Buying Computer (in Off-topic)

I hate Black Friday lines. Find me a better item online. Please. With cherries and carnage on top.

I'm buying a computer for my retired father who will use it mainly for email, light surfing, and pictures -- nothing too taxing.

I wanted to keep it future-proof for him with at least a dual-core 2.5 ghz processor, 3gigs of DDR3 RAM, and Win7, but the best I found online was with Dell (ugh) at $400.

Best Buy beat that with a crappy PC for Black Friday using a single-core 2.8ghz processor sporting an unknown amount of RAM (probably 2 gigs of DDR3), and Win7 at just $220.

The Best Buy offering is good enough for his use, but I HATE BLACK FRIDAY LINES.

Anyone know of a decent offering online? I need to get something lined up soon, so I can't wait to see what Amazon offers for Cyber Monday.

Also, bonus points for finding the cheapest quality USB wireless adapter for it. Cables = bad.

Monitor?

PC is all that's needed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883155017

I like the Dell Vostro line, and this is a heck of a price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883114090

Cheaper, but the brand strikes terror in the hearts of folks who want a machine they can upgrade later.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883153004

Looks like a nice little Mac Mini clone

http://3btech.net/3btecocospwi1.html

http://3btech.net/3btecocospam.html

This one seems to be the best deal I've found...

for future-proofing, do go dual core. single cores do not age nearly as well.

Future proofing for him isn't the same as for the rest of us. The dual 2.5ghz would take care of it for browsing, so I don't exactly have to look at i7. For browsing the web, a single 2.5ghz should still work just fine in 10 years, which is longer than the rest of the eMachines PC will last.

And thanks for looking. Some of those are pretty good values, but they still don't top the entry level PC at Best Buy.

Me thinks I'll be waiting in line at 4am... but at least I have fallback items. It's a shame NewEgg is letting me down.

link the best buy one please

I left out the link because of how useless the ad is:
http://bfads.net/Ad/Best-Buy-2010/Page2

It's most of the way down on the left, boxed in yellow. I had to do a bit of searching to find out that it's a single 2.8ghz core, but I can't even verify that it's DDR3 RAM, and there's nothing to be found on the MB (though I'm sure it's crap).

But dollar for dollar, it has yet to be beaten.

Heres the specs on it

Best Buy eMachines - Desktop / AMD Athlon

• single core 1.6Ghz
• 2GB DDR2 with max at 4GB
• 320GB HDD @ 7200 rpm
• nvidia 6150 SE
• windows 7 home premium 64bit

You get what you pay for, which is ....pretty much crap. excuse my language

Apparently you cant link the info page directly.

working Link

In your browser click ctrl + f and type in the sku # 1278044

Woah! I guess my prior research was wrong. I figured they'd use the last remaining DDR2 to unload stock, but 1.6 single core is useless. That's Atom level in a full sized desktop.

Thanks for catching that. It looks like I'll have to cough up a realistic amount of money.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883114085

Athlon II X2 240 (2.8GHz)
4GB DDR3 500GB
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

$350

There are quite a few computer terms that need to be added to the dictionary. If an admin gets incredibly bored, feel free to give it a go. This is filler text.

Are you able to build from parts?

The computer he's got right now (and the prior one as well) were both frankensteined from other parts. I don't have any quality parts lying around at this time. The goal is to step it up so that I don't have to frankenstein another PC for a long, long time.

Also, I want to get him to Win7 (instead of his pirated copy of XP), and the price for that is nuts when bought solo. As part of a prefabricated PC, it's cheap.

Done. I ended up getting my dad:

* PC: 2.8ghz dual-core (2MB L2 cache); 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM; 500 gig HD; Win7 Home Premium 64-bit
* Wireless USB adapter with docked antenna (n capable)
* A pair of speakers (his old ones were useless)
* 7-port USB hub to sit on the desk (he'll use it a lot)
* Unnecessary 1-year service plan (free)

All for $399.99 after S&H. Not a bad haul.