Just bought

scaldyflash

Hi, I just bought this PC on Ebay and wondered if I got a good deal. It was on for £169 (Way over priced in my opinion) I bid £110 on 'best offer' and it was accepted. Seems like a decent lower end PC and as I don't do gaming etc I'm not bothered about the integrated graphics. Just wondered if anyone had any views experiences about this type of PC. Thanks

This listing is for a ex-display Packard Bell iStart 2380 AMD Athlon64 Black Desktop PC. For a powerful all-round performance on the most complicated applications, choose the Packard Bell iStart 2380.
This sleek machine uses an AMD Athlon64 3800+ processor as well as 1GB memory to deliver you smooth operation. Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium helps take care of all your multimedia tasks. Editing photos, downloading and watching movies will be a breeze thanks to the Packard Bell iStart 2380.
Gamers and films buffs alike will love the NVIDIA® GeForce® 6100 upto 384MB Turbo cache onboard graphics card, which provides you with images rich in colour and detail. Watch all your favourite films on the DVD Rewriter and make hard, durable copies of all your most important files. A 160GB SATA hard drive provides you with a huge amount of space for all your photos, films and music.
Use the 6 USB ports to connect up any external USB device, such as your digital camera or USB stick to safely store, save and load files on to your PC.
The Packard Bell iStart 2380 is a powerful machine, hidden in a sleek and stylish body.
Processor, Operating System and Memory

• AMD Athlon64 3800+ Processor (2.4Ghz)
• Operating system installed : Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
• Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Northbridge with Integrated Graphics Processor
• Standard memory : 1 GB (Max Supported 4GB)
• Memory type : DDR2 667
• Memory slots : 4 DIMM sockets
• Internal drives : Internal hard disk drive 160GB
• Hard disk controller : Serial ATA II hard drive
• Hard disk drive speed : (7200 rpm)
• Optical drive type : DVD±RW Dual Layer Drive
• Optical drive speed : 48x max

System features

• Network interface : 10/100BT network interface
• Video Adaptor : NVIDIA® GeForce® 6100
• Video RAM : 256 MB shared memory, up to 384 MB total available graphics memory as allocated by Windows Vista®
• Internal audio : Realtek High Definition Audio 5.1
• Expansion slots : 1x PCI Express 16X, 1x PCI Express 1X, 2x PCI
• External I/O ports : 6 USB 2.0 ports (2 in front)
• 8 in 1 Gigabyte GO-C81LA CardReader/Writer
• Accessories Included: UK Mains Lead, Wired Keyboard & Mouse

Software
The system disk has been restored to its shipping state, and as such is ready to use.
Please note, these units are ex-display and as such may have the odd light mark upon them

thomas01155

Seems good would add a few sticks of ram into it thought : P

hemophobic

yep sounds like a good deal to me, agreed you could put a bit more ram in

scaldyflash

thomas01155 wrote: »

Seems good would add a few sticks of ram into it thought : P

Thanks for that. Do you reckon get it online and do a crucial check and buy from them or have you any other suggestions ? Thanks.

GunJack

yup, if it works okay, at that price...extra 1GB in there (around a tenner) and should have a perfectly reasonable pc

scaldyflash

GunJack wrote: »

yup, if it works okay, at that price...extra 1GB in there (around a tenner) and should have a perfectly reasonable pc

Thanks again for the speedy reply. Just one other quick question. It comes with Vista which I hate (Got it on my laptop) and would like to install XP, is there any quick way to do so ? I've got the original XP disc from my current PC (Minus SP2) Thanks

thomas01155

I would stick with vista(what don't you like about it?) or take a ghost image of it in case later you want to swap back.

thomas01155

Find out the model number of you ram from crucial and search for it here http://www.funkygiraffe.co.uk/ or some place like amazon as it will probably be cheaper.
http://www.play.com/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.ebuyer.com/

scaldyflash

thomas01155 wrote: »

I would stick with vista(what don't you like about it?) or take a ghost image of it in case later you want to swap back.

I guess perhaps I'm just used to XP but I have to say that one of my main bug bears about Vista is that it takes up so much RAM for very little extra in comparison to XP.

[Deleted User]

It tells you what type of memory to get 'DDR2 667', so just go and buy some more of that. I'd also be tempted to replace the onboard graphics chip with a dedicated card, not a lot has to be spent..

BillScarab

It takes up RAM because it loads your commonly used apps into RAM in case you need them so they will load quicker. However you can turn this off if you really want to be able to see lots of RAM unused and have things load more slowly.

Vista is more resource hungry but it is more secure than XP.