Bare bone advice

[EyeOfThe]

My old father only wants to look at his big collection of digital photos, load em, print em, maybe play them in a slide show - nothing else, no internet, sound, etc.

I haven't built a computer in a long long time.
What is the best bare bone system for that? (monitor not included...although we might need to get one.)

We are looking for cheapness, along with enough reliability for it to run for 5+ years.
We have an external hd for backing up pix.

Probably want enough usb ports to connect a monitor and connect a device for copying photos to and from a digital camera media (we have that device), I suppose one for keyboard and one for mouse too. And one for the printer. So 5 usb ports I think.

I'm open to buying one off newegg or even building it from scratch if the price difference is worth it. If figure we are talking so low a price to start with there isn't much to be saved.

Thanks

 

[fffblackmage]

There are some barebone kits at tigerdirect for $200-$300. However, the few I briefly looked at have Power Up! PSUs... I mean, $200-300 for a barebones kit sounds kinda nice, but I just don't like the cheap PSU they threw in there.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

A higher end P4 (i.e. >2.6ghz) or S939 (i.e. >2ghz) AMD system with 1gb of RAM for <$100 from Craigslist.

 

[heyheybooboo]

You can normally find a $300 entry-level PC with OS (no monitor) on sale each week. Here is a Sempy from Amazon.

I believe I saw a dual-core Regor 240 from Dell for around the same price.




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[MagnusTheBrewer]

Are there no used computer stores around you? I just thought that since saving money was important, you could get much higher value for your money at one.