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  

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.  

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  

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.

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 ).

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. When it stops working, I take it apart and clean it. Less than $10/year when you do the math.