What have been your best and worst buys ever, confined to computer equipment of course.
Best - Core 2 Duo - superb in every way. (Ebuyer)
Worst - Not had many duff bits really but itd prolly be a crappy Labtec Wireless keyboard/mouse bought for bugger all.
And yours would be?
Cheers
Tongy
worst .......keep thinking that hauppage will of finally made some software for there tv cards that isnt pants and clunky...
best probably the old 1.6 p4 nws that went to 2.4 easy?
Best.
Probably the Matrox Millenium II. Best image quality Ive ever seen on any graphics card ever. 2D is balls on cards these days, especially at 2048x1536, they all seem to cry like babies.
I cant think of a worse. Oh wait... Cyrix P200 :gag: :disappointed:
Best: Hmmm. 17" digimate TFT just as they started to be sold for half what most people were asking? Or my shuttle. Or my first smartphone :)
Worst: HP Journada 525 PDA I bought years ago and ended up only using it for solitaire :S
Best: Geforce 6800 LE
Worst: Dell Axim (Another expensive game of solitaire)
worst: 2 dell servers from ebay that were knackered
best: current shuttle with AMD A64X2 4400+, altho i should have waited for DDR2 really
In terms of satisfaction,
Dell 24" widescreen. I cant express how much this has changed the way I use my machine.
Getting a dual Opteron - mind blowing performance for its time..... then getting a C2D which some how had 80% the same performance in a small quiet and cool package. (Obviously the dual optie cant be touched for memory throughput and expandability.)
IBM T43 Thinkpad - Ye gods, the most robust machine I have ever used.
In terms of cost (savings),
picking up four 300Gb Maxtor SATA drives for Ã,£200 when they cost Ã,£100 each at the time :mrgreen:
Worst thing...
Relisys 17" widescreen - such a sh*t screen, and it wasnt that cheap!
Best : Athlon XP 1700+, one of the JIUHB(?) that hits 2.2 on air easily.
The 3dfx Banshee card I used to upgrade my worst item was great as well.
Worst : Probably the HP Pavillion I owned from PC World many years ago.
Best : My new Belinea 22" Widescreen TFT or possibly the old Slot A Athlon 500 that was really a rebadged 650 that hit 900 without breaking a sweat. :mrgreen:
Worst : Hmm, tough one. Not one of my purchases but a guy I used to share a flat with was obsessed with Wireless despite knowing nothing about it. He proceeded to buy a wireless router from Argos, and then spent the next 6 months wondering why his connection kept dropping. :roll:
Best - CD Writer then DVD writer.. saved me Thousands over the years :mrgreen:
Worst - THeres been plenty over they years.. things Ive blown up/killed within a week, etc. Erm, I still have External Jazz Drive. Sealed in its original wrapper :roll:
Best: $5 Lite-On CD writer. Simply works every time. Boring but rock stable Emachines desktop box thats never had issues for five years, (the original Samsung HDD is healthy, but Ive killed two Maxtors with Linux :mrgreen: ).
Worst value: Mac+ with external 40MB HDD and constant power supply issues. $800. :shock: Still, I loved that little bugger. :lol:
best ever, my MX700 mouse. Its now nearly 4 years old and while its looking a bit scruffy, theres nothing wrong with it.
worst....I dont know, sometimes more by luck than judgement I havnt made many bad computing purchases. Ahh wait, I once bought a cheap wireless kbd+mouse combo from somewhere. It died within a week so I scolded myself, took it back for a refund and bought a Logitech one from somewhere else.
best
233mhz imac bondi blue, lasted for 2 years with a modern operating system (ubuntu warty and hoary) which stood basically 100% cpu on a single 80mm fan cooling everything (i only found this out when i cracked it open to put in a bigger hdd, 4 gig isnt anything these days lol) it died in a fit of sparks taking, 3 lamps and my housemates hifi (he was a c**t). best FREE item i ever inherited.
my worst. my new laptop, its had loads of problems :( like the power supply issue which i havent resolved even tho i bought a new one at the correct rating and is intermittent so i went back to the broken one which magically fixed itself, by arcing across other components.
however when its working its sweeeeeet as i can render in nx4 and watch a film at the same time. HT POWERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!
Best Best - 17" tft, need a widescreen one now :(.
Best - Sammy laser printer for Ã,£50 (I haggled pcworld cos they wanted Ã,£75-80 :D).
edit: axia, Ã,£45 seccy hand iirc.
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Absolute worst Worst - Audigy 4, I got it instead of a proper one cos it had a remote control. Rubbish.
Worst - Microsoft mouse, most of their mice are really good, the one I picked is crap.
Yeah on the best list: My MS cordless optical mouse. 4 1/2 years. :lol: When it stops working, I take it apart and clean it. Less than $10/year when you do the math. :P
best,
abit bp6 motherboard, introduced me to the true path of SMP when paired with a couple of cheap celerons.
worst
toss up between cyrix 166+ (133 which ran at about the speed of a p60 when fpu was invoked) and a gigabyte motherboard from long ago which died a death during a bios update and was never revived.
Best is prolly the Thunderbird i got when I was being hammered by all sides to buy a P3. That thing refuses to die even to this day.
Worst is probably the rather expensive (Ã,£90) Gigabyte Motherboard i 1st got for the XP when i got one, unstable, crappy and generally a poor product. I liked Gigabyte up to then as well, but their Customer Service blows.
Best: Coolermaster 200 aluminium case, light and strong and resilient, been through many upgrades, still looks better than most of the newer ones.
Worst: budget Elonex pcs specced for sale to customers with fail-at-will MATX Microstar sktA mobos.
I never had an IBM Deathstar that failed either :P
Best : the elusive AXIA 1ghz athlon cpu that would easily hit 1.4ghz on air cooling
DFI Socket A Motherboard I got to clock my old 1700 JIHUB? Its still a perfect runner :)
Worst ermm a Toshiba Satalite Laptop, it killed 5 hard drives due to heating problems!!! Pile of pap!
Quote from: Ice KayBest : the elusive AXIA 1ghz athlon cpu that would easily hit 1.4ghz on air cooling
ahhh those were the days, I remember hours of fiddling with settings to get my Duron 800 from 1000 to its eventual top speed of a dizzy 1017Mhz. 113Mhz FSB and Damn was it fast (for the time).
Bestest best: Xbox 360.
Second Best: HP Laserjet 4 for Ã,£10. Bought in 2000, still going strong on the original toner cartridge!
Worst... Athlon 2000+ barebones system with 30gb drive, no memory or gfx card. Its gone straight into my loft never to be used because the system I was considering replacing with it is rock stable and fast enough to do what it does. Check email and download. :-/
Best: Prometeia which got a XP2500 up to 2750 Mhz, I should really get it refilled and bring it out of retirement :-)
Worst: Prometeia for what it did to my electricity bill lol
Best: maybe the shuttle I just bought, which I now have 2 of having only paid for 1, and no nasty emails/letters from the company :)
Worst: possibly the same Labtec mouse/keyboard as Tongy, they are REALLY bad. My nice new Logitech set works though :)
Best ever:
3DFX Voodoo 5 5500 Graphics Card. It was awesome, fast and worked with everything. Best Card I ever had.
Recent purchase thats been an excellent result is this Samsung 20" widescreen. [SyncMaster 205bw]
(http://aka.fotovista.com/dev/1/0/00000901/l_00000901.jpg)
Worst Puchase was:
Cheap ass Ã,£20 case just dont go there, charp edges, thin sides and flimsy con-struction.
Logitech Surfman - Wireless Handheld track ball. Its a total white elephant, useless for anything except browsing becuase you have to use 2 hadns for drag & drop. One to hold the button, the other to roll the ball... awfull design.
Best probably my Maxtor 40GB hard drive, which has been my C:\ drive for about 4 or 5 years now and has kept on going and going, never failing.
Worst, I dont think Ive had a bit of dodgy IT equipment. Maybe my CDRW, my 1st one, cost me Ã,£105 and if I had spent an extra Ã,£15 I would have an 8x instead of 4x as the week after everyone in 6th form had 8x recorders.
Best, Iiyama 21" CRT or my 3.06ghz notebook compy. My pair of laser printers are pretty good too.
Worst, a cheap x-box for a friend, I still hate those controllers :gag: so I would never have bought it for me.
Best: Logitech Optical Trackman trackball, its great... and now I prefer it ahead of a mouse for playing FPS. I never have the "ive come to the edge of the desk" issue when trying to kill people in a game :D
Worst: PC Line wireless desktop.
The mouse... I lost constantly, stupid wireless mouse. The keyboard required reconnecting using a pin every damn time I turned my computer on.