my husband and i are thinking of getting a new home computer as the one we currently have is getting increasingly slower and is really outdated. any suggestions on brands or specific models? we were thinking of going with the desktop rather than the laptop.
thanks!
We are in the same boat, as the desktop PC I built a several years ago is now annoyingly slow despite increased maintenance. I’ll be getting one of the new iMacs and I’ll probably run Windows on it in a virtual machine (so as to better contain it’s various misbehaviors) until I find native OS X replacement apps for the few Windows-specific things I depend on.
why an iMac versus say a Dell?
A few things, most captured in a recent survey of desktop system owners that I can send you if you PM me an email address. In every category (or almost, I don’t have the survey in front of me right now) Apple was at the top of the list - hardware reliability, quality of customer tech support, and while Dell was not at the bottom, it was a few steps below Apple. As an example, I recently went through this analysis for my coach, who said he had $1500 to spend, so I configured 3 systems to hit that price point - an iMac w/a 20" LCD, a Dell Inspiron 531, and some other system, a vendor I don’t recall at the moment. At this price the low-level HW components didn’t differ significantly (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, reasonable graphics, multi-hundred gigabyte disk, 1-2 GB memory, etc.) which led me to believe that it’s now other things (system manufacturing quality / reliability, post-sale support, etc.) that are the differentiators. Mac OS X is also less vulnerable to a variety of security-related ills that routinely befall Windows boxes.
If your demands along some dimension are particularly great (e.g., you can’t spend more than $1000, you’re a gamer, or you do very computationally demanding work) then that would shift the analysis and may change the outcome, but othwerwise I’m hard-pressed to see why I’d want a Windows box over a iMac or a Macbook.
I am buying 55 new machines for work this week, it is amazing what you can get now for very little. These are Dell Optiplex business class machines, dual core processor, 2gb ram, 80 gig hard drive, 19" lcd, ms office, xpsp2, keyboard, mouse, ethernet, yadda yadda yadda, $917.
Anyway, I really like Dell…even though I’m in the midst of replacing 47 motherboards with exploded caps…well, at least they covered them (and they’re out of warranty).
what suggestions would you have for a home dell? any particular one? we don’t do gaming or any of that stuff, basically just using quicken for household bills and then for our itunes and photos.
ok, thanks. when is it coming out?
I saw that system, and drooled a bit over it. I thought the price for those was more like $8000, but my memory could easily be wrong here.
It depends on what you need and your budget. Imacs have gotten a lot of buzz and friends of mine who have one really like it. The Windows virtualization software evidently works well, but I’ve never seen it so I’m suspicious as to its limitations, and if you use any particularly esoteric software, such as trading software or anything that is peripheral heavy, then I’m not sure how good it will be.
Another alternative, if you/your husband are particularly handy and enjoy this kind of thing, is to build you own. Generally a lot cheaper, and you can get a lot more power for the money. It does take probably about 4-8 hours of diligence work ahead of time to choose the components, but the end product is typically better and a lot cheaper than anything Dell can provide, albeit without the Dell support or headaches.