🚀 go-pugleaf

Andy Patrizio (patrizio@netcom.com) wrote:

: I'll agree with Bowie over the Packard Bell, but disagree about Acer. I 
: bought an Acer Aspire P133 and the performance sucked eggs. The hard 
: drive was slow and loud and performance was weak. I don't have all of my 
: complete benchmarks, but here's one example: 3dbench on the Aspire was 
: 76.4. On my homebuilt P133, it's 125.

I had considered handbuilding a machine as well.. But when it came down 
to it, the amount of money I'd have to shell out to get what I truly 
wanted was only 2-300 less than what I could get in a pre-packaged system.
The blood sweat and tears of de-tangling hardware was easilly worth the
difference in price. You're obviously going to get better graphics 
performance out of a homebuilt machine.

Suffice it to say, there's nothing to prevent you from buying a 
newer/faster video card and laying it down in one of the Aspire's 
pleasantly numerous PCI slots. :) The graphics performance of the Aspire 
is about on par with most other pre-packaged systems. Its average. Not
exceptionally fast, but not exceptionally slow either.

My Aspire came with 1MB of VRAM onboard, with the capability to add 
another meg. The second meg of VRAM is on the way, actually. Just ordered 
it mailorder on Friday.


: The Aspire comes with a non-standard sound card that, while it is full 
: duplex (great for WebTalk), doesn't do Sound Blaster very well. The modem 
: was also non-standard and many of my apps wouldn't work with it. 

Huh? Thats weird... The soundcard in mine works fine.. I've never had a 
problem getting it to work with *anything* I use. Another case of 
low-balling maybe? Whatever sound card is cheapest that week....?

: In short, I greatly dislike most consumer computers that are designed to 
: act like a Mac. Take it out of the box and it works. Once you change one 
: thing, the whole house of cards comes tumblind down. 

I'll disagree with you here.. For the amount of money I layed down for 
the machine, I dont want to have to *worry* about support, software, or 
other extranneous headaches.

: But right now, I'd be leery about buying a computer from Taiwan. Support 
: might get cut off. :-\

True. But I'd be even more hesitant to buy anything from Apple right now. 
Theyre already doing laps around the industry's toilet bowl--You'de be 
wise not to hang around for the "sluurrgghhsch" noise. :)



: My advice is to build your own. Buy the right parts and you'll never have 
: a hiccup.

True--Granted you know how to do it, and do it right. :) You'll also know 
the hardware like the back of your hand. However, if you're going to be
putting that much money into something, you might as well get a company
behind you, and some form of support outside of yourself.


: -Andy
: -- 
: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Andy Patrizio			"Personally, I think cyberspace means the
: patrizio@netcom.com  		end of our species... it means the end of
: Los Angeles, Calif.		innovation.  Everyone will think the same
: 				thing at the same time. Global uniformity"
: 					- Ian Malcom, "The Lost World"

--

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Bowie J. Poag (bjp@interaccess.com) 50 Mhz A2500HD/030/882,AmiTCP/IP 4.2
(Go to your local CD store and buy a CD called SUPERNOVA:Ages_3_And_Up!)