My kids are slowly hogging my computer, wanting to get on Nick Jr. and similar sites to play flash games and watch videos.

I think it's time they had their own computer to screw up - erm, I mean, use. I'm thinking I'd set up a cheap lan and share the internet connection. I don't use a lot of bandwidth, so if we're on at the same time (I have DSL, but not very fast) I don't think it will be an issue.

So, the question is: What are the minimum hardware specs do you think I'd need to build a PC that will do what they want (flash games and streaming video)? I'm hoping to build it pretty cheap, btw.

Aren't "ultralight desktops" starting to catch on, IE the Eee PC's desktop models etc? Something like that might be appropriate.

Just make sure it doesn't have Vista (XP or some form of linux such as Ubuntu) as the less cores you have the more performance hit Vista has over XP or Ubuntu. With one core your performance in some scenarios is cut in half with only one core.

I don't believe that article for a second. Not one second. XP's caching and core management is vastly inferior to Vista's, and if you have the RAM to handle it, there's no reason to use XP at all. And seriously... "workloads"? "Database transactions"? What the hell kind of benchmarks are those?

I have 1.5gb of ram, on my single core computer Vista and 7 run horribly. My gaming framerate in TF2 is cut in half on 7 (worst on Vista IIRC). That's my benchmark method right there (it is the most important one to me, after all).

And yes I said SINGLE CORE, that article states Vista/7's multicore support is better than XPs. Even though it still lags behind with 4 cores the performance difference starts to become negligible.

I only specified the warning because I assumed the lighter you go the less cores you're going to have... if he has less than 4 I wouldn't recommend Vista.

Not to mention that just for what he wants to do, he could just go with Windows 2000 or XP only because he might not need the new features and such, all depends on what his long term plans for it might be I guess.

I like the article because it gives me more of an excuse to hate DRM (which it suggests is responsible for part of the slowdown, at least, IIRC). I consider that a plus.

Buy a nettop <_< cuz ISNT THIS COOL A COMPUTER THAT HIDES BEHIND YOUR MONITOR so you can pretend you have an all-in-one >_>

Aren't you running some terribly old Athlon chip anyway? How is your system even remotely a good example of performance >.>

see if you can get an off lease ibm or dell for $129. a PIV with 512MB RAM will do for your kids watching cartoons online.
for less than $300 you can get an athlon x2 refurb with a gig of ram.
you`d have to spring for a monitor in both cases.

once your kids start doing other things like gaming you`ll have to upgrade.
any new sub $500 comp will do for a couple of years. make sure it has a pcie slot for upgrading to a new video card when they want to get something new to play.

i speak from experience on this issue. :p

Dude, I just bought 4Gb of Crucial DDR2 for $9.99 after a $20 rebate. WTF are you doing with 1.5Gb?

sign up for tiger direct's mailing list. there was a deal a couple weeks ago on a c2d system with 2 gigs of ram and a nVidia 8600 for 250$. just needed an OS and peripherals. (keyboard monitor etc.) a quite upgradable system for quite a small price.

they seem to have a deal like that every weekend, with varying quality of the deals.

^ I agree with this. Only thing I have to add is, I would stay away from Celerons/Semprons/Atom cpu's. Some of those fast paced fullscreen Flash games are actually a little cpu intensive.

If you purchase a refurbished computer, I would look for one that is a standard midtower case, those low/small form factor cases really limit your upgrade options later. Also, all the bundle-ware they come with will slow it to a crawl. Be prepared to do alot of uninstalling

http://www.gotapex.com/

There are some fairly cheap Dell systems listed there, if you're interested in a prebuilt rig.

When I am looking for the cheapest systems possible I usually look at:

http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=SYS
http://shop4.frys.com/search?query_string=&sort=price&order=asc&order_by=p03a&cat=-59324&pType=pDisplay&from=0&to=24
http://microcenter.com/storefronts/clearance_center/recertified/index.phtml

I would also check Craigslist and look at Ebay auctions that are close to you and allow local pickup.

(Unfortunately) I'm still using an old Athlon XP 3000+ with 1GB of RAM and a GeForce 7600GT (Win XP). For Flash games and streaming video a PC like this is fine (I've even gotten some vaguely modern games to run!). However any 720p streaming video (such as the kind Youtube recently started supporting) won't run smoothly, so bear that in mind. Would need a slightly faster processor to be able to handle HD video in general.

Well I haven't been to Circuit City recently like you apparently have. :|

Fry's / outpost.com. I can't remember when I've last been to Circuit City.

Buy them an Asus EEE PC or 2. I've been working on them for a few months now & rather enjoy them. You can even steal them away while your children are sleeping & use one of them as an eReader & save yourself some cash without paying for books.

Pommy: Would photoshop 7 run on those things?