Help me to upgrade my PC

[pocketpcadmirer]

Ok thats it..my Pentium III has slowed down a great. It served me well from past 6 years or so. So now I'm thinking of upgrading it to a new one

Here are my primary uses and the stuff I want in my PC....

(i) Programming..
Mainly, I'll running the latest MS visual studio .net on it at really nice speed

(ii) Good expandibility
On the motherboard, there ought to be nice expandibility options

(iii) Built-in goodies
Basic things like good graphic card should be there

(iv)Gaming
I mainly play CS(counter strike) on LAN with my college friends(my current PC really lags..no graphics processor)
(actully they all bring their laptops and we connect via LAN)

My eyes are currently on AMD 1800+

What do u guys say about it and rest of things ??

**edit:my budget is $400(i already have 17 inch TFT monitor,keyboad and other neccessary stuff)


Sunny

[Constant Caffeine]

You might want to check locally. Unless you find an online merchant that offers free shipping, as much as I dislike them, you may have to go to Walmart or Best Buy. Another option is looking at www.dell.com. They have a machine that is about $369, which includes a monitor. You can tell them you do not want the monitor and they will take $50 off the sticker price. So that would be $319 plus shipping. That is what I would do if I only had $400 and did not know how to build a computer.

Dell currently indicates that if you spend over $599 you get free shipping; however they charge a $24.99 handling fee. I doubt it cost them that much to ship a system given the shipping volume they have. But anyway...

[Don Tolson]

Hmm... staying within a $400 budget for a 'rockin' machine might be a bit tough. I'd stay away from walmart, but Dell is definitely an option -- I've heard only good things about their machines and support.

I don't know if you have a 'built-it-for-you' place nearby (on campus?), but maybe they could put together a package for you for about that much. The only problem with this approach is that I've found it works well for when it was assembled, but over the years -- with new cards and new O/S's -- things start breaking down and not working properly.

I eventually went with an HP Pavilion 762, which I got refurbed from FutureShop (aka Best Buy) for about $1K. But I really wanted an 'appliance' -- something that would simply 'work' very time I turned it on. So far, I've been very happy through memory, harddrive, graphics cards, and DVD-burner upgrades. It just keeps chugging along.

[Sven Johannsen]

You might take a look at the Dell Outlet store too. You get some pretty good deals there. You have to watch and jump though, because the good ones don't last long.