[CoachKandSportsguy]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

If I won a brand new Dell, delivered to my home and set up by a professional, I'd tell them to skip the setup and I'd donate it to a battered womens' shelter. And then I'd buy an HP and set it up myself.

Geez, OBB, i think your purchasing department is at fault, but I digress. And i get your experience, i just didn't have that with 30 years of use of Macs and Dell towers and laptops, especially my current one of 7 years old and going strong even after I performed several upgrade surgeries myself. . . and i started on a MAC for 10 years prior to going to Dell.

Lenovos suck with the old IBM mentality. I remember going with a friend to buy an IBM tower in 1989, and they had suits on. Went down the street and got a custom built way cheaper.

random IT guy

[cjrjck]

If you aren't into high end gaming, my suggestion would be something with a Ryzen 5600G processor. A fast processor with integrated graphics that can perform as well as many low end graphics cards. Meaning you get the best of both worlds without the need to add a graphics card. There are plenty of prebuilts available at your price range. I would suggest avoiding Dell and HP since they tend to use proprietary parts. Dell uses non standard motherboards for instance. You should be able to get a system with a Ryzen 5600G, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVME SSD, a 500 watt power supply, a USB wifi adapter, and an aiflow case with Windows 11 installed for your price range. And you get to keep your monitor.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by cjrjck

If you aren't into high end gaming, my suggestion would be something with a Ryzen 5600G processor. A fast processor with integrated graphics that can perform as well as many low end graphics cards. Meaning you get the best of both worlds without the need to add a graphics card. There are plenty of prebuilts available at your price range. I would suggest avoiding Dell and HP since they tend to use proprietary parts. Dell uses non standard motherboards for instance. You should be able to get a system with a Ryzen 5600G, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVME SSD, a 500 watt power supply, a USB wifi adapter, and an aiflow case with Windows 11 installed for your price range.

I'm into text gaming, so graphics cards aren't needed for that at all. What I need graphics for is - watching movies and Netflix on my computer, and occasional desktop publishing functions that I do for my volunteer gig (I created the flyers, do some photo editing with it but very limited).

I like HP, but I've been an HP girl since I replaced my 9-pin dot matrix printer in 1989 with an ink jet printer. My laptop, printer, and desktop are all hp. The bloatware I can live without, but unless you build your own computer one component at a time, you're stuck with bloatware.

[cjrjck]

One challenge is price. Apple is out of the question. The other is the DVD and card reader. DVD drives and even card readers have gone the way of the VCR on many modern PCs. Like you, I still use them occasionally. A few systems still have them but they look like they were built 10 years ago. The solution is a USB portable DVD drive / card reader like this : https://www.amazon.com/ORIGBELIE-Ext...s%2C142&sr=8-2

Once set up, you just plug them into your computer and you are ready to go. When not needed, stash them in a drawer.