Discount computer

Wasted

Wasted

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Does anyone know where I can buy a safe discount computer? My girlfriend is a teacher and a lot of her programs don't work with our macs so she's looking for a desktop pc. I don't want to spend much on it because really all it needs to do is run office, adobe and a browser. There are cheap desktops on kijiji but I'm not sure that's the best route. Is there a reliable computer re-seller that I can pick up a cheap work horse, zero bells and whistles computer in the GTA?
 
What is your price range? Many stores sell new PC's for very low prices.
 
You can pick up an i3, maybe even i5 desktop in the $300-400 range anywhere and that's all she needs. Canada Computers, Tiger Direct, NCIX
 
To be honest I was hoping to keep it around $200 but I also don't want to have problems so I guess if I had to spend a bit more to make sure that it was going to be everything that she needs that's okay too. But it will strictly be a work computer (we have 2 macbooks already) so 80G HDD and like 4G ram is probably going to be lots. Nothin' fancy.
 
Well ****....That's what I'm looking for. I didn't realize that TD sold off-lease units. Thanks for the link!
 
CruisnGrrl said:
If you have intel macs you can dual boot with a copy of windows and 10.5 or better. Or you can run windows in a window
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+1

Just buy an OEM version of Windows 7 for under $100 and upgrade the ram as much as you can go. No need for two computers when you have one that will most likely do both.
 
I consider myself to be a little above average in general tech knowledge but computer are not my strongest suit. (I can swap out ram but that's about it lol). Are you talking about a harddrive partition or bootcamp? I understand that in theory but wouldn't have the first clue how to do that. She has an old white MB with either a 80 or 120G HDD and was originally running 2x512 ram. I am pretty sure it's intel but I'm not 100% on that.
 
It's been almost 4 years since I've used it, so there may be better/easier products out there these days - but I had great luck with:

https://www.virtualbox.org/

I have NEVER used a Mac for personal or work purposes - but a client had a Mac and NEEDED to run software designed only for Windows. He left his laptop with me overnight and when he came in the next day I had installed virtualbox and it was running full-screen. When he opened the lid and saw the "press control-alt-delete" to login window he started to freak out and thought I had formatted his Mac and installed windows on it (which would have been impossible). I got a good chuckle outta that!

At any rate, having never used a Mac before I found it easy enough to install (virtualbox) and get the OS loaded onto it. It worked pretty flawlessly I must say, even printing etc. Windows automatically detected all the drivers from the Mac OS and it was practically plug-and-play.

That being said you can't go wrong with a $200 refurbished office PC for what she needs.
 
Wasted said:
I consider myself to be a little above average in general tech knowledge but computer are not my strongest suit. (I can swap out ram but that's about it lol). Are you talking about a harddrive partition or bootcamp? I understand that in theory but wouldn't have the first clue how to do that. She has an old white MB with either a 80 or 120G HDD and was originally running 2x512 ram. I am pretty sure it's intel but I'm not 100% on that.
Click to expand...

You can go that route, or a much simpler route that does not involve any partitions is parallels. http://www.parallels.com/ca/

Makes it very easy to install and lets you run Windows while you run OS X at the same time. You only have a gig of ram, you really want to max that out. I think the white macbooks were 4 gigs. Should be pretty cheap to buy and very easy to install yourself.
 
VMWare fusion is pretty good, I have not tried it personally but I know some MAC guys are using it are pretty happy with it.
 
I wouldn't wanna run virtualization on a 4 gig system.. Can be done but isn't comfortable. I know as I'm doing it right now (not by choice). If you got 16GB it becomes a lot more comfortable, and 32GB is pure dream. Just get a newer machine, yeah its a couple of c-notes, but then you're set for a decade or as long as you need to put up with m$ proprietary crap.
 
bikermahn said:
VMWare fusion is pretty good, I have not tried it personally but I know some MAC guys are using it are pretty happy with it.
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I used to go back and forth between both on 2 different Macs at work. I cant remember the details, but had some weird bluetooth issues with VMware in regards to my mouse and keyboard (apple). Ended up going with parallels and its been working great. VMware ran slightly faster from my tests, but the strange bluetooth issue made it unusable. It might have just been a glitch on my end though.
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