To buy or not to buy!!

[smenon]

Hi,
I am a confirmed newbie here!! and am looking to buy a used desktop that i could do some matlab and other lite processing stuff on mainly for my homework. I have a deal from this guy who gives :-
1.1 GHz Celeron
128 MB RAM
40 GB Hard Drive
for a decent price. I just wanted to know if this sort of processor can handle codes written in matlab or c decently albeit slowly i guess. I am just trying to do some engg homework kind of stuff on this computer which should not be too processor intensive. I am able to do the same currently on a p3 machine with 933MHZ and 256MB RAM VERY comfortably. So if i could get an idea of how close this machine is the one i am using right now, i would really appreciate it.
Thanks a ton,
Shyam.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

That new PC sounds like a bit of a washout. Your current one has the better built-in cache, and has double the memory. Speedwise there is hardly any difference
Don't waste your money on someone's hand-me-down with such lowly specs.
To see any noticeable difference, your next (used) PC should be at least in the AMD Athlon XP 1800-2200 group. Anything lower than that is not worth it.

 

[Charles Hammond]

Why not just tell us the price??

How about a Dell Deal?

Dimension 3000
P4 (3GHz, 800 FSB),
Ms WinXP Home $589.00
Dell Home Customers: Save 20% off - $117.80
Dimension 3000 System Details $471.20


I would not pay more than say $150 for that computer.

That may seem low, but used computer hardware depreciates fast.

They may make you pay for shipping and tax so you have to figure for that.

 

[smenon]

RE..celeron..

Hi,
The guy is selling it to me with keybrd, mouse, 17" monitor for $125.
Regards,
Shyam.

 

[Charles Hammond]

That is not too bad of a price.

The only real danger is if something goes wrong or the computer dies you may lose some infomation or a homework assignment or some project. When a computer gets old, you never know when it will decide to give up.

This is why we cant really suggest buy or not. It will take some personal consideration on your part. Maybe you can make a payment every month and tell the guy if the computer gives up at any time during that period the deal is off. A 90 or 60 day guarantee is a justifiable request. You might also want to do a reinstall of the OS if that is possible. A computer with a fresh install usually runs faster for at least a little while.

I have an Asus TUSL2-C Tulatin core Motherboard at home with a 1.2Gig Tulatin Core Celeron with 256k L2 Cache and it runs pretty good. I gave it to my daughter to use. It still runs pretty good. They tend to run very cool and are very dependable. I have WinXP on it.

 

[SNGX1275]

Are you just in the market for 2 comps? Like Realblackstuff says there isnt' going to be much difference there. So unless you are just buying it for spare parts its probably not worth it.