Beast in a box!
Written: Jul 10 '00 (Updated Jul 23 '00)
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Pros: DELL!, Quality parts, Excellent choice of components
Cons: (Minor) >>> No choice of AMD processors
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| NightShift8's Full Review: Dell Dimension XPS T600 |
My first computer...well, I hadn't even chosen my first computer! Too bad I had no knowledge whatsoever to pick one out myself. Most people cringe when I tell them it was a Packard Bell :O
Although people rank on them a lot, I didn't have much trouble with it. It served me well enough through its life. Maybe I was lucky. Its specs are:
120 Mhz Pentium Processor
16MB (upgraded to 48MB) RAM
A measly 1.19gig HD
Quad speed cd-rom
And a disgusting 1 Meg of onboard video RAM
It supported me on my road to computer knowledge and learning and handled all my tasks, but as i got smarter and the years went by, I had learned what a piece of junk my parents had gotten me! Out of ALL the computers...i had to own the lowest. If I ever needed help with it online, I had to wait for the people to stop laughing and/or screaming before I got assistance. I got to a point where I even removed the name "Packard Bell" from my AOL member profile.
WELL WELL....aren't things different now. I finally decided my 'ole grandpa computer was too slow for me. I needed more hard drive space, and just faster.....everything. I didn't have to do ANY researching. As soon as my parents agreed we could get a new computer, the next place you saw was me at was "www.dell.com" seeing what monster I could come up with. It must have been the happiest moment of my (computing) life. I had so much fun customizing my own system. I wanted semi-top-of-the-line, but I couldn't get everything I wanted because it became kinda expensive. So, this is what I got:
-Pentium III 600 Mhz
-256MB SDRAM
-48X CD-ROM
-13.6 GIG HD
-Voodoo3 3000 AGP 16MB graphics card
-Altec Lansing ACS-340 with Subwoofer!
-P780 17" (Dell) Sony Trinitron Monitor
-(Added HP 9100i 10x4x32 CD-Writer recently)
Wow...BIG improvement:
-I got the fastest, top-of-the-line processor available. Big improvement from a 120Mhz processor!
-Instead of the common 128MB RAM, i was recommended by one of my computer friends to double it...good advice.
-I had a hard time deciding on the cd-rom or DVD drive. I would love the speed of 48x drive (installations in a flash) compared to my QUAD speed one, but DVD's and the drives were becoming popular, and I kinda knew how good of a picture quality they would display. But I figured I'd be wasting money on DVD movies and I don't watch too many full length movies especially on a computer! But once I got my computer...BIG MISTAKE. The graphics and quality the new monitor produced were astounding to me. I must have been used to the blurry graphics from my old monitor. And then the sound quality of the speakers and the subwoofer blew me away! Too bad I ditched the DVD. I also had forgotten the 17" monitor would be much bigger than my 13" TV in my room. But would I have really watched a bunch of movies on my computer?
-I didn't feel I needed anything more than a 13.6 GIG Hard Drive because I was merely coping with my 1.19 GIG old HD with the assistance of a external superdisk drive borrowed from my uncle who works for Imation. The max amount of space I use up now is about 4.5 Gig's with lots of expansion room. As opposed to the old 5400 RPM drives, this one was the new 7200 RPM. That means that the drive spins faster...7200 "R"evolutions "P"er "M"inute and faster access times.
-Anything more than what my old computer had (1 meg onboard video RAM) was better. A good brand name graphics board is what I got. I could finally play videos, even at full screen and games without skipping!
-As I mentioned before, the sound system that came with the computer is great. Most people love bass including me. If you're gonna get a sound system, make sure to get the sub! It makes all the difference. My car doesn't have a sub, but the speakers produced good bass, and I used to listen to everything in my car because it sounded good. Now that I have my new computer with these speakers, I listen to everything on here. This sound system surpasses my protable stereo, car, and even my living room stereo system. I hooked up a little AM/FM cassette walkman to my line-in jack of my computer and I can listen to the clear radio stations on my computer with all the floor-pounding bass! For that reason, I got rid of my portable stereo from my room....saves a lot of space.
-As I also mentioned before, the graphics on my new monitor are astounding. I now knew what I was missing. When I look back at my old monitor, everything is literally blurry. I don't know how I survived looking at that. My old monitor was also small, the screen is convex (shaped outward), and it also had a small chip/scratch in the middle of it when my lava lamp fell and hit the screen (no the lava lamp didn't break when it hit the floor surprisingly) and the scratch always got in the way. My new monitor has a flat screen, but looking slightly concave (inward). It also has OSD (on screen display) controls, including many features such as degauss (demagnatizes your monitor shaking it all around with pretty colors...nice show). The new monitor also has an anti-glare coating (neat purple tint when off).
-And recently, I bought a HP CD burner. You can see my review about that under: Home > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Removable Storage > CD RW > HP > HP CD-Writer Plus 9300i Series.
This Dell is a huge improvement from my first computer, and I plan to stay with Dell until it is beaten. Dell is always #1 on the charts, used for "stress tests" (and holds up to them!), and is used as the "zero-point" system in Maximum PC magazine, which means that it is used to establish zero points for all desktop benchmarking and as a test bed for individual component evaluation. I've never seen Packard Bell even appear on ANY charts or articles, except for one article saying that Packard Bell will be no more!
Now when I go into computer chat rooms for questions/knowledge/chat, I am proud and anxious to be asked what brand system I have......A DELL!!!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2,172
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 501-600
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
NightShift8
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Member: Frank
Location: NY
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 1 member
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