[svlug] Possible specs for system. please review them

[Ray Olszewski]

A bit of feedback on the pricing component of your list (not its technical
merits; I leave that to others) may help. First a preliminary: I couldn't
find Fry's online either. As I recall, they own the domain name
fryselectronics.com, but I can't actually find them using that name. Given
the low-service nature of Fry's business model, it is quite possible they
don't have a Web site.

So with that in mind ... 

Relative to local Fry's ads, the prices you found on RAM, fdd, HD, cooling
fan, video card, and sound card are competitive. (This ignores shipping, but
then you don't pay CA sales tax (8.25% locally) in OR.) Bottom fishing on
CDROM and sound card at Fry's might save $50 off this total (and even as
much as $170 if you also bought a junky video card), but probably
(definitely as to video) at some cost in quality.

Motherboard I simply don't know -- the price range is great and quality
varies too much to know what Fry's offering (if any) is "comparable." 

Fry's sells mini-tower cases as cheap as $15 (and I've always bottom-fished
on cases without ever having a problem), but $50 is about right for a
mid-size case w/ps. 

With keyboards and mice, quality varies -- my experiences with cheap
keyboards are consistently good, with cheap mice consistently bad, and in
any case I can only guess what would be comparable to the undescribed items
you found. Bottom fishing here is about $5 each for a keyboard and mouse; a
cheap kbd + good mouse (I just looked around and noticed that every mouse I
actually use regularly is a Logitech serial mouse) probably would run about
$50. 

Fry's sells no-name 15" monitors for $99, no-name 17" monitors for about
$160. (I regularly use one of their no-name 17"ers, a "GEM" brand, as my
main monitor for both Win95 and Linux, and I like it a lot.) As to quality,
in my experience nothing is better then actually seeing one in use, doing
whatever you plan to do with it.

I don't know where in Oregon you live; Fry's does have at least one location
somewhere in Oregon (around Portland, maybe? anyone know?). They advertise
in the Portland paper. Fry's can be persuaded to ship an order, though only
with some difficulty.

As to what you forgot ... I assume the m'bd has the customary ports (1P2S),
but does it also support USB? You may well care a year from now. You didn't
mention external speakers. Or software; Linux CDs are cheap but not free. 

Afraid I can't help with any of your more specific questions.

At 01:23 AM 11/21/98 -0700, Scott Jaderholm wrote:
>After some scouting at pricecheck.com and some other places this is what I
>have come up with for a price list.  Only sucky thing is that I will end up
>paying _tons_ of shipping.
>
>Amptron P2200 ATX Dual Processing Capability- 440 LX AGPset w/ 1 333mhz P][
>CPU. 3 ISA, 4 PCI 1 AGP. (4)168pin DIMMS-Ultra DMA- AMI-ATX form  				$296
>64MB SDRAM Dimm							$ 80
>floppy drive(TEAC)							$ 18
>Western Digital 6.4GB EIDE Ultra DMA 10ms, 5400rpm, 256k		$140
>Diamond Monster Fusion Graphics 16mb SDRAM, 3DFX Banshee	$138
>Case w/ Power supply.(Sparkle power supply)				$ 50
>CPU cooling fan								$ 13
>Keyboard and mouse							$ 50
>Monitor	(15incher)							$150
>Sound Card(SB64AWE)							$ 40
>Toshiba CDROM 32X							$ 50
[rest deleted]

------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
762 Garland Drive
Palo Alto, CA  94303-3603
650.321.3561 voice     650.322.1209 fax          ray at comarre.com        
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