why did you buy your last computer?

lord of the mark · July 14, 2003, 11:14

Curious.

GePap · July 14, 2003, 11:19

I was in college and I needed a computer of MY OWN. My computer is now rather old, and I haven;t the resources to buy a new one.

reds4ever · July 14, 2003, 11:29

Other, I got offered a swap, my Duron 750 128 Mb for a P4 1700 256Mb that my friend had stolen from his work and couldn't keep in case anyone from there came around to see him!

Bargain!

Eli · July 14, 2003, 11:29

To be able to play Civ3.

reds4ever · July 14, 2003, 11:31

Quote:

Originally posted by Eli
To be able to play Civ3.

They hav'nt made a computer yet that can make 16 Civs, Huge map playable on Civ3!

lord of the mark · July 14, 2003, 11:31

basically similar to GEpap. PC we have now is first one we bought. We could buy a cheapie one now, but trying to figure out if its worth it versus other needs.

Q Classic · July 14, 2003, 11:32

college.

Urban Ranger · July 14, 2003, 11:32

Coz I feel like it

loinburger · July 14, 2003, 11:37

My last computer was a laptop that I'd owned for three or four years, and the company that manufactured it went out of business. Then the proprietary (i.e. "difficult-to-replace") hard-drive started eating itself alive: I ran Scandisk one day, and found that I had 2% bad sectors; a week later I had 5% bad sectors; a week later I had 15% bad sectors; a week later I got a new computer.

I originally got the laptop because my first computer (a desktop that I made out of spare parts) ran into some motherboard problems -- the BIOS battery corroded.

GePap · July 14, 2003, 11:44

I hear you on the hard-drive: Mine was eating itself up too. My computer may be old, but its powerpack and hard-drive aren't.

Skanky Burns · July 14, 2003, 11:46

My old parts were slow and old. Plus I noticed I had a couple of thousand dollars lying in my bank account doing nothing, so the simple solution was to buy lots of expensive new parts.

Incidently, the "left-over" parts from my upgrade ended up making a new computer for my g/f and I didn't need to buy much to fill in the gaps.

Carver · July 14, 2003, 11:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Eli
To be able to play Civ3.

Ditto.

I brought home my new copy of Civ3 and found out my comp couldn't run DirectX v8 and a trip to Circuit City followed shortly.

Arrian · July 14, 2003, 11:50

To play Civ. My old computer wasn't even capable of playing CivII! It was a 386, for chrissakes.

-Arrian

Boris Godunov · July 14, 2003, 11:56

I get a new computer about every 3-4 years. My last one was custom-made by a friend of mine in MD who worked at a computer shop. It was a KMD 450 Mhz with 256 MB RAM.

I got my new computer last February. Basically, my old machine had (thanks to my roommate) gotten a virus on it, plus was clunky and riddled with some other problems. Finally, after having Civ3 and laboring through it, I had to get a new one.

So I got a Dell, dude! And I still

it.

Sava · July 14, 2003, 12:07

My specs were adequate to play newer games, but I wanted better performance... and I had money to burn.

Athlon XP 1700+
512 meg RAM
GeForce 4 TI 4200 128meg
60 gig combined HD space
32x burner

Windows XP Home

my system specs... this is what I've been using since last year. I spent about $450 on my new computer.

Mercator · July 14, 2003, 15:05

Same reason as GePap... I bought my own in December '98 in my first year at uni.

It was a PII 350MHz with 64MB RAM. Recently I expanded my memory to 192MB, but everything else has remained the same.

Adagio · July 14, 2003, 15:12

I thought my P3 500 MHz was too slow to run SimCity 4, so I simply had to upgrade

Fve Crathva · July 14, 2003, 15:13

There was a sale at my favourite parts store.

SP

Paul Hanson · July 14, 2003, 15:14

I managed to get mine as a surplus from my mum's office for uni. It's only a P266, but I've upgraded it enough in order to run Windows Server 2003 at a reasonable speed.

Q Classic · July 14, 2003, 15:15

my current one, jezebel, was bought in preparation for college. since then i've added in 512mb more ram (to bring it to 768mb), a tv tuner card, a secondary 80gb hd, a secondary 24/12/8 cdrw, and a firewire adapter card.

those upgrades have been in the last two years alone. i spoil her rotten.

Neutrino · July 14, 2003, 15:32

I'm planning on building a new PC once the Athlon64 comes out in September (hopefully driving down the already cheap AthlonXP CPUs). I'm currently using an Athlon 1.1GHz but I want to be able to play some of the newer games that are coming out soon.

Main_Brain · July 14, 2003, 16:18

Needed a Portable.

MrFun · July 14, 2003, 18:34

Cause I wanted one.

BeBro · July 14, 2003, 19:03

My old PII 400 had speed problems with both newer games and some graphics software, eg. 3d renderer and photopaint gfx (either big pics and/or many layers) so I decided to buy a 1GHz Athlon some time ago.

Now I want a Notebook for the uni....

DRoseDARs · July 14, 2003, 19:07

"Buy" a computer? You mean people actually spend money to get computers? All eight of our computers we got for free over the past 10-12 years. We pay only for upgrades.

"Buy" a computer...pfft. Who's ever heard of such nonsense?

Actually, my stepdad works in the gaming industry (think: slot machines, not Civ3, CTP, MoO3 et al.) and so works with computers daily. Each of the jobs since his second here in Reno he has been allowed to work from home. He left each of those jobs in good standing with his former employers, so they've allowed him to keep the computer they each gave him to work with at home. That's how we end up with new computers. Though, the last three are from this past company he worked for that REALLY screwed over it's employees (not covering insurance payments, paid vacation time owed) and has since gone under. He is still battling them for what he is owed, but he's keeping the three computers. In total, five of our computers he uses for work and the other three are just for me, him, and my mom.

Asher · July 14, 2003, 19:08

My Pentium 5 3.4GHz is merely a few months away...

Sava · July 14, 2003, 19:35

nice Asher... I'm going to build a dual processor Athlon system for my next PC. (and it will cost less than that P5 and still be faster.

)

Asher · July 14, 2003, 19:40

I wouldn't count on it.

You can't get a dual Athlon, need to go the Opteron 2xx route...which is more expensive and competes well with the Pentium 4s, not 5s.

Neutrino · July 14, 2003, 19:53

You can do dual Athlons using the AthlonMP CPUs.

Asher · July 14, 2003, 20:16

Athlon MPs use the XP core.
Which are far worse than the Opterons...