I am going to buy a computer. Probably a Dell. I am computer illiterate. What is the difference between a celeron processor and a pentium 4? Is a vaio any good. What would you buy if you had 1000.00-2000.00 dollars to spend.

p.s. need to know by noon

wow! a total lack of advice, opinion, knowledge, rumor or lies.....impressive. even though noon has passed any info will help.

http://www.alienware.com/main/system_pages/roswell.asp

or this http://www.alienware.com/main/system_pages/aurora%20ddr.asp

If I had 1000-2000 to spend I'd add a few nodes to my beowulf cluster, probably a few Athlon XP 1800's, with 1GB DDR ram each, on micro ATX EPOX EP-8KHM motherboards. Does that help? What are you going to be using the computer for? Without knowing that, advice is useless...

i use webtv for the net now. i want to download stuff from the net, burn cd's, mp3's etc. i honestly don't known how to do any of the things i hear people talk about. i don't know what i need to buy to get started. i don't want to buy something only to find out it's too slow, not enough memory etc. i have no plans of using it for business type stuff.

what do you want to spend. i'd go to dell, look at what is top of the line and knock it back a few notches. since you're apparently not incredibly computer literate, dell's customer support is a godsend. you'll do fine with a processor in excess of 1Ghz, 256-512MB ram, 40GB harddrive.

and yees, now i see you said what you want to spend.

Dell's customer support is hideous. But most companies' support systems are so what are ya gonna do. It took nearly 4 months for Dell to cop to the fact that the wifey had a defective video card in her lap top. Each time she made call to them, when it crapped out on her she'd have to start from scratch be transferred to this manager and that manager retell her story about 10 different times before they finally said....well yeah ok, so it is the video card, we'll send someone over. At one point some technian copped an attitude when she complained that she had been unable to use her laptop for days and that it was imperative to her small business that she have a working laptop. The guy basically said "well if your business boils down to your computer you have other problems". Fucking cockmaster.

build it yourself! invest what you have left over.

my ancedotal experience with dell is quite different. two people who have called about defective pieces and had replacements shipped out immediately with return postage for the defective parts.

here is what i have come up with. tell me what you think. thanks. dell dimension 4400 pentium 4 processor at 2.0 ghz 256mb ddr sdram 80gb ultra ata/100 hard drive 3.5 in floppy drive 19 in monitor 64mb nvidia geforce2 mx 4x agp graphics card with tv-out 16x dvd rom drive with software decoding 16x/10x/40x cd-rw drive with roxio's easy cd creator sb live! digital sound card 56k telephony modem for windows 10/100 pci fast ethernet nic 6 months net access, speakers, various software, tech support, blah, blah, blah... $1,478.00

FB, Dell are my most favorite computers. STAY AWAY from VAIO. They suck ass. If you buy that computer you just described it will pretty much kick ass. I'll trade you mine for yours!

i'm going to order it in the morning. do you think i should add or change anything. i have more money than knowledge. i want to get all the "goodies" now and figure out how to use them later. i don't want to be disappointed later.

I just bought two HP laptops for $4300 with all the shit. Would not trade em for anything. I'm using an old Compaq laptop myself. But I found a great HP desktop with the same Dell specs you cite for about $1200 at Best Buy. Unfortunately, I understand that buying anything right off the shelf portends great problems in upgrading later. I have no experience in this. Last desktop was a Dell custom built for my SO a few years ago...and there was never a problem. Our business buys either Dell or HP, with the current preference HP.

I got the goodies,and never to figure it out,I still can't tune the radio,Have a c.d. burner and d.v.d,I can't even cut and paste.

i'd boost the RAM fb. 512MB will be a noticable performance change and shouldn't cost too much more..

The system sounds fine, but definately boost the RAM to at least 512MB as Nate suggests. Also, consider getting a DVD drive. And, if you're going to do lots of downloading, AOL just ain't gonna cut it. Budget in a broadband internet connection... Are you going to be using the computer to send music to a stereo system? If so, consider getting a USB audio device. They sound much better than a sound card when outputting to higher end audio equipment. Creative makes a good one for $150.

Go with P4. Here is the difference: System Bus for the Celeron is 100 mhz or 66 mhz For P4 it is 400 mhz System Bus connects the processor with the main memory, managing transfer of data and instructions between the two components. Celeron Processor 32K (16K for infrastructure and 16K for data) the Pentium 4 processor includes an Execution Trace Cache that stores up to 12 K decoded micro-ops in the order of program execution. This increases performance by removing the decoder from the main execution loop and makes more efficient usage of the cache storage space since instructions that are branched around are not stored. The Celeron has 128 KB unified, non-blocking L2 Cache. P4 has 512 KB Advance Transfer Cache (0.13 micron) 256KB Advance Transfer Cache So, if you are a gamer go for the P4. If you just want a word processor, go for the Celeron. One more hint of advice, STAY AWAY FROM HP. Go for a Dell or Compaq.

Oh, and do go for 512 megs of PC 133 ram, absolutely.

how much more would a DVD read/write cost instead of just the player? perhaps your should consider that if its not too much more. trace stop jerking off.

DVD writing runs about $500 last i checked. if i recall correctly, the standard for DVD read/write hasn't really been solidified yet, so if you buy one now you could be dangling your cock in the wind in a year. tigger is right about the DVD drive, though. you may not see clear need for it now (beyond watching DVDs, which I've never done with mine,) but in the near future it should become the media of choice for software distribution (as software becomes larger.) I certainly wouldn't wanted to install MSDN or VS.NET from the 30 some odd CDs that each take.

angry sam bought one of those new g4's with DVD read/write...im so behind i didnt even know such a thing existed. but it will be good for him as he edits his flic, to be able to spit out dvd proofs as he goes along.

FB, go with the memory upgrade to 512MB, definitely. Also, I would go with cable modem instead of DSL if you can b/c even at it's slowest it is still just as fast as DSL. If you can't then go with DSL (if it's available).

I love my cable modem! If only I had some memory!