CoffeeFiend

I think that makes up the majority of them too. Totally. But then again, they've always done that. Again, someone today calling XP a "dreadful OS" because the upgrade from Win ME didn't work out so great... The same as people have driver problems causing BSODs -- no way they'd blame the hardware makers, they go on about how windows sucks. It's all MS' fault!

That's half the reason I bought this one. 1080p Blu-Ray/H.264 contents looks AMAZING on it --- better than most HDTVs I've seen. We havd no "normal" HDTV yet, but now I'm thinking for the price of even a cheap 50"+ 1080p LCD HDTV ($2500 and up), I can buy 2 more of them 24" P-MVA LCDs, and still have 1500$ left for PC upgrades (couple more core 2's, couple motherboards, a few more TBs of storage and what not). This way we can each watch our own movies at the same time (or whatever you wanna do, play games, surf the web...) instead of fighting for the remote of a single TV. Besides, watching on a 24" LCD from like 1 ft away, the pic is probably bigger (field of view) than the 50" from 10ft back...

Indeed. And the vast majority of them had a 4:3 aspect ratio (aka full screen), while most LCDs now are widescreen (usually 16:10 or such). Thanks! There are TONS of places on the web for LCD tech... Wikipedia has an OK article here but I think this pureoverclock one is better. tftcentral is a nice place. There are some GREAT reviews out there, some of them even take photos at different angles and such. If you really wanna see what some monitors look at different angles look, try this link, and pick "viewing angles" in step 3... You'll see instantly (there are other sites with bigger pics in their reviews where it's even more apparent) Personally, I can't stand having part of my monitor too dark to see well, the center looking just OK, and the other side being washed out. I just keep moving my head trying to find the perfect spot to look from, but there never seems to be one. You're just stuck moving your head around a lot to see the different parts of the LCD optimally. I bought a LCD based on a MVA panel myself, and the viewing angle is about the same as the CRT it replaced, we can easily be like 3 or 4 ppl looking at it at the same time, standing up or sitting, from any angle, and it just looks great. puntoMX: it's still a TN I guess (again, pick "viewing angles" in step 3) Granted, mine was more expensive, but it's also 24" (and P-MVA: better angles, etc....), is WUXGA (1920x1200), has more inputs, swivels, has 1:1 pixel mapping, etc. I think that's worth the extra 200$ or whatever.

Then there's something definitely wrong with your install. I've seen XP work great on older P3's just fine, very snappy. It must be the Win ME leftovers. Clean install is the only way to go IMO. Upgrading an OS pretty much always leads to the kind of problems you're experiencing. I've never had such problems, or seen anyone experiencing them. Stuff is just as fast... Especially on a decent machine like that. There's just no reason for it to be so slow. Hell, even on Vista almost everyday I have encoding jobs running (virtualdubmod + xvid or x264, besweet/lame too -- it hardly gets more demanding than that!) and PLENTY of heavy apps and it's NOWHERE NEAR that slow. I can even watch a HD movie while I'm encoding, and still have plenty of other heavy apps open at the same time (had no problems using XP before either) XP is definitely a decent OS. It's just your particular install/upgrade that has some issues.

Good list for some perhaps It very much depends on what ones does with their PC. For me, a GeForce 8800 is just a unnecessary power hog, and only 500GB (non-RAID too) truly doesn't cut it. But overall, yes, nice quality parts (not a big fan of that motherboard either, like puntoMX) @Thunderbolt 2864: why on earth? I can't think of a reason to go AMD at this point... e8400 or q6600 are far better picks IMO. They beat the Phenom X4 9550 on every single bench, and they're basically the same price. Like some articles say: "We don’t see why someone would by a Phenom CPU while you can buy a faster CPU from Intel for absolutely the same price. (...) The reviewed Phenom CPU’s will only be good products if AMD lowers their prices severely." Core 2 Duo/Quads perform great, they're very well priced, and they overclock like crazy, and there's lots of nice boards at decent prices. I just can't think of a reason to buy AMD at this point other than to keep them in business... Besides, why a board with onboard video, if you plan on buying a video card anyways?

I agree here. A couple years (or more) ago, CRTs were still a LOT better than LCDs picture quality-wise. Better blacks, FAR better angles of view, better contrast, none of the 6 bit dithering nonsense, often higher maximum resolution -- well, that and not being stuck at a fixed resolution, none of the response time artifacts, no dead pixels (bad warranty against them too), better gamut/color reproduction, often brighter, etc. Back then, LCDs were a lot more expensive too. The only nice thing they had, were the lack of flicker that cheap CRTs have (below certain refresh frequencies), and they were physically smaller/lighter. Nowadays, things have changed a LOT. There are some very nice panels being used in some screens that look just as good as CRT (IMO), but you very much have to check out what you're buying. Most people shop using only 3 metrics: size, price, and response time (they just pick the biggest they can afford, with the lowest response time possible), and as an afterthought contrast. That might be good for gamers who notice motion artifacts in high action stuff perhaps, but in general I think it's a mistake: -big and cheap = garbage TN panel -big, cheap and fast response times = garbage severely-overdriven TN panel Nevermind the response times are more often than not marketing lies (severely overdriven, calculated gray-to-gray), and the contrast is equally made up (dynamic BS), and the viewing angles are grossly over-stated. TN panels are awful IMO. I can tell just about instantly when I see one... You move your head an inch, and part of the screen becomes darker/brighter, contrast is mostly lost, and colors are often way off. The cheap ones are also the ones most likely to be a 6 bit panel (with dithering), and they tend to have more noise too. However, if you look around, you can find some monitors made from nicer panels -- MVA, PVA, and IPS panels. Those look a whole lot nicer, but they are more expensive (you TOTALLY get what you pay for here!). Here, you get good color reproduction, good blacks, good contrast, and GREAT angles of view compared to TN panels. Their response times are slower, but most people won't notice. There's a bunch of other little things you might want to look for, like a decent set of inputs (mine has Composite, S-Video, Component, VGA, DVI and HDMI). 1:1 pixel mapping is nice to have too. Some high-end models are starting to have features like black frame insertion, but none of that fancy stuff is really a must-have... One other thing to look for, is a seller with a zero dead pixel warranty. It usually costs extra, but it beats being stuck with a nice expensive LCD with dead pixel(s)! I personally don't really care who makes it (viewsonic is a nice brand seeminly, but they make a lot of LCDs from crap TN panels -- it's ALL about the panel used!) If you can afford them, the BenQ FP241W (it's about $500) or the Dell Ultrasharp series (although I heard they were sometimes using different panels in them) are VERY VERY nice.

No one's forcing you to upgrade at all, by any means. You can throw that old copy of MS DOS 3.3 on your new rig if you want... Or keep using that 386SX 20 until year 2150. And car analogies are flawed in many ways. Cars and roads are both hardware, and very unlike software in their nature (which needs hardware to run onto). New versions of windows are a new product too. Yes, they need hardware to run onto, but so is life. Same for movies. If the new movie comes on a DVD, it won't play in your old VHS player, you'll need to get a DVD player, same story with Blu-Ray discs (except you'll also need to upgrade your TV too). The vast majority of people buy a computer with windows preinstalled just the same. Buying windows to most of them is like buying just an engine. I'm not really sure what your point was.

Your examples are flawed for obvious reasons. MS for instance tempts people to buy new windows version with new styles, new features, accessories, etc. Just the same. So you're saying that MS is disabling older versions of windows? Or prevent you from reinstalling? And that is what's forcing you to buy Vista? That's not even making sense. Each year, when the new model of a car comes out, they stop selling the older one. Same story for Windows. When 95 came out, they stopped selling 3.11. When 98 came out, they stopped selling 95, etc. As for updates, they already give 10 years of FREE patches/support for Windows. Are you expecting eternal updates for free? And backporting every new feature to ensure they don't sell any copies of their newer OS'es? (great business model there, I'm sure the shareholders would approve!) Because that's like expecting the dealership to fix your car for free forever, and installing all the features of the new model in your old car for free too. geek was on the money.

Do like Tarun said. That Windows won't be activated on your HP tower, it's of no use to you. Just give Dell a call.

Thanks for the prompt and comprehensive answer! Yes I know.. I'm almost surprised to see myself back too Thanks for the welcome.

Not issues with the site, but 1 suggestion, and 1 question: On the front page, there are links to all the older .net frameworks but not for 3.5 (link for full redist is http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/0.../dotnetfx35.exe ) And now, the question: why does a large number of posts on the front page news show up as "Posted by ( posts)" i.e. no user name? Thanks!

I did run both XP and 2003 on a desktop before. Benchmarks might point out some minor speed differences (<10% likely), but I never saw any speed difference between the two (just plenty of apps that would either not run, or require patching the installers so they would install). XP is plenty fast, unless you have a pretty old PC (especially not enough RAM). If XP is slow (with system restore off, classic theme, unnecessary services disabled and such), 2003 is gonna be slow too. If it's an older PC, you might want to look into win2k, or buying more RAM. Drivers come a LOT into play here. With good drivers on quality hardware, both XP and 2003 are plenty stable for 99% of tasks. It's not like one needs five 9's of uptime on their desktop.

Actually, I find Gigabye boards are nicer than the Asus ones (at a similar price point at least). I love my DS3R, but the main reason to get it is the ICH9R (RAID), which he's not going to do seemingly, so it's kind of pointless. The DS3L is basically the same as the DS3R, but without the ICH9R (no RAID). But, the DS3R has 8 SATA ports and RAID (P5K only has 4, uses ICH9 non-R), and better outputs at the back i.e. a toslink (not just a spdif out) and 7.1+2 audio instead of 7.1 thanks to a somewhat nicer realtek codec, both ps/2 ports, a non-jmicron controller (no a big fan of them myself), 2 eSATA outs instead of 1 (on a bracket though, but it has a nice power plug too as a bonus, and comes with a cable), 2 extra USB ports at the back (same 12 total), has a dual bios, etc. Great overclocker too. The one thing the P5K has that the DS3R doesn't, is a firewire port that most people don't use. (mine is the GA-P35-DS3R not the GA-EP35-DS3R, main difference seems to be I have my beloved serial/parallel ports, and this one has 2 extra USB at the back that I don't need) So that P5K is more like the cheaper DS3L really. There are some very nice Asus boards, but they were out of my price range (and with the P5K, I'd have needed an extra Sil3114 controller, and a parallel/serial card too, that's like 60$ extra there, and 2 slots taken)

It's a decent case (decent front connectors, decent amount of bays, decent airflow especially if you add the 120mm front fan, etc) and psu too (antec as well, made by seasonic -- can't really go wrong there, no complaints at all), but it comes down to preferences at this point. I HATE them door things in front of PCs with a passion. Their only purpose in life seems to be getting in the way of your DVD writer when you need to change a disc. I used to have a couple cases with such doors, they're currently located in a landfill somewhere. I'd pay extra NOT to have one, but again, that's just me.

That about sums it up. A single 12v rail that's kind of weak (20A total, the antec has 2x17). It's not 80 plus either (not particularly efficient really). No PFC of any kind or anything (likely no OCP protection, and very little in OVP/EMI filtering, and almost guaranteed to be group regulation too). I wouldn't call it alright -- it's junk (made from an old design, and outsourced to wintech seemingly). Poor voltage regulation with load, high ripple and all. Known to use crappy fuhjyyu caps too. I've seen nicer PSUs for 35$ (like some by FSP) It's not like you NEED a 750w PSU with four 19A rails to run a basic box, but this is the other extreme. Good, stable, clean power is a must for any computer. Extra points deducted for being sold by Tigerjunkdirect! 150$ for a ugly looking case with bad airflow, and a crap psu instead of 70$ for a GOOD combo... Looks over function I guess!

Looks like you're making nice choices now. Parts you already picked: GA-EP35-DS3L $90.25 (priced matched from DirectCanada here) XFX GeForce 8600GT $38.88 The e2160 is a fine CPU (the one in my main box), but the e2180 is only 1.11$ more... $72.99 The ram you picked is alright. You can pay 50$ w/o mail in rebates, or $32.99 for basically the same thing, but with a mail in rebate (here). If you add to that: the 640GB WD hard drive I linked to earlier, and that Zxian just mentioned, it's $85.99 then the nice Antec NSK4480 case + psu Zxian mentioned, that's another $70.31 (priced matched from DirectCanada here) All you're missing after that, is a DVD writer, most of which are around 25$. So you're looking at about 415$ total, for a fast machine with quality parts. It's a few bucks extra than the refurb HP, but -you'll have a significantly faster CPU if you try to overclock it at all (very easy -- my e2160 OC'ed from 1.8 to 3.4, and benchmarks about 3x faster than my old P4 3GHz) -you got more disk space (140GB extra) -you got a better video card (faster, more memory, better outputs) -you got a far nicer motherboard (HP motherboards aren't exactly great) with better chipset (very stable), more features and all, which is more upgradable too -you get faster memory (brand name too) -you get a lot nicer case (especially airflow wise - thanks to the nice 120mm fan, more drive bays too - something HP cases suck at) -you get a nice PSU (the no-name stuff HP uses is trash that will die on you), which is 80plus rated (save on your power bill!), it's of good quality, from a reputable company, has a couple solid 12v rails, a decent connector set, etc ...and none of them parts are refurbished/2nd hand or anything. An extra 65$ well spent. Already not having to replace the PSU in a year, and the savings of using a 80plus model will just about pay for the difference in price anyways. It should be very stable and fast too.

It's always been like that. Some people don't see the new features, so act like it's not there (or pretend all of it is useless, because they don't use it). Cleartype is one nice addition, and there's plenty of others: fast user swiching. the kids use that a LOT here... hibernate. the kids' pc goes to sleep same time they do, and it wakes up when they're back from school. power savings, fast-on, no need to close everything remote desktop built-in (also, remote assistance) a bunch of new features as of SP2 (mostly security oriented: firewall, etc), and some more as of SP3 (black hole router detection, NAP, etc) driver rollback -- came in handy a couple times after windows update updated a driver to a bad/buggy/malfunctioning version some apps (like IE7, WMP11, etc) run on XP and newer (not that I use them or care for them, but it's still the case) some small things like the built-in CD burning and zip handling (even tho it sucks, it IS there) side by side assemblies (WinSxS) to try to prevent the old DLL hell problem MCE is new, even tho it doesn't come with all editions, same for the tablet features Those are new new to XP, but for win9x users, XP had even more new stuff (things that were already in win2k) And that's disregarding any changes made to the kernel too. I can't think of any new version of windows that didn't bring significant changes/improvements/new features besides windows ME.

I'll take your word for it. Never seen one for sale anywhere (ncix, newegg, etc)

Well, it comes down to: it's your money. I wouldn't buy that board for 35$ (I have seen similar boards with that chipset for 35$). I basically can't think of anything NOT wrong with the board. That, and the crappy seller too... Your new processor will be a little bit faster than your old one (forget about overclocking with that old board), you'll likely have a bit more ram (but then again your onboard video will use some too, so again not much gained there). The video card is 99% likely MUCH slower. In the end, it won't be much of an upgrade at all (perhaps 5% faster than my 5 year old 500$ HP). You'd likely get almost as much of a performance boost in your current PC by throwing 50$ of extra RAM in it than buying that. It's just not worth upgrading to. That board makes the 350$ refurb look REAL good (it most definitely has a better motherboard than that in it!). As for Vista (which is very nice imo), I wouldn't put it on that box either, just because it'll have a solid 1.0 windows experience index (the absolute lowest you can get), thanks to the onboard video. Just like Zxian says. I'm done making any recommendations here. This keeps getting worse. We're at the point that the refurb HP from BestBuy looks better specs-wise (newer chipset, vid card that slaughters this one, DVI out, better audio, spdif out, supports faster ram, etc). Even my 5yo HP tower (the box I can't wait to get rid of) looks nice all of a sudden, at least it has 4 DIMMs and a spdif out (exact same northbridge/southbridge/s***ty GMA video)... Not like you're really following any advice given here anyways.

Only 2 DIMMs, no DVI, only DDR 667 max, and no spdif so worse board than the 60$ asus from ncix, also more expensive, and from a crappy seller. Edit: oh ya, BTW, no, it's NOT a good graphic card on it. Intel GMA 950 sucks VERY badly. That's what I got in my 5 year old HP POS box, and it even sucked compared to the other cards out back then. You'd be hard pressed finding a worse vid card. Old 945 chipset too (I wouldn't stick a core 2 duo on one of those), and old-ish ICH7. BTW, my board has 12 USB

Hmm, no they're not cheap at all (except a couple things on special now and then). They're more like bestbuy/future shop than a computer store imo (craptastic is the word I'd use) Like Zxian said, shopbot works nice, and if it finds something cheaper than ncix has, then ncix will price match it (often directcanada is cheaper, nevermind it's the same company as ncix). canada computers is nice too if you're in ontario, but yeah, those are the main places. As for the ASUS P5K-VM, it's nicer, but still no DVI out. Personally, I'd go with a nice full sized ATX board, like the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L for like 90$, then the 38$ GeForce 8600GT on it (only 15$ more than that board anyways, you do get 256MB of dedicated ram for the vid card out of it, better 3D perf, and more/better outputs). Nice and stable intel chipset (P35/ICH9), very good for OC'ing, has pretty much everything you could ask for: 4 DIMMs, lots of slots, high definition 7.1 audio with toslink and spdif outputs and all... Ditto.

No you're not gonna reuse that for anything. It's an old socket 478 board, for which they've stopped making CPUs for a good while (we moved to LGA775 back in 2004. And there never were any dual core CPUs made for s478 anyways). Also, no pci-e (old AGP, same story), old DDR (not DDR2), old 865G chipset and all. And nevermind HP's board suck in the first place... There is nothing worth salvaging in that old box basically.

I thought I mentioned the specials Their regular prices are more expensive, but their year-round specials are cheaper e.g. Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB Hard Drive 3YR MFR Warranty $85.99. 4$ less than newegg's, for 640 instead of 500 (again, nevermind newegg doesn't ship to Canada) Or if you want something inexpensive, and that 500GB will do, then they have a 500GB seagate for $67. It's like that year-round. They beat newegg on most prices. But yes, the e2180 is all of 3$ more (crappy specials this week really). They have several 2x1GB kits of DDR2 PC 6400 around $35... Plenty of DVD writers around $25... Your XION case is like $53. $60 for that same motherboard. And if you decide to get a nice video card instead of cheap onboard video, they have a GeForce 8600GT for $38. Edit: The Hitachi P7K500 have awful seek times seemingly (18ms? wtf?), so I wouldn't buy one.

2 for now perhaps. But with Vista (and windows 7 next), and memory hungry apps (you mentioned photoshop), more is better. Especially if you decide to go for a x64 OS at some point. A board with 4 DIMMs will let you add a pair of 2GB sticks in a couple years for dirt cheap (probably 30$ by then). Also, that motherboard doesn't have a DVI out. And the fancier boards tend to be better for overclocking (and them core 2 duo's overclock like crazy, my e2160 went from 1.8 to 3.4 -- a 85% OC!) and have other nice things. Vista is more secure in some ways, but that should be a non-issue with both. Too much to load at startup? Like I said, you can disable things you don't want... It loads in about the same time as XP here (never timed it, but never noticed much of a difference) You're welcome. Check their current specials. The page should go live within an hour or so. Should you find a part for cheaper elsewhere in Canada (and in stock), they'll price match it too.

First, I thought you were in Canada? Or did newegg start shipping to Canada recently? Depending on where you live, there might be some good computer stores (there's so many of them... ncix, directcanada, canadacomputers, etc) ncix's new specials are starting in an hour or so. With some luck they'll have some wicked deals (their current everyday prices are about the same as newegg in the first place) Oh, and that computer is plenty fast to run Vista SP1 (disable the heavier things you don't want/like, and it'll run just as fast as XP) And yes, 450w is plenty for a basic box (not that it's a great quality PSU, but it'll work) Oh ya, one last thing: can't say I'm a big fan of that motherboard. Only 2 DIMM slots for a start.