Long story short I am buying a second hand pc for a friend because theirs is insanely slow. It is severely outdated and not worth upgrading. I know a bit about computers and they know zilch ( nothing). It will be used for web browsing and emails. I was leaning towards dual core as i see pentium 4's as older technology but when I suggested a $100 pc they seemed hesitant so I guess their budget is $80 ish. How do the p4's perform compared to the core 2duo and and equivlants, will a p4 be fine in practise for email and web browsing or would you recommend dual core
Obvioulsy a Core 2 Duo would be better than a P4 but how much better a P4 would be than what they've got now is hard to say without knowing what they have now.
$80 isn't going to get much - I'd keep my eye on some $1 reserve TardMe auctions.
P4 is old technology as the poster above said. Dual core would be faster but it comes with the price. Check TradeMe or Seller or PBTech sometimes they have refurbished PC's for sale.
In saying that if its just for web browsing and emails a P4 would be fine.
I was on a P4 3.0 (with hyper threading) until recently, was great system, did everything I wanted except play some newer games ;)
Ive moved onto a Pentium Dual Core E5300 and seen a good increase in performance - but if I wasnt wanting to play games, Id probably still be using the P4 (which I gave my "aging" parents who have no complaints about it).
For day to day use, a later model P4 is fine IMHO.
Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand
the other MAJOR question is ram - even windows xp sp3 is dog slow with 1gb of ram - how much ram will the system have? 2gb min now days even with old os like xp.
They currently have a 1.0, yes 1.0 ghz processor and 512mb ram, my phone is faster. And 2 gb ram is what I had in mind for a replacement. Ram is easy to upgrade though.
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These guys on trademe often sell some reasonable second hand PCs on http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2908730 Just check that you get a COA sticker for windows with any second hand PC
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