Have You Checked the Prices of Technocrack Lately?
October 23rd, 2008My six-year-old Dell Inspiron 4150 laptop is experiencing some sort of heat management issue. The fan is running fast most of the time now. I’ve fooled around with all the settings, trying to underclock the CPU, etc. No luck. There are no rogue processes to blame either. Additionally, the graphics card is sometimes failing to sync resolution with my external display. The problems started when a lightning ground strike blew up the modem on the system. (I personally know three other people in the area who also have blown modems from that same storm.) How my laptop was running at all after that is a mystery to me. I need to have the modem for backup, so…
With my laptop dying a slow death and with the NZ$ crashing, I figured that computers weren’t going to get any cheaper in the near term. I went looking for a replacement. I was initially going to get a Mac, but in New Zealand, they’re absurdly overpriced. The hardware specs on the Mac Mini, for the price, are a joke. I know, they’re expensive, no matter what, but in NZ, it’s funny farm pricing. So, no Mac.
I went to Dell New Zealand and was shocked by what was available for the money!
I wound up buying a tower with:
Intel Core 2 Quad Processor 2.66GHz
3GB RAM
500GB hard drive
256MB PCIe ATI Radeon video card
CD/DVD burner
Windows XP Pro (Dell did the “downgrade” from Vista at the factory so I don’t have to see Vista at all.)
The price (delivered) was NZ$1,104 or US$652. It was actually a much better deal to take their display, but I already have a flat panel that I’m happy with, so I had them reprice it for the box alone.
Since I’ve been using computers (almost 30 years), I think that six years is the longest period of time that I’ve gone without changing systems, so I decided to let it rip this time. The difference in price between that overpowered beast that I bought and the lowest end models was a couple of hundred dollars. Comparing the hardware, it seemed silly to go for a lower end option.
Now, if I can just train that thing to go outside, pull weeds, dig garden beds, collect manure, milk the cow, fix the fence, wash Owen’s nappies… Hmm.
There was a problem with video cards (inNvidia
graphic’s) with Dhell.Only just recently within
3 years I think though.
You didn’t mention % of cpu use.
XP is pretty stable glad you got one without
the memory hog vista.
Dhell has funny cpu/cooling wind tunnels and
complex fins.
Try prying/taking apart the case and use a toothbrush and some compressed air on them.
It helped me.
I came home once temp’s were in the 80’s
and I had left a server app running that was being hammered extended periods of +50% use.I didn’t know the fans were variable,my last pc was all inNtehl top of the line P4 prior to this new Dhell p4 3 ghz no matter how hot it got(thermal grease totally absent,…vanished) fan spd. didn’t change,…I thought whole thing was blowing up sounded like was going 5k rpm.
I took it apart and there was a nice mat of cat hair,dust and nicotine covering cooling block.
Also, if you live in a small apartment and do more than your share of cooking that produces greasy smoke, the computer-user is well advised to buy one of those air-conditioner/ heating-unit filters that come in a cardboard frame, take out the filter material, and cut it into squares (the wire-mesh material attached to the filter-material can be cut with scissors, too) that you duct-tape over the intake vents (making sure your squares are big enough so that the duct-tape you put on the edges doesn’t cover the vents). Change every three or four months. Filter-material with a rating of three microns or smaller is recommended. The newer generations of computer need a lot more cooling than their 90’s predecessors, so their powerful intake fans really will suck whatever is in the air of the room the unit is in into the machine-innards.
Dells are just impossible to beat when you come down to technocrack-for-the-buck. Slap some of their coupons or deals off of list price, and it’s freaking ridiculous.
6 months ago, I was looking at a new laptop, and I could spec out a Dell Vostro w/ coupons for almost 1/3 the price of a comparably-equipped Apple MacBook Pro. Now, I’ve bought 3 new Macs over the past 3 years for my wife and family, but it’s crazy what Dell can ship for the money.
That system actually seems like not a bad deal at all. It’s nice and beefy and will likely last a good long while, and since it’s a tower instead of a laptop, it’ll be a lot easier to upgrade/repair and replace parts. It could last you indefinitely, or at least long enough to cost less than $100 a year … which’ll probably be the price of a meal soon enough.
On a side note… for the last year or so, I’ve been monitoring craigslist for various tools and small farm equipment and also to replace my old computer+gear (15 years in the making) collection I left behind after moving to the sticks of Oregon. In the last 3-4 months or so, I’ve noticed a drastic increase in “toy” items (ATVs, boats, RVs, computers, etc) and also a drastic decrease in the prices of such items. Second hand stuff isn’t for everyone, but there are a LOT of great deals available in this salvage economy. Call it the silver lining of the current economic turmoil.
I agree with your decision. The laptop was compromised when it was hit by lightning. Sure, just the modem died, but there’s bound to be other damage.
I’ve found laptops generally have a life expectancy of about a year. At least with me they do, because they’re packed up and carried through airports a lot. I’ve been really happy with my HP Pavilion zv6000 series laptop. It’s been with me to a dozen US states and 2 foreign countries over the last 3 years, and keeps on working. 🙂
I also had a dozen dead laptops in the garage, that bit it for various reasons. Most were heat related. Sure, they’ll shut down if they get too hot, but over time they get damaged. The last one was an Alienware laptop. It ran in a 90 degree hotel room (in Canada, imagine that), and was never stable after that.
When I’ve been buying stuff lately, I just go to Frys or CompUSA, and buy the cheapest thing they have. We spent $300 on a nice AMD64 machine with 1Gb ram for a mail filter for my friend. She runs a small hosting business, and I handle all the technical stuff for her. She needed it, we bought it, and had it up that night. For $300, we couldn’t go wrong. It’s been running strong for months.
Dell can always get sweet deals. They buy in such huge bulk, they’re in a similar situation to WalMart. They can dictate their prices, or go elsewhere. I’ve never been very fond of their stuff, there’s nothing amazing about their hardware, but they seem to work pretty well, especially for the price. They also offer sweet deals on what they’re clearing out, which is advantageous to folks like us. They know the big contracts (governments and large corporations) are going to buy huge bulk of current products, so these little clearance deals are nothing to them. They could afford to just give it away to clear the warehouse space. 🙂
Hey Kevin, I’m curious,
I punched up the same specs you gave above at dell.com here in the States, and was given a price of $869 (the $NZ hasn’t gone UP vs. the $US yet)…plus, the website informed me I couldn’t pair the 256MB ATI Radeon video card with Windows XP (actually, it’s listed as an “ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB” card, which might be the issue?). The disc drive is a 16x DVD+/-RW drive.
Just as most people do with their entire life savings, when it comes to compusters I choose to just listen to whatever a fairly competent-sounding figure says and then blindly follow their instructions…But obviously I’m missing something. Any clue?
Steven,
Dell will have totally different pricing structures from country to country. On the Dell U.S. site, I configured a system that’s exactly the same as the one that I bought in NZ and the price is US$1,278! Or, more than double what I paid for the same system in NZ. HA. Don’t ask me why. Nearly everything here costs more than in the U.S. It might be that Dell is trying to destroy the competition in NZ and is simply willing to eat losses until they give up. I’m surprised that a company like Dell even bothers trying to dominate a market like New Zealand. But there you have it.
For your reference, I’ll email you the print summary of the system I configured on the Dell’s U.S. site.
Note: I didn’t include a firewire interface. If you want that, it’s another $30.
Wow…what a price difference. You weren’t shopping for refurbished or anything?
I can’t find anything even remotely like yours at a comparable price. In fact, even when I go to Dell’s NZ site I get a quote for NZ$1,649.00, but then the NZ site doesn’t let me take the monitor off…
Anyway, I DO appreciate the specs you sent, since I haven’t looked at the state of computer tech in over 6 years and they really helped clue me in to what I’m looking for. The wife and I are trying to load-up on a few things now, because I can’t help but think that over the next year or two things will be inflating, regardless of the current deflation arguments. Our old pc is already irritating us, and I want one that’s going to hold it’s own over the next several years.
Thx again!