Dude! I'm gettin' a Dell!

[Boeing Skunk Works]

I stumbled across several (many actually) auctions from an apparently popular and reliable seller on e-Bay this morning. All this guy and his shop do is refurb Dell and HP business computers that are off-lease.

He had a bunch of systems on a one-day sale for today only, that started at a $1. Three of the systems were were Dell Optiplex GX280's each running a Pentium IV 2.8 Ghz core, 2GB of memory, and an 80GB hard drive. These were made in '05 and probably came off lease in '08 so not ancient even though not new.

I waited until the last two seconds of the auction to place my bid and picked one up for $112.10, and FREE shipping from Arizona. It also includes a new sealed refurb licensed XP OS disc. I didn't know MS did that.

That's probably the best deal I've ever gotten on e-Bay beside my Fluke 8000A mutimeter NIB for $35.

The other two auctions on identical systems ended already. The second one went for $142.50 and the second went for $155.xx. That made me feel especially good.

The same models I found at various internet outlets were $165 with only 512Mb of memory.

Plenty of power to run a Wideview monitor with XP and FS9. I'm really happy I took the chance with a bid. I shopped NewEgg for a decent Wideview system, but I just can't justify spending that kind of money for a bunch of junk like card readers, 500GB hard drives, DVD/CD burners and such that I don't need and will never use on a Wideview computer.

[Bob Reed]

I have 100s of these at work. Not a bad machine. I just brought one home GX280 3.0ghz 4gb  ram 80gb HD The OS disk is a ligit Dell disk. Says Dell right on it and will reinstall the OS to your Dell... This is the type of computer I work on at work. Laptops Desktops Servers we sell em all....

[Trevor Hale]

Congrats Mike,

I am sure your going to love em..  (You must have lots of copies of FS9 by now) ROFL..

I can't wait to see more views on your setup.  Great Job..

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Well, I wish that were so, but I bought it to replace an existing system. It was my first XP computer that would run FS9, and barely at that.

My son built it for me back in '03 or '04 I think, using an Athlon 1.3Ghz Thunderbird core. This processor just can't keep up. It crashes at least once during a flight, usually before I'm even out of the gate. Sometimes it runs for the rest of the flight, but more often than not it will crash on final.

Even with settings turned way down and using the default 737 for the WidevieW aircraft it's a dog and it's never really ran very well at all.

I'll probably still use it in the shop for a utility computer or listening to music while I'm working on something, but its FS gig is over with for good. I might use the case and the power supply to build another down the road too.

[Boeing Skunk Works]

I got the computer yesterday and gave it a good inspection before powering it up. It has the strangest way of opening I've ever seen. It opens like a clamshell. The case spearates and it's hinged at the front. Strange. The case is huge! At least as large as the full tower I'm replacing it with. No, it's even bigger than that. We're talking almost server-size box here. Plenty of room for the largest video card currently made...and then some.

It was clean as new on the inside, and outside too. Looked like a typical office system with just a slight ding on the front top of the case and a slight rub mark on the side, probably from an office chair.

Windows XP disc was still sealed in the plastic box and came with a driver disc. It didn't have a lot of garbage software preloaded. An Office compatible program, a CD/DVD burner suite, and an anti-virus by Avast. I haven't installed that yet. Other than that it was pretty clean. Came with a new cheapo USB keyboard and speakers and a pretty nice Dell optical USB mouse. Nice and solid feeling like my old IBM mouse.

I downloaded ZA, deleted a couple of minor programs, defragged it a few times, and then sat and loaded software for three hours.  Then I ran through the configuration procedure for XP and FS to optimize it.

This box smokes my Celeron 2.0 Ghz I bought new just a year ago at three times the price. And I had to upgrade it just to get enough memory in it to equal the Dell. The biggest difference is the amount of L2 cache. The Dell has only 512kb vs. 1Mb on the E-Machines. The speed of the Pentium 4 at 2.8 Ghz more than makes up for the lack of cache for FS.

I'm really amazed at this P-IV. I went from a 1.3Ghz Athlon processor to a 2.0Ghz Intel Core2Duo for the main FS computer with no in-between. Had I known the P-IV was this good for FS, I would have bought that (at a higher processor speed) instead of the Core2Duo machine a couple of years ago. I use the E-Machines model as my internet and media computer as well as for FS/Wideview but I'm thinking of swapping the system for the new Dell. I think it would handle two monitors better than the E-Machines, but that's yet to be seen, and I haven't bought a video card for the Dell yet either.

Using only the on-board video in the Dell, I had a rock solid 29 FPS running UT Europe and GA1 Innsbruck while taxiing around the apron. Jumped to outside view and spun around the aircraft a few times and couldn't get it to budge from 29 FPS. The AA isn't the greatest and had some jagged edges on the airframe, but it was only turned up to six within FS. I'm certain the video card will take care of this.

The sliders were set (as near as I can remember) Terrain 70, land only, Global & Third Party scenery were maxed out, lights and AA at 6, no glare, extended terrain textures, and a few more I can't remember. Overall the sliders were at 75%+ with no frame rate hit locked at 30.

I'm going to be looking for another one of these boxes. God I love FS9! Cheap, cheap, cheap hardware!!!

[Trevor Hale]

Great to hear Mike.

I was wondering if you had received this yet?  I like hearing stories like this.  Much better to hear someone say "I am getting another" then "Don't ever buy one"  The Intel Core2 Extreme I think is was called is really good as well.  For a while there the AMD Chips were better gaming CPU's but I think Intel got the Jersey back for now.

Trev