My parents are in their 70s, and want to upgrade their ancient (15-year-old) PC and get online. They don't want a laptop and have asked me to source a reliable PC with a flat-panel monitor for around £300. I'm struggling.
Paul English
It may not be easy to hit the £300 price point on a new, name brand machine running Windows. However, there are often special deals that come close. At the moment, for example, Dell is offering an Inspiron 545 desktop PC deal (search the site for D004528) with an 18.5in widescreen for £329 including VAT and shipping. It's not the prettiest machine around, but the price includes 2GB of memory, a DVD +/- RW drive, Windows Vista Home Premium and Microsoft Works 9. The screen resolution is limited to 1366 x 768 pixels, but the text should be quite big.
It will be best if you remove any unwanted trial software and install some free programs such as AVG or Avast antivirus software, SuperAntiSpyware, and IE8 (if it comes with IE7) and either Firefox or Google Chrome.
Supermarkets offer good deals from time, especially Aldi with its Medion PCs, but generally these are for limited periods.
You can also find cheap PCs from local companies such as Mesh, which offers the R2S Matrix A7550 running Ubuntu for £200 plus delivery charges, if you feel up to supporting that. You can shop around for a cheap LCD screen.
Another option, if your parents have a good LCD TV, is to buy a tiny Asus Eee Box and clip that to the back, or an Acer Aspire Revo. The Eee Box is basically an Atom-powered netbook running Windows XP in 1GB of memory, while the Revo has 2GB and runs Vista. Neither offers the performance of the Dell Inspiron, nor its DVD drive. But they're fine for web surfing and email, and take up little space.
Bear in mind there's only a tiny profit margin on a £300 PC, and your parents can't expect much in the way of support unless they pay for it separately, or you do it. Dell offers 3 years' support, including evenings and Saturdays, for £95.20. But it blows your budget.
