On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 06:03:33PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
Chris G wrote:
Exactly my problem last time around and that's what I'm trying to avoid
I'd echo Wayne's comments. Eg: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164667 Looking at the reviews, I found this one:
Ordered this last evening, and it arrived at 9:45 am today. By 10:30am had Ubuntu linux OS (free!)up and running and was surfing the internet.At this price it is unbeatable for use as a kids machine, for surfing and homework. True, the fan is not silent, but would recommend this as a second PC for anyone
Under £200+VAT for Intel Dual Core E5300 (which is of-course socket 775), 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD and DVDRW seems pretty fair to me, and it certainly sounds like it should be happy with Ubuntu on it.
There are of-course other suppliers than eBuyer, and indeed eBuyer are not the cheapest for most things any more. But the principle of buying a box without an O/S (or pre-installed Linux) makes a lot of sense in my experience, and it's rare that I subject myself to building a PC from scratch any more.
Yes, I must say that looks a pretty good deal and also that it will install Ubuntu 'out of the box', thanks all! (I also quite like ebuyer, I've bought several bits and pieces from them and so far have never had any problems).
I will still probably build PCs "from scratch" when I want specific things (like a particular low power motherboard, or a specific graphics card) but I agree that ready made boxes are the way to go most of the time.
A middle road is to use something like LambdaTek's PC Designer:-
http://www.lambda-tek.com/computing/index.htm
I've successfully used this for a couple of systems that I wanted to build around specific motherboards (have to be ones that LambdaTek sells of course).