Which PC is the better deal?

gregrocker · 24 Jun 2012

For my sister the home medical transcriber. Used mostly for web surfing, typing medical transcriptions via the web, spreadsheets, light but intense usage.

Best Buy Latest Deals - JUN 24 - JUN 30 - Asus - Essentio Desktop - 4GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive

or

Best Buy Latest Deals - JUN 24 - JUN 30 - HP - Pavilion Desktop - 4GB Memory - 500GB Hard Drive

Especially interested in knowledgeable comparison of AMD processors: AMD Dual-Core E-300 Accelerated Processor with Radeon HD 6310 vs. AMD Athlon II X2 processor with Radeon 3000 graphics

Will be immediately cleaned of bloatware/startups and Clean Reinstalled by winter.

Thanks!

ignatzatsonic · 24 Jun 2012

Greg:

I'd give at least some consideration to support in case of a hardware failure.

From all I hear, Asus is average to poor---I have not heard recent reports on HP.

My Asus misgivings would probably not apply if you would be dealing only with Best Buy--who themselves may be questionable?

Additionally--has your sister ever used Dragon Naturally Speaking for transcription purposes? I have a lot of experience with it and found it reduced my overall transcription time by perhaps 35%, after accounting for the manual correcting that would still have to be done.

Dragon likes lots of CPU power--but I found that a 2008 era Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 would run Dragon very well---I could speak most portions to be transcribed at near normal speed.

writhziden · 24 Jun 2012

I know little about ASUS systems other than many of the people I know in IT like their laptops; I have heard nothing about their desktops. HP makes hit or miss laptops, but fairly quality desktops in my experience. That said, HP systems do tend to run a bit hot, so the lifetime may be an issue without proper dust maintenance.

My HP is nearly four years old, but the Intel Q9550 CPU runs up to 75-80 C and the ATI Radeon HD 4850 GPU ran in the high 90s until I tweaked the fan speeds with SpeedFan; I could not adjust the CPU temperatures, so I just live with that and clean the dust out every couple months. Just giving my personal experience so if she does go with the HP, you know what to recommend. :)

whs · 24 Jun 2012

Hmm, the E300 is a netbook processor. I would not want that in a desktop.

The Athlon at least has good specs. The 3000 graphics is not the greatest, but it should suffice for what your sis wants to do. You can always add a more powerful GPU later - for less than $100 you find decent GPUs. And there is an available PCI-e X16 in the box. Changing the CPU is more difficult because of the sockets.

And I have never heard anything real negative about Asus. Maybe Ignatz mixed it up with Acer.

stormy13 · 24 Jun 2012

Full specs on that HP,

HP Pavilion p2-1100 Desktop PC series - HP Pavilion p2-1124 Desktop PC Product Specifications - c03364038 - HP Business Support Center

If you ever plan on upgrading anything other than the ram or HD in it, forget it. As a HTPC or light gamer it might not be too bad, but it will be held back by the CPU (which is only 1.3 GHz).

The Asus on the other hand,

ASUS - Desktop- ASUS Essentio CM1730

while having a much weaker onboard video in the HD 3000 (first gen DirectX 10.1 onboard), can be upgraded easily with a cheap video card if needed. The CPU is also much better.

bassfisher6522 · 24 Jun 2012

Why not just build one with some high quality but inexpensive hardware...this way your sister will have all the hardware support she'll ever need....chuckle.

writhziden · 24 Jun 2012

Based on what whs mentions about the E300, I would probably lean toward the ASUS, as well.

I probably should have mentioned, when I bought my HP, I bought fairly top of the line hardware at the time.

Also, be wary of Best Buy workers in sheep clothing.

Their extended warranty can end up costing more than a new system in the long run... Happened to me, so my feelings may not reflect those of others, but their support team damaged my last laptop to the point that I had to buy a new one through their store credit which was not enough to cover a comparable system.

Anyway, ASUS looks like the better choice.

TVeblen · 24 Jun 2012

Hey Greg. From what I can see on a very brief review of the processors I don't think that one performs significantly differently from the other. I would call them near equals.

After that, the Asus system is head and shoulder above the HP for the $30 extra.
The Asus is expandable to 16GB RAM vs 8GB for HP
Asus 750GB HDD vs 500GB HP
Asus has Gigabit LAN vs 10/100 for HP

The HP has a 12x optical drive vs the 8x on the Asus.

Neither system has USB 3.0, which bums me out. You know we are going to insist on disk images and constant backups, and the 10x transfer speed is just a huge plus!

My 2 cents anyway!

TVeblen · 24 Jun 2012

bassfisher6522 said:

Why not just build one with some high quality but inexpensive hardware...this way your sister will have all the hardware support she'll ever need....chuckle.

I'm working on a new system for a friend right now with very similar specs and I can't come close to that price building from parts!
They must have some serious bloatware on those systems to make up that kind of margin!

Kipper · 24 Jun 2012

Looking over the specs on these I would definately go for the ASUS with its much faster processor and the larger Drive.

As for a warranty I strongly suggest you get a SquareTrade 3 year warranty which will run you approximately 60.00 if you buy the warranty while the system is new.