Buying A First Computer

[born too late]

Am recently retired here living in my own condo in Pattaya would like to buy a computer for e. mailing,listening to the radio and printing out newpaper articles but have no computer knowlege. My local IT place is selling an s.v.o.a for 19.000 including a printer. Would this machine be suitable and is it a fair price? Do I have to think about the internet connection before I buy the computer or do all providers work with all computers? Any help would be appreciated.

[stumonster]

Hi mate

first - all the internet providers will work with all computers ( that you are likely to have ) - but you do want to check out the threads in the forum about members experiences with different providers.

as for the computer for you

you do sound like you will need a fair bit of assistance so buying a comp with after sales service might be a large consideration - though you can get a lot of assistance from members of this forum.

19k for a basic comp with printer sounds ok , though knowing the specs of the machine they wish to sell you would be of interest as a basic new machine of minimal specs can be built for 14-15k ( basic printer about 1800 baht extra )

I recently built a new machine for myself for 23k ( no printer ) and it is well spec éd

eg

AMD 2600

512 meg RAM

120 gig 7200rpm 133 ATA hard drive

128 meg 8x AGP video card

DVD burner

17" flat screen monitor

winXP pro - shop copy.

it does come down to how much you wish to spend - tell us the price you wish to pay and then take the spec's suggested to the computer shop and ask how much.

[born too late]

Thanks for the advice, given I will not be doing graphics intensive work will I need all that RAM? Have read all the threads about connection problems in Pattaya so maybe initially I will just use it to print out the articles I save here on disk at the internet cafe, play a few games and type out letters home.

[Sydney_Tom]

My law of computers

You cannot have too much CPU, Memory or Hard Disk space

[britmaveric]

Ram is cheap might as well take advantage and add now.

[stumonster]

Ram is cheap might as well take advantage and add now.

Yes - I intend to add another 512 meg stick into the machine shortly - this was my first win XP machine so I didn't realize how much of a resource hog it is.

does anyone have a good URL for the description of services running on XP - I used to refer to www.blackviper.com for win2kpro but now that site is down.

[slimdog]

For stumonster

http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/W.../servicecfg.htm

also

http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/T...nt/bvdotcom.htm

Hope this helps

[stumonster]

excellent thx slimdog