Are you thinking of getting MagicJack for your home phone and want a separate computer so it doesn't tie up your main computer?
Try this little computer with all the extras you need to get it working with only 1 monitor, 1 keyboard, and 1 mouse!
OPERATING SYSTEM NOT INCLUDED!
This is small, quiet, and can be put out of the way so no one can see the computer. Yet it can handle all the way up to a Gigabit connection to your router.
It has a little Intel Atom 1.6GHz. which SHOULD run fairly cool. (The computer doesn't come with the SATA cables so I added 2 8" cables to hook-up the hard drive and DVD burner.) A single 2GB stick of laptop DDR2 533MHz. memory. A small Western Digital Caviar Blue 80GB SATA hard drive with an 8mb cache. (Shouldn't need to much hard drive speed or space for MagicJack.). A cheap Lite-On DVD burner since you really just need it for installing the operating system and maybe an Internet Security program.
The IOGEAR KVM switch I selected has a remote with a 6' cord so everything else can be hidden. The monitor uses the VGA (D-Sub) connection. The mouse and keyboard use USB connections.
Just add Microsoft Windows XP Home SP3 for System Builders for $89.99 with free shipping, a freeware firewall, and a freeware virus scanner like Avast! and you're all set to go once everything is all updated.
As usual..
Good Luck With Your Build!
Well, the 1st Intel Core i5 showed up at Newegg. The Intel Core i5 750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz with an 8MB L3 Cache. This sits on a socket 1156 motherboard. So far both Gigabyte and MSI have motherboards out for them. Gigabyte has the information on their website and MSI does not. They use DDR3 Dual-Channel memory like the AMD AM3 motherboards do.
Here is a basic build for the i5.
I went with a Gigabyte motherboard since they have their information up on their website.
Grand Total including $29.64 shipping charge in the Shopping Cart is $938.55.
This has the bottom of the line Gigabyte motherboard for the i5's in it. It still is on their Ultra Durable line so it's a good motherboard.
I put this in the Cooler Master 690 case which has 3 fans with room to add more. This is in a combo with the Cooler Master UCP 700 watt power supply. This is a tier 2 power supply on the Eggxpert Tiered Power Supply List. It has enough power to run an ATI Crossfire set-up with room to spare.
The OCZ Platinum DDR3 1333MHz. Dual-channel has good timings of 7-7-7-20 and needs 1.65 volts to get it there. OCZ is on the Gigabyte memory support list as a company.
The XFX 4850 1GB video card has a double lifetime warranty and should be a good video card for at least high settings in games. But not really high settings.
A Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA hard drive with a 32mb cache is in here. This is a pretty fast drive.
Samsung's 22x SATA DVD burner is both fairly quiet and stable.
As Always...
Good Luck With Your Build!
Well, I put together as best I could an Intel Core i7 set-up for $1,002.00.
It's in a Mid-Tower Cooler Master HAF 922 case with a tier 2 OCZ StealthXStream 700 watt power supply with all the right connections.
The video card is a 4870 1GB so it should be able to do gaming.
The 6GB of Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333MHz. memory have good timings of 7-7-7-20.
The motherboard is a Gigabyte UD3R. This is on their Ultra Durable (UD) line of motherboards, which are some of the best out there at this time.
The hard drive is the Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB SATA with a 32mb cache.
The DVD burner is a Samsung 22x SATA with LightScribe.
Grand Total including the $10.10 shipping charge is $1,001.02.
These prices and combos should hold through the end of October 2009.
As always..
Good Luck With Your Build!
It's been a long time since I've written anything on my blog. So I figured I would put up a new build.
School is about to start. This is an AMD AM3 Dual-Core set-up that should work well for a general purpose computer (surf the web, school work, office documents, etc.). This isn't a speedy gaming machine and the CPU isn't a Black Edition so it's harder to overclock (it can be done). This is just something simple that should cover most people's use of a computer well.
Now, I'm sure you might be saying "I can buy one for less than that!" But do you know who manufactured the parts that are in the computer? Building your own you do and you know the quality of the parts that are in it.
The price reflects the shipping costs to Minnesota, 55111, as well as the cost of the parts. This DOES NOT include the monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, or any other part out side of "the box". It only includes what is inside of it.
The Cooler Master Sileo case comes with a 500 watt power supply that has all the proper connections you'll need including the 8-Pin CPU power connector for the Gigabyte UD3H motherboard. Most power supplies that are included in a case don't have that connection. It also has 2 120mm 800 RPM fans already mounted it it. 1 in the front for intake and 1 in the back for exhaust. This should be pretty quiet. Since the power supply is also fitted with a 6-Pin PCI-E power connector, you can add 4770, 4850, or a GTS 250 video card later on if you want to.
The Gigabyte GA-MA785G-UD3H motherboard is part of the Gigabyte Ultra Durable (UD) line of motherboards. These are some of the best motherboards out there at this time. It has ATI Radeon HD 4200 on-board graphics so you won't need a video card. But you can add one later if you choose to.
The CPU is a Phenom II 545 3.0GHz. Dual-Core. Tom's Hardware tested the Athlon II (250 Regor) and Phenom II (550 Callisto) when they first came out. They said the Phenom II is better than the Athlon II and gave it the nod. The AMD Phenom II 550 3.1GHz. Dual-Core is available in a combo with the same Gigabyte UD3H motherboard for $12.01 more.
I chose the 4GB of OCZ Blade Series DDR2 800MHz. memory for their good timings of 5-5-5-15 and needing only the stock 1.8 volts to work right. This way you don't have to go into the bios and start playing with settings to get the memory to work right.
I included a Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB hard drive with a 32mb cache. This will help get the information to and from the hard drive faster helping speed up the computer. You can lower the price by switching this hard drive out for one with an 8mb or 16mb cache and changing the hard drive size.
The Sony Optiarc 24x SATA DVD burner with LightScribe should be pretty quiet and stable to operate. There are cheaper SATA DVD burners.
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-BIT is in the build for the operating system. The version will give you a free copy of Windows 7 Home Premium "upgrade" when it comes out in October of this year.
These prices and combo should hold through the end of September 2009.
As always...
Good Luck With Your Build!
I received in my feeds this article from ZDNet entitled " Vista or Windows 7? Just get rid of XP, Microsoft tells users ". This is more meant for business users, but it might be interesting reading for the rest of us as well. This kind of puts things into perspective as how Microsoft sees things.
There are 401 "Talkbacks" on this article last time I looked.
Well, I've already started to play! Since the AMD Phenom II CPUs are starting to come out, I decided (for fun) to see what a fairly solid system I could put together. In parts, I've over built it for the up coming Windows 7 64-BIT.
All the prices are current as of 7:30AM CST on the 8th of January, 2009.
CASE: Antec Nine Hundred $99.99
POWER SUPPLY: PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W $134.99
MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-DS4H $138.99
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition $275.00
CPU FAN: XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 $36.99
MEMORY: (2) G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $99.98
HARD DRIVE: (2) Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB $179.98
VIDEO CARD: SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB $244.99
DVD BURNER: SAMSUNG Black 22X with LightScribe $29.99
OPERATING SYSTEM: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit $99.99
TOTAL INCLUDING $42.49 SHIPPING CHARGE TO MINNESOTA: $1,383.38
As you can tell, I over built it a bit by adding 8GB of memory and 1.5GB of hard drive space using 2 drives.
The price can be raised or lowered by adding or changing the video card, lowering it to 4GB of memory or changing it out, or dropping one of the hard drives. There are, of course, other ways to change the price as well.
EDIT: I almost forgot to add the DVD burner! It's in there now though.
EDIT AGAIN!: Here is a review from Tom's Hardware that just came to my attention.
EDIT YET AGAIN!: Newegg finally added free shipping to the AMD Phenom II CPUs!
Till Next Time!
2 of the AMD Phenom II CPUs are now available through NewEgg. The 920 (standard) and the 940 Black Edition. Both have a 6MB L3 cache, 45nm manufacturing tech, work on the AM2+ motherboards, and use 125 watts of power.
The 920 has a operating frequency of 2.8GHz.. While the 940 Black Edition operates at 3.0GHz.
Both are quad cores.
The 920 costs $235.00 while the 940 costs $275.00. Neither one is marked with free shipping at this time.
Till Next Time!
Well, it's happened. It is now cheaper to buy G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066MHz. memory than it is to buy the G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800MHz. memory. The DDR2 1066 is now $49.99 and the DDR2 800 is $74.99. The DDR2 800 used to be $49.99, but they have changed it.
So, if you are building a new system, you might want to simply look at the 1066 and forgo the 800. (If you are running an AMD you will need an AM2+ CPU to use the 1066 memory to its full clock speed of 1066.)
Till Next Time!
EDIT: With in a short time of writing this blog, Newegg has dropped the price of the 4GB G.Skill PI Black DDR2 800MHz. memory back down to $49.99 like it used to be. I can't understand why they had raised it up that high to begin with? It almost seems that someone or a computer at Newegg keeps moving the price up then down again. (I hope they decide soon which price they are going to give it and keep it there.)
Microsoft Research teamed up with Disney•Pixar and created a virtual tour of the universe hosted by none other then……WALL•E!
WALL•E is assisted by award winning director Andrew Stanton, who narrates this tour.
Here is the link to the rest of the article: Explore The Universe With WALL•E And Andrew Stanton (Liveside.net article)
This should be great for anyone who has kids or grandkids like I do.
This will require you to install the world wide telescope program. The link is included farther down the page to the website.
UPDATE
I just watched it myself and it was quite interesting. It's only a few minutes long and just gave you a glimpse at a few things that are out there. Then suggests you continue on your own to look around the universe.
Till Next Time!
People that attended to the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles three weeks ago were given a hard drive with Windows 7 build 6801 on it for testing. (Windows 7 isn't slated to be released until sometime in late 2009 or early 2010.)
The reviews of this BETA are starting to show up.
Here is the review from Ed Bott's Microsoft Report from ZDNet.
If you find more reviews, add them in!
In the ZDNet blog Hardware 2.0, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote an article called "$350 Barebones Vista/7 PC". The system he came up with is an Intel. But it's not complete. What he has listed has everything EXCEPT the DVD burner and the case. (As normal it does not include the operating system or anything outside the case.) He was showing how much you can now buy for $350.00 compared to, say, a month ago.
Here is the list of parts he constructed:
CPU: Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P5N-EM HDMI MEMORY: Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 VIDEO CARD: HIS Hightech H467QS512P Radeon HD 4670 HARD DRIVE: HITACHI Deskstar T7K500 HDT725032VLA360 (0A33435) 320GB POWER SUPPLY: SeaSonic SS-300ET 300W
The total cost of what he has listed is $344.94 in a NewEgg Wish List. (If you throw it in the NewEgg "buy basket", it comes to a total of $364.02 shipping it to Minnesota zip code 55111.)
Now, like I said, he didn't include the DVD burner or the case. So I went hunting for a cheap case that still had some fairly good reviews. I ended up with the Rosewill R102-P-BK at a cost of $19.99. With the $12.99 shipping charge, it comes to a total of $32.98. For the DVD burner I chose the Samsung Black 22X DVD+R 22X. This DVD burner is a 2 time winner of the Customer Choice Award at NewEgg. It costs $27.99. With the shipping charge of $6.99, it is $34.98.
If we add everything together, we get a total now of $431.98 including all shipping charges to Minnesota zip code 55111.
Needless to say, the $350.00 box just came up to over $430.00 after including everything to build a fully functional box, minus the operating system.
That's not to bad, but it isn't a true $350.00 computer. I also saw there might be 1 very large problem right off the bat with this set-up. Since we are dealing with a micro ATX case (that's what most of them were that are under $20.00), the video card he put in the build might not fit the case. It is the newer "long card" configuration which needs space behind it versus the older "square card" configuration. A square card will fit in just about any case as long as it doesn't have the "half height" card restriction.
If the video card fits in the case, this would make a good Intel starter system for the money.
Now that we have Adrian's Intel system out of the way, I decided to put together an AMD system for about roughly the same amount of money. (A total of 431.98 including all the parts and shipped to Minnesota zip code 55111.)
Here is what I came up with.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H (This is the 3 time winner of the Customer Choice Award for AMD motherboards at NewEgg.) MEMORY: Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 VIDEO CARD: SAPPHIRE 100255L Radeon HD 4670 HARD DRIVE: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB POWER SUPPLY: SeaSonic SS-300ET 300W
That completes the AMD build. The total cost in the NewEgg Wish List is $345.95.(When put in the NewEgg "buy basket", this comes to a total of $361.44.)
After adding the same Rosewill case and the same Samsung DVD burner, our total in the buy basket (or cart) is $429.40 to Minnesota 55111.
Well, with the AMD system, we didn't break the $430.00 mark for a total. The AMD system will fit in a micro ATX case since the video card I chose was the older "square card" format and doesn't need the extra room in the case.
As we can all see, the AMD system is about $2.00 cheaper than the Intel system. Both systems should be a good match for either Windows Vista or Windows 7 when it comes out sometime in late 2009 or early 2010.
I would recommend changing the HIS video card in the Intel system for the Sapphire card in the AMD system. Both cards cost the same. It's just that the Sapphire card is shorter. That is the only reason.
Have fun with either of these builds.
Till Next Time!
Back on September 30th, 2008, PC Magazine came out with an article titled "Build It: A Sub-$250 Desktop PC".
They used a Shuttle "G7" Chassis K48 barebones kit, an Intel Celeron 430 (single core) CPU, a single 1 GIG stick of Crucial Value Ram, a Western Digital 80GB SATA2 hard drive, and a Lite-On DVD-RW burner. All the parts came from NewEgg and did not include shipping. The operating system was Ubuntu Linux, which is a free operating system if you download it from the internet.
Since Linux laptops and PCs are being returned at a rate of 4 to 1 versus Windows or Mac computers, I decided to see if I can build a little better PC for about the same price. The answer is: YES!
Now remember. The total of what everything is DOES NOT include the operating system or anything outside "the box". (Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, Etc.) It DOES include the shipping charges though. (At least to Minnesota. Your mileage may vary.) I didn't use any rebates when I set these up.
I set 2 parameters that both the Intel and the AMD computers had to meet. A Dual Core CPU and 2 GIG of Dual Channel Ram. With these 2 parameters met, they should be able to run WindowsXP Home or Windows Vista Basic at a minimum.
These are not going to be speed demons of any sort. These are very basic computers which should allow e-mailing, surfing the web, and running some programs. Not necessarily games real well since these are minimalist machines. (Go check out "jsv35's Budget Builds" in the forums for more powerful computers than these.)
UPDATE! I just noticed the prices have changed since I wrote this. I will correct them at the bottom. I also noticed the Samsung DVD has been deactivated and I will put an active one in its place.
Time for the "guts" of both machines. They share just about everything except motherboards and CPUs, which is only natural since you can't put an AMD CPU on a Intel motherboard. It just doesn't work that way.
CASE - I used the RaidMax xB with a 380 watt power supply built-in. It's not THE bottom of the line case, but it is close. The 380 watt supply that comes with it should be more than big enough to power it.
RAM - I went with Kingston ValueRAM (2x1GB) Dual Channel set. It has a CAS 5 latency so it's not slow, but it's not the fastest either. Kingston are my old "stand by". If no other ram works, Kingston does.
HARD DRIVE - Western Digital Caviar Blue 80GB. Same with this hard drive. I've never had a problem with a Western Digital I've bought yet.
DVD-RW BURNER - Samsung 22X DVD burner. Since the power supply has only 1 SATA power connector on it, I went with an IDE burner. Leaving the SATA connector for the hard drive. PC Mag used a Lite-On burner for their build. But I've had 1 Lite-On burner myself and it was very noisy. The Samsung burners seem to be quieter and cost the same.
VIDEO CARD - BioStar GeForce 8500 GT. This will help with better video instead of using the on board on the motherboards. Since both the motherboards I picked have the older PCI-E slot, I didn't want to trust using a card built for a newer 2.0 slot. It might not work. (I went with a BioStar video card since both of them have BioStar motherboards.)
Now that all the parts they share are out of the way, it's time for what they don't share.
INTEL SET-UP
MOTHERBOARD - BioStar G31-M7. Lately I've built 2 computers with BioStar motherboards and had good success with them. So I went with them for these builds. This is a socket LGA 775 board. So it should work with the CPU I picked out. Also a LGA 775.
CPU - Intel Celeron E1200. This isn't the fastest by no means. But it serves the purpose for what we are doing here.
This brings the Intel machine to a total cost of $305.25 including shipping.
AMD SET-UP
MOTHERBOARD - BioStar MCP6P-M2. This is a nVidia board. It serves the purpose like the Intel motherboard does.
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. Since this is an OEM part, we will have to add a separate CPU cooler to it.
CPU COOLER - COOLER MASTER DK8
This brings the AMD machine to a total cost of $345.05 including shipping.
As you can tell, both machines have met the criteria and the cost is a $39.80 difference.
OH! How do you get both machines to around $250.00? That's easy. Take out the video card from each machine! The Intel will cost $255.26 and the AMD will cost $292.50. Each including shipping from the time I wrote this.
Till Next Time!
Last time I wrote a blog similar to this, I used some parts I picked up on the cheap. This time I will attempt to build a fairly good all-around rig including all the parts. Everything will be retail packaging except for the hard drive and DVD burner, which is OEM. The total cost, including shipping, from New Egg is just under $600.00. This is all the hardware, not including monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, or the operating system. You are on your own there since some people will run different versions of Windows or maybe even Linux.
NOTE: They change the prices every once 'n awhile. So I'm going to take all the price quotes out. You can look at the links to get the prices. It SHOULD still come in under $600.00 including shipping for some time to come.
CASE - I chose the Antec Three Hundred case for this build. It's a sturdy case and pretty cheap. It's only 1" higher and 1" longer than the mini P180. (18"L x 18"H x 8"W)
POWER SUPPLY - Once again, Antec. Antec Earthwatts EA500. This is a 500 watt supply that is SLI and CrossFire ready. It is also 80 Plus Certified so it will save you a bit on your power bill. Hopefully. The Earthwatts EA430 is about $10.00 cheaper.
MOTHERBOARD - I decided to stay with the GigaByte GA-MA78GM-S2H. The 3 time winner of the Customer Choice Award for AMD motherboards. This is pretty much a fully loaded motherboard.
MEMORY - I stuck with 3 GIG of Kingston Value Ram. (A 1GIG set and a 2GIG set.) The reason for sticking with these Kingston sets? They are in the ballpark costs of what most of the other memories single sticks. Both of these are dual channel sets. (If you choose to run a 64-BIT operating system, simply buy 2 sets of the 2GIG. This will give you 4 GIG total.)
CPU - AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core. This is the cheapest Quad Core there is from what I can see. It suffers from the B3 problem. But reading some of what has been written, it's not easy to make it happen. A lot of people shut off the B3 repair on the motherboard. It takes away about 18% of the Quad Core's speed when it is turned on. This is cheaper then a lot of the Triple Core CPUs. (The 8450 triple core is cheaper by around $20.00.)
VIDEO CARD - I decided to go with one of the least expensive ATI Radeon 4670. That is the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670. It has 512MB GDDR3 video ram and 320 streams. The 4670's chip is based on the 4800 series. ( ATI just released the new Catalyst v8.10 drivers on October 15, 2008. This new version of Catalyst now supports the Radeon 4670 chipset.)
HARD DRIVE - Western Digital Caviar 640GB. I have always trusted Western Digital hard drives. They seem to be the most rugged and last the longest. When I ran a BBS many years ago, there were others that ran Seagate and Maxtor hard drives. They seemed to die more often then Western Digital drives did. I figured a 640GB hard drive should have plenty of space for the future. If you need more, simply add another 640GB drive and have a total of 1.280 Terabytes. (I use Diskeeper Pro to keep my hard drives defragged automatically in the back ground. Diskeeper Pro will handle up to 1 terabyte per drive.)
DVD-RW DRIVE - Samsung 22X DVD-RW with LightScribe. I have found the Samsung DVD drives are quite good. (I have a 20X in my current computer.) I included LightScribe on the drive because you never know when you might want to burn a disk for some one and then personalize it.
Till Next Time!
I was reading my RSS feeds and came across this little gem from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes in the ZDNet Hardware 2.0 blog.
It appears that Symantec (AKA Norton) has come out with a BETA replacement for the Windows VISTA User Account Control (UAC).
It appears to give you the ability to (finally) get the UAC working right so once you tell it to run or not run the program, it will remember your decision. It also gives you more information as to why it activated the UAC. This is a direct replacement for the UAC built into Vista. It comes in both 32-BIT and 64-BIT versions. Downloading is available through a link I will add to the bottom as well as a link in the article.
PLEASE READ THE WHOLE HARDWARE 2.0 ARTICLE BEFORE INSTALLING THIS!
Remember... THIS IS A BETA!
DO NOT install on mission critical computers! (Betas do not always work like they are supposed to.)
Here is the link to the Norton Labs Vista User Account Control BETA.
Till Next Time!
In my blog post "Time for a New Computer", Jas0n asked if you can build a laptop? That's a fair enough question.
So I started looking around to see if it is possible to build a laptop. I checked NewEgg, GearXS, and Pricewatch. I didn't find anything dealing with a "laptop" bare bones kit at any of these sites. I finally went to Tiger Direct. The answer is: Yes you can. But there is not much that you can configure in the kit. It comes pretty complete.
All their "notebook" kits are made by OCZ Technology. There are 6 different ones. They range in price from $649.99 all the way up to $1,549.99. Warranties are offered starting at $134.98 for 1 year. Shipping is not included, that's extra on almost all of Tiger Directs products. (3 to 7 day shipping to my home here in Minnesota for their cheapest one is about $15.00.)
There are only 3 items you get to decide to install on these kits. The hard drive, the memory, and the operating system. Everything else is already installed and ready to go.
So let's look at their cheapest kit. The OCZ DIY 17" Gaming Notebook PC.
This is an AMD machine using the AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual-Core TK-53 processor with a 512KB L2 Cache. (Most of the other more expensive notebooks are Intel.) The optical drive is the standard DVD +/- RW Dual Layer drive. Audio is a RealTek ALC885 HD audio codec. Graphics are nVidia GeForce 8600 GS with 256MB DDR2 dedicated memory. A modem, Gigabit wired LAN, and a Atheros b/g wireless LAN are all included. The built-in display is a WXGA+ DimondBrite display with a 1440 X 900 max. resolution. The battery is a 6-Cell Lithium-ion. No battery life was stated. It has 1 - Express Card Slot/54 or 34.
O.K. Now that we have the major specs out of the way, let's take a look at memory. It says it can take a maximum of 4GB (2x2GB) of DDR2-667MHz. memory. Well, there seems to be only one option for this memory at NewEgg. It's OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM . This is dual channel memory. $74.99 with $6.99 shipping. There is a MIR of $25.00, but I'm going to take the full price since that's what we will pay upfront.
Now the hard drive. Since this is a gaming machine and games are getting up around the 10GB each in size, I went with the biggest and fastest hard drives there are. For laptops, that's 320GB and 7200RPM. There are 3 of them from 3 different manufactures available at NewEgg. A Western Digital , a Seagate, and a Hitachi. All of them have free shipping. The Hitachi is the most expensive at $139.99. Both the Seagate and the Western Digital cost $109.99. I'll use the Hitachi for this example at $139.99.
Now the Operating System. Since the laptop has 4GB of memory, we'll look at the 64-BIT Vista Home Premium and WindowsXP Pro 64-BIT. It's not a real fair comparison since the Vista Home Premium 64-BIT is a 3-Pack and the WindowsXP Pro 64-BIT is a single pack. We'll use WindowsXP 64-BIT for this build since it's a single pack. The cost is $139.99 with free shipping.
O.K. Time for the total bill. This will include the notebook, 1 year warranty, 4GB of memory, 320GB 7200RPM hard drive, MicrosoftXP Pro 64-BIT operating system, and all shipping charges (to Minnesota).
All the damages come to a grand total of: $1,161.39
The price will be different with a smaller hard drive, not including the warranty, less memory, and using the Vista Home Premium 3-Pack.
This was using Tiger Direct's cheapest D.I.Y notebook. There are 5 more that are more expensive then this one.
Till Next Time!