| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| alison |
upgradingHow long is a piece of string.I know this is that type of question, but here goes. When do you have to think about starting again from new, rather than keep adding bits on to a pc unit. My mum has my old pc, and it has a newish (3years) hard drive. It must be 9 years old, with windows se, with an xp upgrade. It seams to be getting slower and slower, and I am not sure all the drivers are now supported, as I keep getting messages up. Would it be better to cut my loses and sstart again, putting the old hard drive in, or what else could I do. I would really like to carry on using xp, as I am familiar with it, and the other 2 pc's I "look after" are xp. I don't really have the inclination to learn vista. Please do not answer if you are just going to slate microsoft, or rubbish windows. I have limited knowledge, and do not have the time or inclination to learn a new operating system. Thanks. |
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| dpack |
so far im very happy with my hp laptop but it wasnt cheap
a good new box and modern os is best value and will run modern apps for much less £per oomph |
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| tahir |
Yup |
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| alison |
I thought that is what you may say.
Where is a reasonable place to buy from. I always thought dell had a bad reputation, but I notice a few people mentioning them here, so perhaps this was from years ago. What is dell like compared to ebuyer? How hard is vista to use, compared to xp? |
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| vegplot |
You'll get better performance from XP than Vista on the same hardware but less features and not as good security. If I was on a budget then I'd stick with XP for now and ensure my system was kept fully patched. |
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| tahir |
Me too |
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| tahir |
I prefer HP which I normally buy from www.misco.co.uk |
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| dpack |
is there an independant shop any where near that will build in whatever you need ?
plugging bits together in a box at home is a possibility , takes about an hour including unpacking and loading software but most independants charge about £50 to build up from parts to be fairly sure it can cope with developments i would go for best within budget and lots of ports |
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| JB |
Even if you are not on a budget I would suggest sticking with XP rather than Vista. MS have made noises to the effect that "Windows 7" release date will be earlier than expected. Which many are taking to mean that Vista is a dog and will be quietly abandoned while MS will make an upgrade path available directly from XP to whatever replaces Vista. | ||
| alison |
Not sure what her budget is going to be yet.
What would be high speck now for a desktop. ram, processor, memory etc Not to necessarily get it, just to know when looking at models what the highest would be, and compare with what she has now. |
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| JB |
What do you need to do with the machine? Generally I find I can get away with some relatively low spec machinery as I'm not playing with high end graphics cards, video editting etc. | ||
| tahir |
This
http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=289215&Sku=Q118989 will be streets ahead of whatever your mum's running, got one for my FIL, really quiet too |
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| Talbot |
i have heard mesh computers are really good for customer service which is where many of the larger providers fail on.
in terms of spec - that truly is how long is a piece of string. The spec below would be an indicative guide for a PC used for Word Processing/Web Browsing/Photo Management etc. What is more important is the balance between the components. This is where the larger resellers make their money. They offset newer components with old/poor quality lesser known parts. This only goes to create a bottleneck. Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz RAM - 2GB minimum ensuring bus speeds match that of mthrbrd HD - its a space thing and they are cheap. e.g. 500GB 7200 rpm < £50. Depending on what you want to do with the PC a graphics card may be considered as well as a sound card. You may struggle to get one of the larger manufacturers to install XP as Vista is now very much the standard since its first Service Pack has come out. building your own is a possiblity. motherboards are user friendly in design these days but there are still some mistakes to be made if you don't research and plan your install. software is intuitive and you could realistically have a PC booting within a couple of hours (lots of time waiting for Windows to aplly the NTFS (formatting) to your disk). 
Talbot |
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| happytechie |
You won't go far wrong with a dell PC. £300 - 400 will get you a new PC, a new monitor and a KB/mouse that will turn up and work. Avoid the words celeron and shared video memory and you won't go far wrong.
any of these will do internet, word processing, accounts packages and managing photos etc: http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/dotw_desktops?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs |
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| Shane |
An alternative that's worth considering is to tidy up your home PC (have a clean up of files and run a defrag) and then check to see if you can upgrade components (RAM first, CPU if necessary) to make it run a little faster. I've done this to mine and it's probably added a few more years to its shelf life.
For tips on how to make Windows run faster, see this page. I think I did about the 5 or 6 easiest ones and it made a big difference. Also run a defrag (Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter). You'll need to completely disable all anti-virus / firewall / etc software (so disconnect from the internet!), because their constant monitoring means that the defrag keeps having to restart. Leave the PC on defrag overnight, cos it takes absolutely hours! These first two are free and fairly simple, and should make a noticeable difference to how fast your PC is. It's also worth checking out whether it's possible to cheaply upgrade your RAM and / or CPU (RAM will probably make the biggest difference to an old PC). Either take the side off the case and find the motherboard model number or run a program such as the Belarc Advisor, which will tell you what all the bits inside your PC are. Then take a look on the internet to see if any higher spec bits are available for your motherboard (I had to resort to ebay for mine, as it's totally obsolete now!). If they're cheap, you'll be able to increase system performance enough to eke out a couple more years from the PC, with a bit of luck. If you're running out of hard disc space, an external hard drive might be a better solution than replacing the internal hard drive in an old machine - they're pretty cheap now. |