FW: OT - Way off topic, but Dell is giving away machines

[Dan Barker]

Bill, K3UJ sez:

 > Drats! They now seem to be out of the Celrons. Their P4 SC420 w/ 1G ram
is $699

I said you had to be very careful about the selections or the price comes
out funny. Example:

Default: $630 with
   512MB DDR2, 400MHz, 2X256MB, Single Ranked DIMMs
   3 Year Basic Plan
   Onboard SATA, 2 Drives connected to Onboard SATA Controller
   First Hard Drive  40GB, Serial ATA, 1 inch, 7.2K RPM, Hard Drive
   Second Hard Drive 40GB, Serial ATA, 1 inch, 7.2K RPM, Hard Drive

Change it to:
   FREE UPGRADE to 512MB DDR2, 400MHz, 2X256 Single Ranked [subtract $99]
   $531

This is very interesting, because you are changing the memory for identical
memory but saving $99. Go Figure.

Change it to:
   1 Year Basic Plan [subtract $119]
   $412

It's a $200 machine. If it breaks, buy another.

Change it to:
   Onboard SATA, 1 Drive connected to Onboard SATA Controller
   First Hard Drive 80GB, Serial ATA, 1 inch, 7.2K RPM, Hard Drive [add $10]
   Second Hard Drive, None [subtract &89]
   $333.

If you need a second drive, $89 for 40G is horrible. Try TigerDirect.

So, you are paying $100 extra for a better chip. The P4 will run 800MHz
frontside buss, so you might (think carefully about this!) want faster
memory. Your call.

rtfm.

Someone mentioned they required a Tax ID number. I did not use my tax ID,
nor did it ask, and I used a Personal Credit Card to pay. That information
appears to be incorrect.

About the "Desktop" vs "Server" question, "Dell does not support" does not
mean it won't work. It does mean there is no AGP slot, but a PCI graphics
card is fine for everything except Gaming, DVD viewing and CAD. Heck, the
onboard Video is probably fine for hi-res, non real-time applications. The
SC420 does have two "PCI Express" slots, whatever those are<g>.

END OF THREAD FROM GEORGIA. Use the web, Luke!

Dan / WG4S / K2 #2456

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[Andrea Borgia]

Dan Barker wrote:

> onboard Video is probably fine for hi-res, non real-time applications.
> The SC420 does have two "PCI Express" slots, whatever those are<g>.

Very briefly, ISA -> PCI -> AGP -> PCIX. Basically, yet another even
faster interface for cards.

B73,
Andrea.

--
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[Donald K. Duncan]

>About the "Desktop" vs "Server" question, "Dell does not support" does not
>mean it won't work. It does mean there is no AGP slot, but a PCI graphics
>card is fine for everything except Gaming, DVD viewing and CAD. Heck, the
>onboard Video is probably fine for hi-res, non real-time applications. The
>SC420 does have two "PCI Express" slots, whatever those are<g>.


AGP and PCI are going the way of ISA and are being replaced with PCI Express.
The latter is a serial bus and comes in a variety of "widths".  For video
you normally get a 16 or 32x PCI Express that has 16 or 32 high speed serial channels
feeding the video card.  It is at least an order of magnitude faster than AGP.


Here's a good link:

http://www.intel.com/technology/pciexpress/devnet/docs/WhatisPCIExpress.pdf


~Don
--------
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