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Thread ID: 62177 2005-09-29 09:07:00 Are PC's rip offs? zahmad (8963) Press F1
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392018 2005-09-29 09:07:00 About 4 years ago, my family bought a top of the notch Compaq Preasrio Pentium 4 1.4GHz, 40GB Hard Drive, Geforce MX2 Graphics Card (128MB), 128MB Ram, 17" Monitor (CRT), Logisoft Web Camera, HP Scanner and HP Printer + software for NZ$6000. Was it a rip off or what?

Compared now, it sucks like hell.
Should I get a new PC, or wait for technology to advance a bit more, as it does very fast, I mean only after a year, the price of a similar computer was down to $2500.
zahmad (8963)
392019 2005-09-29 09:12:00 That one was definitely a ripoff.

Which is why I never buy systems, already made up.

You can make one for $900 - $1000 these days. And a lot faster than 1.4.

It'll be better, if u make a system up yourself than buy one, with crap software on it.
Speedy Gonzales (78)
392020 2005-09-29 09:12:00 You will never catch up with the technology .

Hell, I built up a killer rig last week, some one wandered in,looked at it, asked how long untill it was outdated . . . . I told him it pretty much was, there is new stuff hitting the market all the time .

And no compaq is top of the line anything,MX2 was an extreme budget card, Im sure the mobo is an office machine special, its lacking ram and was probally SD ram at that, and the HD is probally a 5400RPM .

Even at the time it was purchased you could get far better gear for half of what you paid .



The idea is to shop smart .
Metla (12)
392021 2005-09-29 09:29:00 As already stated, as soon as you buy a system there is a better one around the corner. Prices for entire systems are getting better and four years ago you would of paid much more for a equivalent "latest model" than you would now. I remember my brother buying his first PC. It was a Pent 75 MHz with 16 MB of RAM, had a flash 4x speed CD-ROM and ran Win95. It cost $3200 new.

Basically, just get what technology you require now and don't buy a system with all the bells & whistles if you don't really need them.
Jen (38)
392022 2005-09-29 10:58:00 The rate of technilogical advance has been a lot slower over the past few years than it has been in the past, and I don't think we will see any significant improvements in consumer PCs for at least a year, probably 2. Once multi-core or cell processors take off, I expect we will see a lot of significant improvements in a short period of time. Greven (91)
392023 2005-09-29 11:03:00 Dual cores
64-Bit
The rise of the P-M

Been ticking over nicely, The last year has seen some of the biggest advances in CPU's ever.....
Metla (12)
392024 2005-09-29 11:19:00 About 4 years ago, my family bought a top of the notch Compaq Preasrio Pentium 4 1.4GHz, 40GB Hard Drive, Geforce MX2 Graphics Card (128MB), 128MB Ram, 17" Monitor (CRT), Logisoft Web Camera, HP Scanner and HP Printer + software for NZ$6000. Was it a rip off or what?


for $6K....mayby. you havn't eaxctly said what software and printer etc came with it. those sorts of things can easly double the price of the pc. without knowing details and what prices they where going for when you bought them, any comments are purly guess work.

naturally anything is out of date. due to the short product cycles and fast rate of advancement you will always buy something quicker tomorrow than what you paid for today.
tweak'e (69)
392025 2005-09-29 19:31:00 That one was definitely a ripoff .

Which is why I never buy systems, already made up .

You can make one for $900 - $1000 these days . And a lot faster than 1 . 4 .

It'll be better, if u make a system up yourself than buy one, with crap software on it .

I got mine built for just approx $1500 :D
Mr Wetzyl (362)
392026 2005-09-29 20:11:00 That one was definitely a ripoff .

Which is why I never buy systems, already made up .

You can make one for $900 - $1000 these days . And a lot faster than 1 . 4 .

It'll be better, if u make a system up yourself than buy one, with crap software on it .
If you add up all the parts off my website for an entire PC it would come out more than if you got me to quote for building it for you . SO thats not why their PC was so ripoff .
Just because it was a ripoff .
I got called to a guy who said it wasn't loading . Paid $5000 2 years ago . I get their and its running Win95 and was a 486 . And it was stuffed .
Asked where he bought it and he said some guys came to the door and offered it to him, some dodgy finance deal on it too .
I vaguely remember that from Fair Go a while ago .
pctek (84)
392027 2005-09-29 20:12:00 The rate of technilogical advance has been a lot slower over the past few years than it has been in the past, and I don't think we will see any significant improvements in consumer PCs for at least a year, probably 2. Once multi-core or cell processors take off, I expect we will see a lot of significant improvements in a short period of time.
Has it? PCI-E - SLI - Crossfire - sata to name a few.
Quad core cpus are out next year. I think you are overestimating the time there....
pctek (84)
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