New Member, Just Purchased ZV6000

Hello, I'm a new member here. I just ordered a custom Pavillion ZV6000 from Office Depot. They were running a great offer with $200 in rebates. Overall, my net cost after rebates will be $700 with tax and shipping included. Features include:

* AMD Sempron 3000+ 1.8Ghz
* 15.4" WXGA screen (not the Brightview one)
* 40GB HD
* 512MB RAM (2 x 256)
* 128MB ATI Radeon Xpress
* DVD/CDRW combo drive
* WinXP Home
* 8 cell battery

A little background on myself. Three years ago when I was getting ready to finish college I was in the market for a new computer. I insisted on a Notebook vs. a Desktop computer, but was lured into buying an Apple after dabbling a little with OS X. I bought myself an iBook G3 600MHz/384MB ram/8MB vram in December of 2001 for $1500. Two months into the purchase, I felt buyer's remorse. I remember when I installed Office v.X on the machine, it ran so horribly slow I felt embarrassed having made the switch to a Mac.

Throughout the three years, I've been working in insurance, banking, and now mostly mortgage/real estate. Every field had software only designed for Windows with the exception of MS Office, so I was screwed from that aspect with the mac. I purchased Virtual PC thinking it would help patch up a problem; boy was I wrong. Not only did it run painfully slow, I was running Win 98. Don't get me wrong: there are some good software titles for the Mac, including the iLife and Final Cut. But for me, the main priority was business and getting work done, not sit around and play with photo albums and put together movies.

So three years later I said enough was enough. I was about to go purchase a Powerbook for $2000 and install VPC all over again, but I got disgusted at the snails pace that Apple has been progressing and its lack of concern for providing superior hardware with its exorbitantly priced systems. I've spent some time on some Mac forums, and no offense to some out there, but most members on those forums are nothing more than Apple sychophants, lapping up any gimmick Apple tosses out to the market place.

I can't wait until my system gets delivered. It's very annoying trying to use the loan origination software through VPC on my Mac. I've lost so much productivity and this new system will help me get back on track.

 

I agree with you with the people on the Mac forums. I hope you enjoy your new computer calyxman.

 

Any reason why you didn't upgrade to the Athlon 64 processor for just a few more dollars?

 

Good question. Being that this machine will be exclusively for business and I won't be doing any gaming or heavy duty video editing/production, I was more cost conscious and decided to stick with the Sempron.

Do I intend to adopt the best of the best one day? Absolutely. This machine will be my work machine, and frankly it makes no difference to me how much faster MS Office or Calyx Point run. I even forewent the DVD burner option for this machine. But again, I have very minimal intention to explore the "digital lifestyle" with this system since it will exclusively be for work. And actually, I really don't care for any gaming or anything of that sort.

Also, I had to act quick since I needed something right away, so I didn't spend much time pondering the different options.

But I'm happy with what I picked.