[wellylug] Buying pc

[Brent Wood]

--- Rob Collins <robcollins55 at aim.com> wrote:

> Can anyone give me any hints as to what specs I should be looking for 
> when buying a second hand laptop or pc off Trademe?  I want to get 
> something that is going to be as hassle-free as possible when installing 
> K(U)buntu and run fairly well as a home media setup.  I already know 
> Nvidia is something to make sure it has, anything else??

To be safe, buy local, see it running & boot it off a LiveCD before you agree
to buy. You might also ask on the WellyLUG buy/sell list if anyone there has
something along the lines of what you're after. Everyone there is totally
reputable :-)

It is very much up to you, a real bargain in Auckland might be worth the risk,
if the seller has a good record, or offers a warranty.

Nvidia is not a requirement IMHO, an Intel chipset/cpu is likely to work
perfectly well, as are most SiS & Via offerings. That said, an Nvidia based AMD
cpu system is likely to have few problems, Ati still pretty good, older Via &
SiS are more likely to have problems. Multimedia does not generally require
fast 3D graphics, so it's not like a gaming system. If you can run the LiveCD
effectively on any of these, it shouldn't really matter which you get.

Despite this, I suggest the biggest area of concern is going to be graphics
compatibility & performance (assuming you get a reasonable cpu/memory setup).
It may be worth checking that it has a VGA or PCIEX slot for a graphics card,
even if it is using on-board graphics. That way if you do have any graphics
issues, they can be fixed without buying a whole new motherboard/system.

I'm not sure if some basic hardware specs will be useful or not, here's my
02c.... Hopefully not too contentious :-) It's hard to really say what you
should get without an idea of your budget.

You might also be surprised what a new box might cost, even with decent
components. 

Anyway, I'd avoid any Celeron cpu's, & the slower Sempron's are marginal. Any
AMD 64 bit cpu, even socket 754 will probably be fine, esp with an Nvidia
chipset. Even the Athlon 32 bit cpus, 2400+ or better should be OK. Any 2Ghz+
P4 or better will also be fine, I'd suggest 512Mb memory, DDR is probably best,
as the old PC100/PC133 modules are old & expensive. At least a 40Gb Hard drive,
depending on whether you wanna store videos on HDD, & decent DVD player/writer.




Cheers,

  Brent Wood