Recommend a brand of computer

Hey all. Well today our main computer went bust and seeing at its reasonabley old, we decided instead of getting it repaired, it would be better to just replace it entirely.

My mum is somewhat relying on me to help with what one we get, as out of the three of us, I'm the most computer oriented, but I'm not really sure what kind we should be getting.

for the longest time we've been fairly consistent on getting HPs, but I have no idea whether HPs are the best ones to be getting.

So I turn to the computer smart people here for a little bit of advice.

Any suggestions for good brands on computers, and only the flip side, which brands should be avoided entirely?

The computer will mostly be used for basic word documents, email, and web browsing, but we do want one that has some power incase we have other uses for it down the line.

Any suggestions would be appreciated

www.dell.com would always be my recommendation

HP's are good from experience, though. Acer are also good.

My "Homework and work" computer is an iMac, (The newer one) it's extremely pricey, (starting at 1110 USD) but it has very good processing power, easy to use, and has everything else you'd expect from a mac. You can even get microsoft office on it, ironically. Upgrades, however are probably out of the question. The one advantage with PC's is that you can open up the PC itself and upgrade almost everything inside of it, to my knowledge, the Mac doesn't allow that

I'd get a separate mouse though. Mac mouses tend to be rather horrible for the simple reason it is very hard to right click with them.

Oh yes, and website: http://www.apple.com/imac/

To get the best computer for your money, you'll pretty much always want to build it yourself. It's not really as difficult as most people seem to make out.

I not too long ago upgraded to
AMD Athlon II X4 640 3.0GHz Quad Core Processor £70
ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card (sapphire) £50
ASUSTeK Computer INC. M4N68T motherboard £37
2 x 2GB Corsair DDR3 RAM £20
Samsung SH-D163C DVD-ROM drive £12

£189, though I bought a new case and DVD-ROM/CD-drive aswell, making the total just above £200. If you're not planning on much gaming and instead, just the basic usage of a computer, then you shouldn't need anything as good as I got.

If you're going to stay away from anything in particular, I would stay away from Intel, due to their poor graphics drivers (opengl support specifically). I would also (sorry apple fans) advise against buying a mac of any sort, since half of the price you're paying for is for the logo.

If I had to promote a specific make, I would say Acer and HP.

I would suggest Dell, they've been a pretty reliable brand for me so far.

Personally i'd stick with a macbook pro, however the best windows PCs tend to come from Dell
Whatever you do don't buy anything from packard bell though

well depnding wether ur a gamer or its to be used for office
Dell Alienware is a must for gamers I may be biest though
or have a Dell made up if ur a student and use office a lot

or if ur mam dad play funny check PC World
I say this as I orded mine online from dell as aspecialist job and it took 2 months but
but i would recigmend u use dells site to make up the pc u want but not buy it

I would recommend building you own PC. It's more trouble in terms of maintenance (if something isn't working, it's up to you to figure out what part died in order to replace it since you can't just ship off the entire computer somewhere to get it repaired), but other than that, you get more computer for the money and it's a great learning experience. I could help you find parts if you give me a budget and a computer part site that delivers in Australia (Newegg?).

I've had good experiences with Dell and Asus, bad experiences with Sony, and have heard that you should stay as far away from Acer as possible.

Macs just cost too much for what they are, so I wouldn't bother.

As a lot of people have said, BYO is easily the best value way to go.

I myself am in the process of speccing up a PC for my friend Dan to build (he runs a PC building company) for no markup and trade value.

After discussions, I realised for £500 you can get a monster of a PC - by far better than anything else for similar money. As said, maintenance can be problematic, but if you know the right people and the PC you spec is all compatible you should have no problems.

www.newegg.com actually sell premade CyberPower PCs, which are competitively priced and of great quality - as CyberPower don't ship to Australia, I'd check them out

Thanks everyone for the advice. And I appreciate the offer to help Didzo, but due to a bad experience with a custom built computer, my mother has become soured on the idea completely. I'm sure a custom built one would be the best way to go, but that probably won't happen.

I think considering it seems fairly unanimous on Dells being good, we might try looking at a Dell.

Thanks all again

Dell? I thought they had the worst customer service.

Before switching to Mac, I was always an avid HP & Compaq customer and always got my money's worth.

LordRemington wrote:Thanks everyone for the advice. And I appreciate the offer to help Didzo, but due to a bad experience with a custom built computer, my mother has become soured on the idea completely. I'm sure a custom built one would be the best way to go, but that probably won't happen.

What happened?

Didzo wrote:

What happened?

Was about 5 years ago. Our previous computer had just packed it in, so we started shopping around for computers.

Ended up wander into a computer store and asked the guy there what brand he'd recommend. He told us we should go with a custom build and told us all the reasons for why we should. We agreed and he said he'd make it and just needed to know what sort of specifications we wanted. We gave him the details and shortly after, we had our yamcha.

For about the first two months, it worked perfectly. Very fast. But then for no apparent reason, it started to become slower and slower quite rapidly, until one day, it just wouldn't turn on at all.

Later found out the motherboard was fried as well as some other parts. As we hadn't thought to back up all our stuff, we lost quite a bit.

Later heard from a few other people that they to had had issues with their custom builds, so now the thought of buying another custom build is completely out of the question for my mother.

I'm sure it was most likely the guy who built it for us wasn't an expert. Something about him made me think he didn't fully know what he was doing.

I know if done properly custom builds can be far better than brand computers, but thats just not on the table now.

It was probably lack of proper power/cooling for the specs.

I've had 3 custom PCs (2 broke due to some of the programs I put on the, )

So far, I've had no real problems with my PCs apart from a small issue with my PC overheating, which one call to the local PC store fixed with a new fan.

LordRemington wrote:

Didzo wrote:

What happened?

Was about 5 years ago. Our previous computer had just packed it in, so we started shopping around for computers.

Ended up wander into a computer store and asked the guy there what brand he'd recommend. He told us we should go with a custom build and told us all the reasons for why we should. We agreed and he said he'd make it and just needed to know what sort of specifications we wanted. We gave him the details and shortly after, we had our yamcha.

For about the first two months, it worked perfectly. Very fast. But then for no apparent reason, it started to become slower and slower quite rapidly, until one day, it just wouldn't turn on at all.

Later found out the motherboard was fried as well as some other parts. As we hadn't thought to back up all our stuff, we lost quite a bit.

Later heard from a few other people that they to had had issues with their custom builds, so now the thought of buying another custom build is completely out of the question for my mother.

I'm sure it was most likely the guy who built it for us wasn't an expert. Something about him made me think he didn't fully know what he was doing.

I know if done properly custom builds can be far better than brand computers, but thats just not on the table now.

When I say custom built, I mean built by you. That way you know what you put into it and you only have yourself (if you used incompatible parts or did something stupid like not plug in fans) or the part manufacturers (Google is fantastic for helping you troubleshoot) to blame.

I sure hope you got your money back, because:

1) Most parts come with a 1-2 year manufacturer warranty, and some come with a lifetime warranty, and

2) I would expect that he would have given you some sort of warranty as well since he picked the parts and built the thing. If not, I'm afraid to say that you were scammed.

I've been considering buying an Alienware M14x, with the extra upgrades to the processor and video card, averaging at about $2500 AU. Is this a reasonable price, or should I drop the high-end upgrades?

Didzo wrote:

When I say custom built, I mean built by you. That way you know what you put into it and you only have yourself (if you used incompatible parts or did something stupid like not plug in fans) or the part manufacturers (Google is fantastic for helping you troubleshoot) to blame.

I sure hope you got your money back, because:

1) Most parts come with a 1-2 year manufacturer warranty, and some come with a lifetime warranty, and

2) I would expect that he would have given you some sort of warranty as well since he picked the parts and built the thing. If not, I'm afraid to say that you were scammed.

Yeah, now I know what we should have done, but back then me, my mother and brother basically had absolutely no clue about computers. Could have told me everything about the specs of a computers and I wouldn't have had a clue what you were talking about. Which is probably part of the reason what happened, ended up happening.

I'm pretty sure we did end up getting a refund from the guy, but not after wasting money on attempting to get it repaired.

Jokie155 wrote:I've been considering buying an Alienware M14x, with the extra upgrades to the processor and video card, averaging at about $2500 AU. Is this a reasonable price, or should I drop the high-end upgrades?

$2500 is a huge sum of money for a computer, at least here in the US. With it, you could build a top of the line desktop that can play any game and run any program you could imagine.

Then again, laptops are not meant for playing games, and if you want one that plays them well, you should expect the ridiculous price hike. It's your call, honestly. If you have money to burn, then go ahead. It's a very cool toy and will definitely stand out from other laptops... I have an Alienware m11x, so I should know. If not, then you probably have more reasonable options available for you.

Ok, based on my recent evaluations of my income, it turns out I was aiming way too high anyway. >.>

I'll sacrifice my beloved mobility in favour of a decent price.