Try a Mac and you'll never go back. Superior operating system and quality hardware. A little more expensive but will outlast most PCs two to one.
Any Ideas For A Computer
- Thread starter Liberalman
- Start date
Try a Mac and you'll never go back. Superior operating system and quality hardware. A little more expensive but will outlast most PCs two to one.
That is a myth. I have upgraded and updated over fifty unites in the last couple of years and I live at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere. I can take a ten year old mac and upgrade to take on most PCs on the market today and they will still out last them. And many of the parts are the same as a PC, like hard drives and RAM, optical drives, printers. monitors, scanners, etc. macs are not proprietory any more, especially when the switched to Intel chips and can run Windoze natively, as well as Linex, all at the same time.
Right now I am running a dual processor G5 1.8 Ghz with 2 Gigs of RAM. 2 80 Gig SATA hard drives, DVD burner and 256 Meg ATI video card. I run three printers, a scanner, a 19" wide screen Gateway LCD and a Logitec THX sound system. I have a complete graphic arts, publishing and entertainment system all within reach of my comfy chair. And I got it all on eBay for the price of an equivelant PC.
Cool. I was just going by what I'd heard. This thing runs at 3.3 GHz. Our laptop runs at 2.8 I think.
*wonders why anyone would need 3 printers* Ahah!!! Lots of fresh cash!
*wonders why anyone would need 3 printers* Ahah!!! Lots of fresh cash!
I am not really a computer person.
But Microsoft forced me into learning a bit about it.
Constantly bogging systems.
Never enough memory.
Crash after crash.
Lost emails, lost spreadsheets.
Every Widows system that I owned seemed to need to be completely wiped and reinstalled on a yearly basis.
Maybe its me.
I got so sick of having to rip hard drives out of failed boxes to get at important information.
And yes I know I should have been backing up more often.
My last HP a one year old cheap piece of crap just died.
So I bought a Mac.
The thing boots up in seconds.
It will run windows if I need it to.
Pricey though.
I hope my luck changes.
Trex
But Microsoft forced me into learning a bit about it.
Constantly bogging systems.
Never enough memory.
Crash after crash.
Lost emails, lost spreadsheets.
Every Widows system that I owned seemed to need to be completely wiped and reinstalled on a yearly basis.
Maybe its me.
I got so sick of having to rip hard drives out of failed boxes to get at important information.
And yes I know I should have been backing up more often.
My last HP a one year old cheap piece of crap just died.
So I bought a Mac.
The thing boots up in seconds.
It will run windows if I need it to.
Pricey though.
I hope my luck changes.
Trex
No. Those aren't really the factors that determine how slow or fast a machine is, but as others have said, what you need depends entirely on what you want to do with it. You need high end hardware only if you do a lot of gaming or run heavy scientific calculations, those are the only applications that'll take the hardware to its performance limits. Windows Vista is a serious resource hog too. I think custom made from components is the way to go, but that's only because that's what I like to do, it's one of my hobbies.
At a minimum, whatever you're doing, I'd suggest at least a 2 GHz processor, 2 Gb of RAM, and a 500 Gb drive. That'll give you a satisfactorily functional XP or Vista system for routine office automation tasks, email, web browsing, photo storage, stuff like that, and those I've seen on the shelf at Best Buy and Future Shop and a dozen other places for around $600-$800. If you do gaming, need powerful apps like Photoshop, download movies and music, you'll want more of everything: a 3 Ghz dual core processor, quad core if you have apps that can use it, 4 Gb of RAM, two 500 Gb drives. I'm not a fan of really big single drives, that's a single point of potential failure for everything you've stored on it. My system has four 250 Gb drives in it, two of them bootable (one with XP, the other with Ubuntu), one is designated solely for backups of critical stuff, and one is for my personal files, correspondence, essays, reference material, photos, and such. I don't download movies and music files, if I did I'd upgrade a couple of those drives to 500 Gb. I also have two external 500 Gb drives that plug into USB ports, which I use for offline backup and moving stuff between my desktop and laptop. I'm a little paranoid about backups, and everything I really care about, like my photos, I have three copies of on different drives.
Some other observations: XP will run fine with 1 Gb of RAM, though 2 is better, and it's unlikely to be able to see more than about 3.5 Gb even if you install 4, Vista is useless with anything less than 2 Gb of RAM, no processor slower than 2 GHz is worth a nickel, any version of Linux will run much better than any version of Windows on the same processor and RAM, if you use wireless networking any version of LInux (at least any of the half dozen I've tried) will give you a major headache, and Ubuntu LInux is by far the best current version of Linux for the technically challenged. And if you like Windows games, Linux is useless.
If it outlasts two of you former machines, it will be worth it. If it doesn't crash half as much or burn out hardware, if you don't lose anything, it is worth it. Regular maintenance (run Disk Utilities every month) and you should be fine. At regular intervals (once a month at regular use) boot into Safe Mode (hold down the Shift key at start up). Once it is fully up and running, reboot normally. This should defrag your files. Takes about five minutes.
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Cool. I was just going by what I'd heard. This thing runs at 3.3 GHz. Our laptop runs at 2.8 I think.
*wonders why anyone would need 3 printers* Ahah!!! Lots of fresh cash!
Les,
I publish my own books and cards. I use an old HP B&W LaserJet with a Duplex unit (prints both sides of the page) to print the guts of the text and an HP colour LaserJet to print covers. I use my Epson photo colour ink jet printer to reproduce my art of glossy card stock.
(if I could find a way to produce the holographic strip, I could print fresh cash);-)
I would think that 3 or 4 years is all you'll get out of a computer anyway.
Key to longevity - vacuum the bloody thing. Most home computers sit on the floor, and the cooling vents collect dust, and then they overheat and die.
Key to longevity - vacuum the bloody thing. Most home computers sit on the floor, and the cooling vents collect dust, and then they overheat and die.
if I were to build an everyday, general purpose PC, I would go with something like this:
Grand Total = $560.93
Grand Total = $560.93
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Forget looking for something that will last you ten years. That's bad criteria, instead find the things you do now regularly, the things you do once in a while and the things that really take a long time for your computer to do now.
A few things you should keep in mind is your obvious Internet usage. This message board stuff doesn't take much horse power to do, but the movies and pictures might put some demand on your new system. You will eventually upgrade to broadband so that's a key issue to take into account.
For the rest, it's up to you. There is no limit to what you can pay so forget that aspect. You don't need to be the fastest but you do need to keep up. If that's the case, look for something name brand with the features you want.
Custom made is really the way to go but unless you know what you want, you're just going to make a mess of it.
Now is the time to look at the new stuff you can do with a computer to see if that's what you want to do as well. Photos and home movies, music and art are all at your fingertips now.
One last bit of advice. Along with your computer get a second external hard drive to back up on to and use for storage of things like pictures and music. So if your main drive fails, which it probably will at some point, you won't lose stuff. Back up early and often.
A few things you should keep in mind is your obvious Internet usage. This message board stuff doesn't take much horse power to do, but the movies and pictures might put some demand on your new system. You will eventually upgrade to broadband so that's a key issue to take into account.
For the rest, it's up to you. There is no limit to what you can pay so forget that aspect. You don't need to be the fastest but you do need to keep up. If that's the case, look for something name brand with the features you want.
Custom made is really the way to go but unless you know what you want, you're just going to make a mess of it.
Now is the time to look at the new stuff you can do with a computer to see if that's what you want to do as well. Photos and home movies, music and art are all at your fingertips now.
One last bit of advice. Along with your computer get a second external hard drive to back up on to and use for storage of things like pictures and music. So if your main drive fails, which it probably will at some point, you won't lose stuff. Back up early and often.
You have to remember that any computer you buy is obsolete before you leave the store. If you want to keep it for at least 10 years - up-date it's "innards" frequently and - clean it often.
I got a new computer 4 gigs ram and 1 tcp or tara byte I think it's 1000 gig hard drive motherboard is expandable a upgraded video card and I got it custom made. The only draw back is it has vista premium instead of XP I chose it because XP will eventueally be out of date.
It was a bitch to set up and with a few choice cuss words I got it going.
Thanks for all the comments it helped me make an informed decision
It was a bitch to set up and with a few choice cuss words I got it going.
Thanks for all the comments it helped me make an informed decision
Go for a netbook that has vga out and then spring for a widescreen 24" (or smaller as 1024x600 is a netbooks resolution) add a wireless mouse and keyboard and away you go. Net connection (streaming video style) at a desktop and mobility if you want to move around abit. If you are a hard core gamer you need the faste$t regular notebook you can find and then you might even have a port to yout 52" plazma TV.
