Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

desktop PC opinions

Jul 26, 2009 9:26AM PDT

I need to buy a new desktop, and I was hoping for some advice. I'm not a "power user" at all - I surf the net, bank online, make purchases, occasionally watch movies or news videos, and that's about it. Amazon has a popular deal gong on a HP machine wiht Windows XP. That's not the OS that had eveyone going crazy about security and other problems? I'm looking at:

Compaq CQ2009F Desktop PC
L2 cache 512K
SDRAM (?) 1G
hard drive 160G

thoughts, suggestions or advice?

thanks again
DY

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Could you provide a link a the proposed unit
Jul 26, 2009 10:27AM PDT

configured as you intend to buy ?

VAPCMD

- Collapse -
Compaq
Jul 27, 2009 2:08AM PDT

Depending on what you are going to do this is a fair basic system that will require some work to keep up in the future, upgrades, etc. Get some advice from a geek friend but personally unless it was really cheap I am not so sure I wouldn't pass.

- Collapse -
Windows 7
Jul 27, 2009 7:44AM PDT

If you are interesting in jumping up to Windows 7 from XP eventually, I would do some research to see if this purchase qualifies for a free upgrade to Windows 7.

- Collapse -
New PC
Jul 28, 2009 7:26AM PDT

And if it meets the minimum requirements to upgrade to Windows 7. I would think if you could upgrade it to Windows Vista then you could upgrade the OS to Windows 7.

- Collapse -
budget?
Jul 28, 2009 11:46PM PDT

What's you budget? Even if you don't want a high spec pc, you can probably afford to get something better than that (1GB RAM means your pc will likely run slowly if you have a few programs open, most new pcs these days start with at least 2GB).As for getting something with XP, Windows will not continue support for that OS for ever, being as they will soon have two newer versions for sale (Vista, and Windows & which comes out in October). Vista has been problematic but several manufacturers (Lenovo for one) are offering free upgrades to Windows 7 for users who bought a pc with Vista on it between a certain date.

- Collapse -
Usage And Budget
Aug 6, 2009 8:38PM PDT

It all depends upon your usage and budget. As you watch movies and news online I would suggest you to increase the RAM Capacity from 1gb to at least 2GB. This will help your system to run at a faster speed. Before buying do search online for a better deal in website like AMAZON, EBAY, TIGER DIRECT, ALIBABA, CRUCIAL, OM NANOTECH, KINGSTON...