The ASUS I have is over 7 years old so its time for a replacement. Looking at what is available I have some question and request opinions from this very knowledgeable group.

My usage is mostly surfing and email. I don't do coding or game playing and my internet connection is a 3Mb DSL line.( UGGG)

First is there a "better" PC than others such as HP, Lenovo, Dell,
Acer? Should I need a DVD Burner? Is a 250 GB SSD better than a 1TB HDD?
Looking at an HP Elite, the DVD is read only, can I remove my DVD burner from my ASUS and replace the reader in the Elite?

Seems like I have a lot of questions for someone that works on PC's so much. Sounds like the mechanic that was asked what was the best car to drive? His answer was I don't know I only see broken ones!
Thanks,
Dan K.

A year ago (Black Friday), picked up:

HP Pavilion 590-p0076 Desktop PC
AMD Ryzen 5 2400g (3.6->3.8 GHz)
8GB Memory, 1TB Hard Drive, AMD Radeon Vega 11 grahpics (on chip)
Windows 10 Home

$350.


IMO, it runs like crap.
And it shouldn't.
It simply does not run "cleanly" - what I would consider cleanly.
And I don't know why?


This is not my machine, so I only dabble on it from time to time.
It would NOT work for me - at all.
That said, I don't hear complaints about it.
It gets "general" PC usage; browsing, Office... nothing at all demanding.

I really have not used a Win10 OS... so don't know if its 10 or ...? And I don't think (?) that there is even any HP crap on it (as early on there were all kinds of troubles with the OS, & it was reinstalled, from scratch, multiple times with varying versions of 10).
(Similarly, I've never used an SSD...)



At the same time this was purchased:

Dell, Optiplex 3060 mini-tower
8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, Win10, onboard graphics HD630
Intel i5, I'm sure it must have been, of some sort

The Dell should be, I'd think, a roughly equivalent "performer" to the HP. Never heard any complaints about the Dell, nor any comparison, one way or the other, to the HP. (Same person uses both.)
I've never touched that one, but likewise, I've got to think that I would not care for it.



(And I say that as I type away, currently, on my XP system with an e4300 CPU & 2 GB of RAM. So, in that respect, all is relative.)

(My Win7 machine, i5-3570, 16 GB of RAM, HDD, runs MUCH cleaner this much newer, "faster", HP.)