PC for University

[peekaboo]

I've been given the task of purchasing a new computer for my lab at university (no screen or software, just the computer).
The budget is super low. approx. 400$ Canadian (unless i can justify the added expense).
is it worth the hassle/price of trying to customize a computer for that price range or am i better off just buying a pre-built-take-it-or-leave-it computer.

The computer will probably be used mostly for regular office applications. Any suggestions as what to look for?

[yeoamuca]

i work for a major university
one thing i have learned
dont build your own pcs for labs
(especially true if students use them they tend to try to figure out whats in a computer if they know its not a namebrand)
if only one person was going to use it (like lab monitor or something like tat)then yes you could go with that option
we dont build any custom computers for labs for a couple reasons
one i mentioned above
two we have a contract with gateway and get computers really cheap you should see if your university has something like that (we buy thousands of computers a year so they better give us a discount)
three its alot easier if something goes wrong with them
a university would rather see a bill from a guy from dell or gateway etc

plus for that budget it would just be easier to get a dell

[peekaboo]

it's a research lab not a student lab so only myself and a couple of other grad students would work on it but you made some excellent points.

i'd still like some suggestions as to what to look for and what to look out for.

[yeoamuca]

if its just going to be used for regular office apps then a dell would be fine
you dont need anything special to run office or check email or browse the web
if you are running labs on it you should make sure you have a cd burner
and i dont know what kind of extra cards you would need
you arent going to get alot for 400 canadian dollars
but it doesnt sound like you need alot
(we give our grad students the old boxes that we take out of labs if you get lucky you get the old p4s if you get unlucky you get the p2s)
but for doing the basic stuff dell makes a good box

[Science_guy]

$400 CDN is a very difficult price point to hit if you aren't recycling some parts. Processor + memory + motherboard will eat up most of that, and you'll still need a case, power supply, hard drive, optical drive, video card ... You could only do it with substandard, low-end components and you'd probably wind up with an unstable, unreliable system that's more trouble than it's worth. Like yeoamuca says, check with the purchasing dept. to see if your univ. has a preferred vendor, or even contract pricing with somebody like Dell or Compaq.