von's grocery (parent company is Safeway) had a Bingo game in 1984 where you get scratchoff numbers to paste on your game card when you buy groceries. I got BINGO! and won $300, so I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer II (64KB RAM) with it. Of course then I had to buy a casette player for storage (later upgraded to two 160KB floppy drives) and added a 2400baud serial printer. But I got to learn Basic and assembly language programming with a free computer.
 
Chieftech Dragon ATX case (blue w/ window)

Got this on sale at new egg for like 80, and have had it for 3 years now, still looks as good as new cept the scratch in the middle of the window.

Plain styling, not too outlandish, good cooling, nice and light!

Edit: its the aluminum model, I gave my old steel Antec to a friend who doesn't go to lanpartys
 
drizzt81 said:
Abit BP6
Click to expand...


FTW. I love mine.


It's either my BP6 which I bought used (came with case, PS, 2x 400mhz Cellys, 2 Alpha HSFs, memory, and a 30gig HDD) for 100 dollars

That or my Dell 2001FP that I bought for 749.99 (thats AFTER 25% off :eek: )
 
WesternDigital 250GB hard drive for $70. I didn't think I'd see much benifit from switching to SATA, but the Windows bootscreen only shows up for 5 seconds (total boot time from splash to desktop would be around 20 seconds).

My GDM-F520 would be on my list too, since I only paid $50 for it (but I don't use it anymore because "shadows" appear on the screen every once in a while (overheating?) I still might use it for a MAME cabinet.
 
I'd have to say my XPS laptop and monitor. There was a mess up when the M170 was released back in October 2005 and I got it for $1500. ;)

My Dell 19" monitor was only $20 on eBay. Still love it today
 
My Radeon 9600XT VC. To this day, I can still play Soltaire and have zero lag when shuffing cards :D :D
 
17" Viewsonic LCD with a microscopic scratch on the screen in the corner $5 from rummage sale
 
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