Chosing cheap desktop: recommendation?

[Alex Beamish]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 8:26 PM, S P Arif Sahari Wibowo
<arifsaha-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to find a cheap desktop for playing with Fedora 9 and Centos 5.
> Because the "cheap" requirement, I don't think I can get it by chosing each
> parts separately and configure it into a system. Beside I probably don't
> have the time. :-) So I looked into the choices from Canada Computers and
> wonder which one will have good compatibility with linux? I listed the
> choices below. Note: Serenity is Canada Computers' own brand, I know some
> model have Biostar motherboard but not sure if all of them are.
>
>  - Serenity T1150, AMD Sempron LE-1150 2GHz, nVidia nForce 630a / GeForce
> 7050 chipset.
>  - Serenity T1100, AMD Athlon 64 3200+, apparently some Via chipset (S3
> UniChrome Graphics).
>  - Shuttle K45PC, Intel Celeron Dual-Core E1200, Intel 945GC / ICH7 chipset.
>  - Serenity T1080, Intel Celeron Dual-Core E1200. Intel 945GC / ICH7
> Chipset.
>
> (from
> http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=cpl&id=170.45&sort=3)
>
> Any suggestion?

I think any of these would be fine for fooling around with a Linux
installation. I'm currently using an Old Dell P4-3GHz with 1G RAM and
it works just fine for a variety of applications. I bought this box
about two years ago for about $350 from Sonnam, and it's still got
years more wear in it.

For me, more RAM is the most important feature in a system -- almost
none of the software makes use of the additional cores, and my files
are all stored on a file server (another old machine -- P4-2GHz with
mirrored 320G drives running open solaris) so I really don't care
about local storage. If you're a big game player, a good video card
and a big screen may be more important. Depends what you use the
system for.

Oh, and all three of my systems use CRTs that range in age from 8-12
years old. They all have powersaver modes and still work fine; the
only downside is that they're heavy and they take up space. As they
die, I'll replace them with flat panels, but they're fine for now.

-- 
Alex Beamish
Toronto, Ontario
aka talexb
--
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