So after a horrible ordeal w/ Westinghouse over a 24" monitor, i've decided to catch up with 2005 and get a 30" monitor.

Today I was at costco and picked up an HP package, a 30" monitor w/ a full sized tower(the m8187c) for ~$1800.

Here are the specs:

Processor: Intel E6750 Core2Duo VIIV 2.66ghz

2gb ram

windows vista home prem (32bit)

500gb hd

Nvidia 8500gt

dvd rw / cd rw / lightscribe

built in tv-tuner

Does this seem like a pretty good deal? The HP 30" monitor looks to be about $1300ish online. Costco's got a 90 day return policy so i've got some time before making my final decision. Thoughts?

Also, since i need to pick up a wireless card from newegg (like $30ish) i figured i'd grab some more RAM too, assuming I keep it... Any other suggestions would be great.

Thanks,

Surf

So after looking through some of the "build me a pc for a 30 incher" posts, I've discovered that more detail is required to determine how "good" a pc is. Here's the hardware in this unit in all the gory detail:

Mobo: Asus IPIBL-LA

processor: Core 2 Duo E6750 (C) DC 2.66 GHz 1333 MHz fsb

ram: 2gb PC2-5300 MB/sec 240 pin, DDR2 SDRAM

hd: 7200 rpm 500gb

looks like a 300v psu

It looks like a pretty sweet deal for a web/poker/office computer. It won't hold up with any high-demand gaming, however.

Yeah, I kind of figured that. I don't really play games at all, though i'll probably play a little SC2 when it comes out, and fallout 3 or whatever it's called - def no UT or anything like that.

Any suggestions for quick-and-dirty upgrades, just another 1-2gb of ram and I should be all set or what?

Thanks for the input.

Surf

all you need to do is upgrade the graphics card for gaming, but you may need a bigger PSU for the graphics card.

Go to crucial.com for your ram upgrade.

upgrade video card? shouldn't the nvidia 8 series cards play modern games flawless on max?

No, the 8500 will struggle to play games like BF 2142 even on low settings. Forget about Crysis.

The 8800 is a different beast.

Check tomshardware.com for benchmarks.

ok thanks man, i'm gettin the 9600 when i order my pc next week..that card should keep me from having to upgrade for a while right? everything is advancing so fast i expect lag in modern games after a short period.

I would think it woudl be ok for BF, I have a 7600 card that plays it fine, but yeah for Crisis and CoD4 it you will need to turn it down.

The 8500 gets less than half the framerate of the 7600GT. If you like to play your games at 1024x768 with low settings then the 8500 will be almost adequate.

i think i have that pc. it is good, but i added in an extra, quieter HD, and upgraded the video card and power supply.

it is the meridion 8828 or something, i think. i got mine from aldi.