Wow! Some BIG changes around here while my computer was sick. But to stay on topic, I'm planning on buying a machine of my own when I get out of basic training and into school for the Air Force. I will probably begin shopping around with enough cash around May or so of next year.

I want to have a computer that can run most current PC games fairly well, and also optimized for enjoying/creating various forms of media. It doesn't have to be State-of-the-Art, but I don't want an eMachine clone either if I can help it.

I'm looking to spend between $700-$1,000 on this, and I plan to get a digital camera near the end of the year to replace my old one, which didn't play nice with my current computer (Born: 1997). I ended up selling the camera, because I couldn't even use it.

What hardware do you recommend? Any specific brands to seek out or shy away from? What about software, too? I have a "For Dummies" manual that came with the Linux Red Hat 8 operating system. I am considering using this OS to cut some costs on the PC's price.

I'm glad to get some advice from those who have bought their own PC's and have some insight to share. I sawCybernet's Zero-Footprint PC, and it looks like it would be very portable with a flatscreen monitor. Or maybe even Eye-Top's LCD shades for when I'm on the move. I can always have a monitor at home for when I work there. I like the idea of having the option to take my PC with me outside of the house, but I don't want to pay laptop prices.

So, any advice? Maybe we should start with a processor?

Advice: Build your own or find a friend who will. It'll be much cheaper, and you'll get better parts out of the deal. Prebuilts are known to break down right after the warranty drops.

Hmm let's see what we can get in that price range:

AMD Athlon ~ 1700 to 2000 (depends on availability) ~ 50 USD
ASUS motherboard with build in sound, LAN ~60 -80 US (depends on model)
Samsung 512 MB PC2100 DDR Ram ~80 US (more memory really helps when pushing imageas arounds)
Western Digital HD 60-80 GB ~75 US
Video Card ~50-150 US (depends on how much gaming you want)
Case ~50
CD Drive ~25
Floppy ~7

NEC 15" LCD ~275 US
Using a 17" Trinitron CRT instead is around the same price.
A Philips 107 17" CRt is around 140 US

Win 2K or XP Pro OEM ~150

That gives us:

PC 400-500

With another 425 or so for a good 15" LCD and a copy of windows.

Keyboard and mouse to taste.

My prices are a bit conservative, you can probably shave around 50-75 US off total prices for parts I give, if you shop around a lot.

The 'Dell Check' says that a system with slightly more power and options ships for around 1200. But it would have a CD burner, include a mouse and keyboard of reasonable quality, have a set of speakers, and some other stuff.

If you are going to want to use it for much gaming, you'll need Windows since hardly anthing is available for Linux. If you are planning to do much with Linux, you'll probably want a nVidsia video card as opposed to an ATI one, since the nVidia Linux drivers are considerably better (vs the non-existant ATI ones). If you aren't taking Linux that seriously, the ATI cards tend to be slightly better 'packages', since they have very crisp and bright 2D display (important when working with pictures). To get a nVidia card with a good 2D display, you need to shop around. (There are a lot of cheap nVidia cards with very crappy 2D displays). Avoid SIS, while they are cheap, they have not really produced a solid video card yet.

A bit Off topic, Dingus_McGee, any idea what job or base you'll end up with? I recently got out of tech school and am heading to my first duty station tomorrow.

I'm going to be a Weather Apprentice. After basic, I'll be back and forth between keesler and Hulburt field for tech school for about 8 months.

For good prices you might want to check ebay. i cant promise anything good, but I got this machine for 150 bucks after shipping and its a 667 20gigs 124RAM and ones that are twice as good are about twice the price. There are a ton of valid computer stores on ebay so dont feel like you are gonna get ripped off if you do your research right.

Basically you buy them with no OS and no drivers, but you can go to the IBM website and download them all and burn them to a disc if you have access. Thats what I did.

The auction store I used was called tech smart autions.