[geeks] Ultra 20 thoughts

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 @ 15:52 -0500, Bill Bradford said:

> On Mon, Jul 04, 2005 at 03:18:59PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Ha... low-end PCs are around $350.  
> 
> $265 for the Dell I just bought, a PowerEdge SC420 "server".
> 
> Celeron D 325J (2.53Ghz), 512M DDR2-400 ECC RAM, 160G Maxtor SATA HD,
> CD-ROM, Broadcom gigabit Ethernet, onboard Intel video, Intel motherboard
> chipset.  Has one PCI-E 8x, one PCI-E 1x, and three 32-bit PCI slots,
> four USB2 ports, PS2, serial, and parallel.
> 
> I suspect the cheap price in this case results from Dell's volume 
> buying power, as this is much better built than say, Packard Bell or 
> eMachines systems I've seen.  It's also *heavy*.

I was wondering about that.

The PBs and eMachine motherboards will almost fold like cardboard, and
they really cut corners.

Personally, what I do is keep machines long past the point where
everyone else calls them old and crusty.  That let's me save money for
something better, at least that's the theory.  Saved money has a way of
attracting stealth bills...

Have you tried the PCI-E hack to get a faster graphics board in there?

A lot of people on the various forums I read have had a lot of trouble
with it, and they say the BIOS doesn't support it.

However, most people only post when they have trouble, and I'm all too
aware of how bad some people are at following directions.

Let us know if you try it.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["And in billows of might swell the Saxons
before her,-- Unite, oh unite!	Or the billows burst o'er her!" -- Downfall
of the Gael]