Finding a new tiny god

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

So I'm thinking about getting a PC in the near future. I've been happy with my MacBook, but when I work from home, connecting to my work PC through this Windows Remote Desktop program for the Mac gives me a sad face. I could partition the dive and yadda-yadda-yadda, but what I'm going to do is just pick up a PC and go direct.

So I could pick up any crap-box and just go with that because the PC is little more than a dumb terminal to my work machine. But y'know...there's an awful lot of neat PC games.

So, if you've got some informed opinions, what would you buy? Say that I'd like to spend no more than $1k, but I'll go to 1.5. I'll probably play FPS games (like Battlefield or Left 4 Dead) and maybe a few action sims (like World of Tanks, or some space dogfight games). I'd like a box that comes with a minimum of added 3rd party crap I'll have to uninstall (do not suggest HP for example).

Regale me with your opinions, Internet!

later
Tom

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I bought one of the big Lenovo W-series ThinkPads when I returned to college in 2010. It's been good for most things I've asked of it, including some reasonably high-demand games, though it does have its limits (it can run the Star Wars: The Old Republic client without a problem, for instance, but The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a bit beyond its capabilities). The current models are presumably more capable in that regard.

Lenovos do tend to be a bit pricey for their specs (though not to the same extent as Apples), but as a tradeoff to that, the support system for them is domestic - they're serviced by IBM out of Atlanta, as opposed to someplace in Singapore or Mumbai - and the warranty lifetime is pretty generous. Mine's still under warranty until this September, which will be the beginning of my pseudosenior year. I don't recall a ton of third-party junk being on this one when it was new. It has a bunch of first-party utils that might or might not be crap depending on your standards (the power management, networking, etc. - stuff that happens in the lower right corner - is Lenovo-branded, as is a diagnostic program that I think is just a reskinned version of PC Doctor), but I haven't had any difficulty with just leaving those alone and letting them do their thing. It also came with the obligatory crippled copy of Office, but I don't think you're going to get a new PC these days that doesn't unless you build one yourself from parts that include a completely blank HDD. :)

I freely acknowledge that this information is three years out of date, but on the other hand, I haven't heard about ThinkPads suffering some catastrophic decline in quality since then. It still has the same feeling of solid well-madeness that my old IBM-branded ThinkPads always had.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

The best way to get a good computer for cheap is to build your own. PC Gamer magazine has recommendations for components in the back of every issue.