Impulse PC Buy

[DontSayBanana]

I was at staples today, and saw a Athlon dual core laptop for 399 bucks. Decided to pick it up:

http://www.staples.com/Compaq-Presario-CQ61-313us-Laptop/product_828743_HC2?cmArea=SEARCH

Nice machine, but I had to make the backup recovery disks myself. Cheap fucks.

Aside from the card reader and the webcam, that could be a sister lappy to my Toshiba, except I have an Athlon QL-65 instead of an M300 (slightly faster), and it came with 32-bit Windows.

Soon as I can, I'm switching to 64-bit and putting more RAM in.

[bogh]

Never bought a Dell PC for myself before, but I had been looking at one of these as a possible replacement for my gigantic (by comparison), loud, energy-inefficient home theater PC. 


http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=DDDOUB1

They put the base model on sale for $199 today w/ free shipping.  With the 20% Bing cashback, it effectively becomes $160 before tax.  I kicked in the extra $30 for the dual-core processor but I left everything else as is.  I can upgrade the OS & memory on my own.  I may also put a blu-ray drive in it.

Hopefully it handles 720p content okay.  If not, it should do fine as a Home Server.

I'd be interested in hearing your feedback on this - I was looking at the exact same model for the office just yesterday (we just need a very basic machine to install Boxee etc. on to try out user interfaces).

[derspiess]

I'd be interested in hearing your feedback on this - I was looking at the exact same model for the office just yesterday (we just need a very basic machine to install Boxee etc. on to try out user interfaces).

I'm supposed to have it by around the 17th (went with free shipping, so I wasn't expecting to get it from Dell in record time) & I plan to test it out extensively.  It is shipping with Vista Basic & I opted not to go with the very reasonable $30 Win7 upgrade because I'll have a Win7 license to use on it.  But for the hell of it I'm going to see how it performs with Vista before I do anything.

I went with the standard on-board graphics & I hope I don't regret it.  From what I read though it should handle 720p video fine.  I plan to up the RAM to at least 4GB and may upgrade the hard drive as well.  I'm now leaning against adding a Blu-ray drive, since it will be sitting right next to an actual Blu-ray player

I'm going to stress-test it with high bitrate 1080p video just to see how it does; I'll let you know how it turns out.

[derspiess]

bogh, I dug a little deeper & found the support/technical docs on Dell's site (they're listed under "Inspiron 400").  Found that all configurations should support Blu-ray playback up to 1080p, and will output 5.1 AC3 & DTS through the HDMI port (makes things infinitely easier for me).

The two memory slots will handle up to 8gb of DDR2, but the model I opted for will not have a video card slot-- I really hope it handles HD with the onboard HD3200 without a hitch, 'cuz I'm locked into it.

And apparently it has an internal wifi card, possible N?

Anywho, here's all the doc: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/insp400/en/index.htm?ACD=10550055-3136390-&AID=3136390

[Barrister]

Let us know how it goes.

I've been tempted at times to buy a mac Mini to act as a kind of home server for media and other files.  Perhaps hook it up in the kitchen so it could be used for light webbrowsing (mostly for recipes) and media playback.

But I don't know if it could really do what I want it to do, at least quickly and easily...

[bogh]

bogh, I dug a little deeper & found the support/technical docs on Dell's site (they're listed under "Inspiron 400").  Found that all configurations should support Blu-ray playback up to 1080p, and will output 5.1 AC3 & DTS through the HDMI port (makes things infinitely easier for me).

The two memory slots will handle up to 8gb of DDR2, but the model I opted for will not have a memory card slot-- I really hope it handles HD with the onboard HD3200 without a hitch, 'cuz I'm locked into it.

And apparently it has an internal wifi card, possible N?

Anywho, here's all the doc: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/insp400/en/index.htm?ACD=10550055-3136390-&AID=3136390

Thanks, I may go ahead and order it next week anyway, looks fine for a Windows 7 / Boxee outfit. But by all means keep me posted.

[grumbler]

If you need HDMI cables, Woot.com has some fairly nice ones for a pretty good price (today only, of course).

[derspiess]

Fixed my post from Friday.  I meant to say the model I ordered will not have a *video* card slot-- it should have two DDR2 memory slots.

[derspiess]

It shipped yesterday & has an estimated delivery date of 12/10

[Josquius]

Why is Jos acting like home networking is something new?

It is to me.

[derspiess]

Okay, got my Zino HD yesterday, 2 days after the estimated delivery date.  Dell seems to do a crappy job shipping stuff promptly unless you're a business, so no surprise.

Anywho, it was a sort of clandestine unboxing.  Not trying to completely conceal it from the wife, but not trying to overemphasize it, either.  It looks pretty nondescript with my other A/V stuff; about the same size as my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive (though a little taller.  It came with a keyboard & mouse I won't be using with it, as well as a driver disk and recovery disk with the OS.

It uses a laptop power supply, and it also uses laptop (SODIMM) memory & a laptop-sized optical drive.  I didn't opt for a wifi card, but I believe it has an open internal PCI-E slot for it.

I opted for the Vista Basic OS since i have a Win7 license to use with it.  For the hell of it, I played around with configuring it to see how it would perform.  Performance was good, even before I uninstalled the Dell crapware that came with it.  I connected the power, Cat6 cable, MCE IR keyboard, and HDMI cable & I was ready to roll. 

Only real issue I ran into was that the screen image was smaller than my HDTV's actual screen.  It is a 37" 720p display (1366x768 native resolution) and no matter what resolution I tried, I got the same result.  Could not get Catalyst Control Center to run for me on Vista to tweak the overscan settings to stretch the image back out.  Everything else seemed okay-- I got audio out through HDMI with no problems at all.

So at this point I gave up & loaded Win7.  After loading drivers, updates, etc. I went into CCC and adjusted overscan to fit the screen image to my display.  Display looks good now, but I can't tell for sure if the pixels match 1:1.  May have to tweak a little more-- maybe it's just me or the default wallpaper, but colors don't look as vibrant as they did with my older, bigger HTPC that connected via VGA.

Loaded up Windows Media Center & got the 5.1 sound & my HDTV tuners (both USB-- I can't use my PCI tuners) configured.  WMC runs way, way better for me on this box than it ever did for me under any OS on any PC I've owned. 

Performance in general is very, very snappy with this little PC.  I dl'ed & installed the divx codec & apps and also installed boxee to try out, but I need to resist the temptation to load it up with too many apps (as I have with my main PC).

I streamed some 720 .mkv and .wmv files & the system handled them fine.  Need to try out a few more formats, but results so far are encouraging.  At this point I do not regret keeping the default configuration for most of the components.

For anyone curious, here are the specs:

* Processor:  AMD 3250e (dual core, 1MB L2, 1.5GHz)
* Chipset: AMD 780G
* Memory: 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SODIMM (will upgrade to at least 4gb later)
* Video: ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 (integrated into chipset)
* Audio: 5.1 DD/DTS over HDMI (HD3200)
* Optical drive: 12.7mm (standard laptop) SATA DVD+/-RW drive
* Hard Disk: Standard 3.5" 250gb SATA hard drive (will upgrade to 1TB at some point)

Prices on the Dell Zino HD range from $199 (sale prices on base config) to ~$650 (all the bells & whistles).  My configuration was base, except for the processor upgrade.  It was about $244 after tax w/ free shipping, which will effectively be $195 after I get my Bing cashback.

Going to give boxee a try, and will also see if I can stress-test it with some more high def content.  But if my experience thus far holds up, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap home theater PC or desktop for non-gaming duties.

[Pat]

I might be interesting in a player for streaming media, but I was thinking of maybe getting a chipped XBOX 360. Is there any reason why a PC would be better than an XBOX for streaming media?

[derspiess]

A pc would be more flexible/customizable, and you'd have more codec support.  Plus you could do all the normal pc stuff, and could repurpose it for other duties later.

[Pat]

Customization is why I'd want it chipped. I've been looking at the Xbox Media Player (http://xbmc.org/about/) which is supposed to be able to play most stuff. Already have two PCs but I don't have a console so the additional console use would be of more interest to me than the additional pc use. But I'm a bit wary after hearing of Xboxs apparently breaking down all the time, while a PC would (presumably) last me longer. And I *could* play emulator games on the PC (already have usb gamepads).

[derspiess]

Customization is why I'd want it chipped. I've been looking at the Xbox Media Player (http://xbmc.org/about/) which is supposed to be able to play most stuff.

Ah, gotcha.  I didn't know the 360 ran xbmc.  Still, I would think a PC would be infinitely more customizable

Already have two PCs but I don't have a console so the additional console use would be of more interest to me than the additional pc use. But I'm a bit wary after hearing of Xboxs apparently breaking down all the time, while a PC would (presumably) last me longer. And I *could* play emulator games on the PC (already have usb gamepads).

The 360 is an excellent gaming console-- if that were a significant factor in your decision, I would definitely go for the 360.  The newer chipset seems to have fixed the overheating issues, and it comes with a huge warranty anyway in case something does happen.

Just be aware that MS is cracking down pretty hard on any modded 360 consoles-- the worst they can do is cancel your Xbox Live account & ban your console from online gaming, but it's something to be aware of.