Looking for a fastest home desktop

8-yr-old PC infected viruses worms tortoise slow

[stevegpan2]

Do not laugh at my laziness I am still using a 8-year-old PC (windows 98) from Dell in 1998, which experienced the internet boom and stocks ups downs, and heavily infected with viruses and worms invented by these bad gurus. And now it becomes extremely slow, and some worm even set my default homepage to?

Would appreciate your advice to get a fastest PC (home use for email and web page writing, managing several small web sites). Really need a faster one to make life more enjoyable....

I looked at Dells XPS 600. Are there any better PCs. I will need one very fast and does not need reboot too often.....

[kevinpate]

if you're not playing vid games or watching movies online, it's amazing how practical an old pentium 2 running W98 remains.

If your box is beyond cleaning up (mine wasn't the last time I blinked and something got in via a careless click but yeah it took the better part of a weekend to get things back as they ought to be), Dell's don't seem to be bad machines.

[physics]

You might want to check out your local electronics stores to like Best Buy and CompUSA. They often offer better service deals where if something goes wrong you can actually bring the thing in to have someone else try to fix it, as opposed to Dells where you are basically required to be a PC repair man as they tell you what to try over the phone...
Also if you want less problems with viruses and reboots you can get a Mac (many programs such as Office, Dreamweaver, etc are compatible) ;)

[onlineleben]

get some antivirus software and something against spyware,
spend a few hours running things to get rid of all the bad stuff,
clean your HD from all the obsolete stuff (temp files, projects that are not needed anymore can be saved on CD-Rom, etc).
run defrag and then your machine should be in quite a good shape again.
Save the money!

[wheel]

I think you'll find just moving to windows XP from Win 98 will mean you don't have to reboot as often.

Just about any of the dells, including the $400 ones will do you just fine. In fact I don't think you really need a fast computer for what you're doing (most of us don't). Get yourself 512megs to a gig of ram, an 80 gig hard drive, and spend some money on a nice keyboard and a 17 or 19" LCD flat panel monitor instead. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck with a nice monitor these days than spending an extra $500 on a faster processor that you'll never take advantage of.

[steve]

I agree with Wheel.

I've just ordered myself a new system - AMD Semprom 3100, 1Gb PC3200 ram, 80Gb sata2 drive and a 19" Samsung Flat screen panel.

The new PC will replace my my old P2 300Mhz Compaq laptop for everyday use, which I'm keeping for surfing the net, emailing etc. when I'm sitting in the garden!

[carguy84]

I always feel sad anytime I see some one carrying a computer out of or into Best Buy for some reason.

Try a Micro Center or something.

Even maybe a new Dell if you want to buy over the web.

Chip-

[percentages]

I like the Dell XPS 600 fully loaded right now.

It is a good machine at a bargain price (19" flat panel monitor included). Not so good if you already have a great 19" flat panel monitor :(

I change PC's every two years. It is a constant battle of price Vs performance.

At the end of the day the cost of the machine is simply minimal, the cost of the time to move your "stuff" is the major impact. The cost of finding the right PC is also significant!

To me my PC is a bit like my favorite chair, damn the cost, I simply love sitting in it :)