Can you build it?

[IrishEyes]

alex, you're a gem, as always. Wanna be adopted? You can have your own room at the farm, and I'll even cook! All you have to do is keep the network running, which is something nemo rarely has time to do anymore.

I'm going to check out that link and see what nemo says next week.

Thanks for the suggestions, Dave. I'll keep them in mind. I have a few friends with Dell's. They are fairly happy with them. But then again, all they do is browse and e-mail.

And Merc, I understand what your dad is saying, but she's hardly a kid. Ask Tormod or Yvonne, she's really quite grown up for her age. Plus, as her Daddy is a hacker of sorts, she really wants a machine that she will be able to learn some tricks on. Maybe she can turn it into a profession, just like Daddy did. I mean, she's already a 'penguin' freak! (But that's not unusual at my house. My 8 year old son sees MS's butterfly and gags. )

[GAHD]

Macs are THE BEST for video and audio editing. the have an awesome, user-friendly OS in Tiger, and with the release of the Mighty Mouse they have revolutionized the point & click world. OSX, Being Unix Based, would be fun for you daughter to learn to 'hack', but she's probably had almost the same experiences with Linux.
That being said, macs should generally be left to editing studios because their small user base has driven their price sky-high.
My favorite brand up untill recently was the Thinkpad line by IBM, which was recenly sold to LENOVO (an asian multi-national corporation). I don't know how they're doing since them, but it's only been a few moonths so there can't be that much of a change. They even have a Clearance Corner for Laptops where you can pick up some pritty sweet macheines.

[alexander]

No problem Irish, sooo, umm, when do i move in?

[alexander]

Gahd, as sweet as a AMD 3000+ 64 bit laptop for $860, besides i really hate the way IBM's look, i deal with them every day in orders of dozens, and can tell you that they are durable, but dont really perform all that great, although they do have quite a large user base...
As to macs, they look great and run awesomely, and are generaly ok for the general public, but its a proprietary front end that is closed source that runs off of BSD kernel, which i dislike for a number of reasons: 1 they are pain in the but to configure, and generaly come with everything built in, leaving tons of room for performance, and that is not the case with Linux machines, Linux kernel is 100 times easier to configure, and it has help built in, as well as numerous tutorials, and people that will help you. But, of all the things i disagree with BSD licensing and thats why i prefer GNU over BSD; just that there's something about "well, you can tweak my code and destribute it as a proprietary piece of software, close the source and sell it" that kinda turns me away from it, except for OpenBSD there is nothing that BSD does that is not done on Linux, and even in OpenBSD, its just easier to set up things (like transparent bridging with pf is way easier then iptables), not necessarily a question of whether or not it can be done...

[alexander]

I have a few friends with Dell's. They are fairly happy with them. But then again, all they do is browse and e-mail.

For your daughter who would eventually want to start playing around with stuff and try to hack things, dell, is probably not the best choice... (cheap parts and all) If you are considering that option, you are better off buying a prebuilt system through like pricewatch or something, with an overclockable AMD processor in it and things, just so when she gets to the point where machinery matters, just saying overclocked commands certain respect raising the 1337ness factor

[Jay-qu]

I had a PC made for me only about a month ago and it was far better than buying one from the stores - not only was it nearly half the price of the equivilent retail I was able to customise all the parts. But if you really dont no much about the inside of computers it might be better to just go off the shelf...

[CraigD]

My experience with personally owned (as opposed to those an employer gifts one with) computers is that the best course is to:
1) look for specials such places as www.pricewatch.com, www.shopper.com, and local store adds for retail stores like BestBuy and CompUSA for machines that are close to state-of-the-art, but for some reason suffering poor sales, and thus deeply discounted;
2) Google the specific machines for any dire complaints (buggy motherboards, NIC cards, etc.)
3) Buy one.
4) Spend an extra $100 or thereabouts to up the memory above 1 GiB.

I’m this moment typing on a Toshiba A65-126 laptop purchased at CompUSA for $400 (after rebates), with $160 in added memory to max it at 1.2 GiB, and a $200/2 year accidental damage replacement warrantee (I’ve never dropped or sat on a laptop, but the peace-of-mind this affords feels well worth the $200), for a total cost of $760. It’s an awful nice laptop for that price – my only regret its short (typically 2-3 hr) battery life, and a single annoying feature of its keyboard layout – the lack of a right-side Ctrl key, making 1-handed Ctrl-Home/End etc. impossible. Sometimes I wonder if laptop designers are required by some weird secret society law to include at least one idiotic keyboard design flaw in every laptop – I’ve yet to see evidence otherwise.

[Jay-qu]

my laptop keyboard is pretty good (has two ctrl keys - one on each side ) dont think there is any mayjor design flaws or I would realise it...

In reply to upgrading to get above a Gb in memory - well its almost useless in this case, if she is just using the net wordprocessing and some photo editing then 512 is fine, if in a year she needs it for more then by all means spend the extra $$

[alexander]

I’m this moment typing on a Toshiba A65-126 laptop purchased at CompUSA for $400 (after rebates), with $160 in added memory to max it at 1.2 GiB, and a $200/2 year accidental damage replacement warrantee (I’ve never dropped or sat on a laptop, but the peace-of-mind this affords feels well worth the $200), for a total cost of $760.

see Irish, that is exactly what i mean, he got a Celeron 2.8 toshiba, although it is an ok top, think about it, for $100 you are getting an amd 64 2.8 laptop that is about 3 times faster then that cell with 512 megs of RAM (you might want to upgrade to a gig or two in the future, but right now, its more then wnough, especially in linux, give it a gig of swap and you are golden, and that can function as a DVD player on your long car trips, with a neat remote control... It also has a better keyboard layout, I dunno why, but toshiba layout seems to stink a lot, i got used to it, but my firends hate it. It also comes with a better screen and its a 15.4 inch screen not a 15, which makes it soo much wider and seem like a 17, no kidding, 20 gigs more space, DVD rw, and although the toshiba comes with a ATI mobility radeon 7000, it is still a low-end card, it doesnt have good 3d acceleration drivers in linux anyways (that you need to have an Nvidia card for), so going with a card that is supported by the manufacturer, for a person who doesnt play games much anyways.... up to you