I’ll summarize the adventures. If you want details, follow the jump.

We needed a new PC. We wanted a Dell, but it never got cheap enough, so we picked a Gateway. The local Best Buy didn’t have it on display and it took us a few days to get the nerve to buy the machine without a test-drive. We did get it and things have been fine, but with a few hiccups.

It’s obvious that we would be avoiding the multitude of available HP machines and I’ve never been a big fan of Asus, Acer or eMachine. We originally wanted this Dell and have been waiting for months for the price to drop. It hasn’t, so we looked for a comparable machine and decided this Gateway (SX2800-01) would be a perfect match. It’s got a big enough hard-drive (at 640GB), but more importantly has the Quad Core Q8200 and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. This new PC, even at nearly $400 less than the Dell was a tremendous upgrade for us. Since the HP notebook died several months ago, we’ve been using an old Toshiba Tablet PC (60Gb Hard-drive, 1.6Ghz Centrino processor, 1.5Gb RAM) connected to the television and external hard-drives. Performance-wise, it was nearly the same as the Dell, only missing out on the more-powerful graphics card. I can replace that myself and still keep below the $900 price-range. To top off the deal, the Gateway has a small-profile case which allows it to fit perfectly within the current television/sound system stand.

So. We got a decent PC with all the widgets and gadgets that we need and for a fair price. What frustrations could there have been? Let me count them…

Finding the PC:  While visiting the local Best Buy (the aforementioned store 805), we couldn’t find the machine on display, but there was a big ol’ stack of them on the storage shelf. I asked one of the sales people and was told that the Gateway we wanted to check out was not on display. He added, not as helpfully as he probably though, that we could still buy the computer. I was a little perturbed, so we headed out on a tour of all of Jacksonville’s electronics stores (limited now to a Staples, Office Max, Radio Shack and two Wal-Marts since Circuit City went under). None of the stores had the model, even though they carry Gateway products.

Purchasing the PC: Given no other real choice and a few days thought, we decided to get the computer at Best Buy, even without a test-ride. After about 10 minutes, we found an available sales-person and asked for help getting the PC. The guy moved the ginormous ladder, grabbed the box, handed it to me and sent us on our way to the register. No question of what we were looking for, what we were going to do with the PC, or any attempt at an up-sale of Geek Squad services or software. Just a simple “Here’s your box, registers are that way.” At the register, same thing: No offer of Geek Squad or product protection plan nor an explanation of return policies. I suppose all of that is moot, since Best Buy was going to get the sale of the PC and I wasn’t going to pay more…But, as a former Best Buy kinda-guy, it was really a crappy shopping experience. I suppose you can get away with crappy sales-experiences when you’re the only major electronics store in town…

Setting up the PC: I’ve been down this road several times and it seems that I always seem to make the same mistakes. I always forget to export the iTunes library and playlists. I always forget to export FireFox favorites. Fortunately, this time, all our files were already on an external hard-drive, so that wasn’t an issue. I installed FireFox only to discover that the Password Manager doesn’t prompt to save usernames or passwords. I went to install Panda Cloud antivirus only to discover that Panda Cloud doesn’t work on 64-bit systems, so I’ve gone to AVG’s free antivirus. I tried to use the HDMI connection from the PC to the HD teevee, but the colors were wacky and lines were…Not line-like. So I went back to the RGB and all is well. When trying to authorize iTunes to play purchased songs, I didn’t know that I needed to have the User Account Control turned off for it to stick (That was particularly frustrating).

The bottom line: We had to get a new PC. The tablet, at 4 years old, just wasn’t cutting it anymore and we were both concerned that it would die, leaving us without any computer. Since the internet is the central operating core of our entertainment, work and financial access, that’s not something that would be really allowable.

I’m still working on recreating playlists, FYI.