Within My Means:

[kennz.c]

 So I guess its time to buy a new comp.  With all the shiny flashy speedy blinky things.  Man those custom built machines look  sweet.  Truth is Wifey is not to intent on me forking out the bucks  My question to those the wiser,  Since I can't run with the big dogs.  Wife agreed to buy machine at Wally Mart.  (it's juist the same as the other kids she says They are just paying for the name )   Ok not so.  But to keep the peace I agree....   These machines Have 2200 Athelon's or however it is spelled.  I have 512mb of ram and a shiny new GForce fx5200 128mb vid card ican salvage from my ole machine.  If so will I remain happy until FS06'  Be Honest not Brutal.

[Wing Nut]

That sounds like a decent enough machine to me.  The video card will help a lot, but I was saying in another posting, Wal-Mart just started carrying a GeForce FX5600 256 Mb card (I have one in lawaway. Oh, to dream...  If CompUSA had layaway... ) for about $250. I think the Athlon 2200 is somewhere equal to a 2.4 gig Pentium, but I never could figure out how to translate AMD's numbers.

I bought my PC at Wally world and did ok.  I got a 2.4 gig P4 with 512mb Ram and a 120 gig hd.  I added a stick of 512 mb ram to get 1024 total, and due to some problems with the purchase (see below) ended up with an extra 60 gig hd for a total of 180 gig hd.

One thing to be sure of...  NEVER EVER,  EVER,  EVER buy a box that has been opened. I did and the box had been opened and someone had stolen the RAM and replaced the HD with a 60 gig.  They had upgraded their computer and returned this one.  I ended up dealing with Sony (It's a Vaio) and Wal-Mart on it and both were more than willing to help out.  They exchanged the tower and when I explained I already had installed some programs on the HD, they let me take that one too!

Wal-Mart is really getting some decent things computer wise.  I found one of those little USB keychain drives (128 mb) there for $40.00, and a DVD writer (next purchase) for around $250 also.  

[kennz.c]

Thanx Dead Pirate that is where i got my gforce 5200 128mb card...  They have those emachines for about 500 and change with the 2200's and was just a little leary bout the name e machine. I know for about two hundred more you can walk out with a nice HPwich is what I have here now.  It's getting ole and moody now only a 750 P3 but she has held together well.  As a general rule of coincidence I end up being about a year behind the time vice a couple of month's considering speeds were about 2G when I got my 750 and now they are up to 3.2g.  Oh well.   As I see u too have children and Mine always come first.   ...  So they ain't nuttin wrong with a wally machine...... just watned to complare notes figured somebody out here got 1.

[darkhorse]

I used to work in the electronics dept at Wally (transfered to TLE now) and the E-Machines have seem to become a more dependable computer than when they first came out.  Didn't have too many problems with them other than the lower performance.  If I were you looking at a pre-fab machine, look in to HP's.  They cost a bit more, but you also get better performance.  Dollar to perfomance wise, they are both about the same.  I wouldn't go with the $500 machines though because they will be abit taxed uless you at the very least upgrade to an actual video card.  My Wally HP has been fine for over a year with a couple of upgrades.  I running 1.2 ghz celeron, 384 mb SDRAM (128 original), Ge-Force MX 440 SE PCI video card (intigrated originally), and 30 gig HD that is a bit over 50% full.  I get anywhere between 15 FPS at busy airports and well over 40 FPS (locked) in the air with medium detail settings.  If I max everything out, I usually don't see that much of a difference from my normal runs.  If you want to save money with the custom jobs, I'm not sure if you would save enough to warrant the effort on a smaller machine.  But if you are going for top dog, the customs are great.  A friend of mine priced all of the parts for a custom build of one of Alienwares top machine and could save about $1500, and still be the same spec. as the pre-fab version.