Looking for a new computer. Need some expert suggestions

[Master Rudy]

Well it should come as no surprise that I'm doing this based on the number of times I've bitched about my homemade system in the past. With Christmas coming up and myself in need of a new computer I've already started looking. It's one thing I've got on top of my list following a few bills that still need to be paid off. As of now the big winner is the HP Pavilion P6130Y. Best Buy has it for $629 which is fairly cheap considering how much I paid for Brandy's floor model A1130N back in 2005 at Circuit City. The key features I'm loving are:

-8 Gigs of RAM out of the box (expandable to a max of 16)
-750 GB hard drive
-AMD Phenom Quad Core processor
-A free upgrade from Vista Premium to Windows 7 if purchased before 1/31/10

All in all I'm liking what I'm seeing but I'm far from a computer expert. My main concern is having a desktop that can use high speed internet since my dad's piece of junk is forced to use dial up. A large amount of storage is also a plus since I put shitloads of music onto the drive. Finally there's nothing I love better in my free time than playing WoW so that's a major one too. Needless to say I'm sure it can handle all that. I guess my main question is if there is a similar PC that is close or better than the main features of this one for a lower price. I still remember how overpriced BB was the last time I was shopping for a PC. While I'm still far away from the actual purchase I still want to check my other options before I commit to them.

[kainashi]

doesn't seem overpriced to me. that looks like a pretty good deal besides the onboard graphics but you can easily upgrade that. you could check compusa and such too if you live near one to try and find a better deal but overall, that looks pretty good for the price.

[mr_pikachu]

That looks pretty good to me, as well, particularly for the price. The one thing I'd scrutinize would be the processor speed; 2.4 GHz isn't going to break any records. (My dual-core laptop, which I got in summer '08, has over 2.8 GHz... then again, it cost over $2K.) However, the quad-core system may give you a boost.

It's worth glancing through a few review sites (try CNET, if you haven't already) to see what they say about the speed. For just over $600, though, I'm not sure you're going to get much better than that. Looks like a good deal to me.

[Knight of Time]

Hmm, you could always give Dell a chance, they have a Canadian website and an American website, the good thing about Dell is, they allow you to choose what specifications you make for your computer (kinda like blueprints), and from there, once you've selected for what you want for each major part of the computer, and order it, they build it for you, pretty convenient, eh?

[Master Rudy]

Meh.....I've tried Dell in the past and overall I'm far from impressed with them. I personally haven't bought them but I've used them many times and frankly I consider them to be overpriced junk. Of course that's just me. To each their own right?

For a graphics card I think I'll be decent for the time being provided my old one is still compatible with the newer computer. I went ahead and pulled the old ATI Radeon 9250 that was in my homemade system. For this day and age I know it's far from great but as far as games are concerned I'm not looking to run much more than WoW. Plus I FINALLY managed to get a job so a newer card shouldn't be too hard with a few days of work.

[Knight of Time]

It's just a matter of opinion. I guess Dell makes their computers and stuff fairly expensive if you wanted it to be customized with great features. The one I've been using for the past 4 or so years is in fact a Dell computer, which works fairly well for me, price-wise, it was over a thousand dollars IIRC.

As long as you can find a great deal on a computer (e.g. one that has a good price and good features with it that you're looking for), you're bound to be a-ok.

[Telume]

You should get a Toshiba or Acer, I heard those are pretty good.

[Master Rudy]

I might look into Acer and see what they have to offer in that price range. The CD-ROM drive I recently tranplanted into this one from my old computer was made by them. Aside from the lack of being able to read DVD's it's always worked pretty well for me.

Then again if it could read DVD's then I'm sure this thing would explode......