PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Software, Hardware & Website Recommendations => Topic started by: Clive on December 11, 2007, 16:15
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My computers are now 3 years old and beginning to make funny noises. I am therefore considering replacing them and ask what a reasonable specification would be these days? I don't play games and I don't store masses of film but obviously I would like to futureproof them to some extent. This will be the last time we buy a pair of computers since Mrs Clive plans to retire within 2 years so we will then be able to manage with one PC and her Mac laptop.
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Sue retired and we increased the number of machines, Clive!
Intel Core2 Duo processor, 2GB RAM, I'd suggest a dedicated system drive, say 80GB, plus one or more others. A 256MB graphics card should be adequate for your needs. Aim to get an e-SATA option if you can. DVD/CD drives as required.
Don't skimp on the power supply, and looks for a high-efficiency cooling system, maybe Akasa 120mm case fans.
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What is a dedicated system drive? Does that mean the OS is on one drive and the programs and files on another? I'm going to go for crappy Vista because MS will abandon XP before too much longer leaving us all up a creek without a paddle.
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What is a dedicated system drive? Does that mean the OS is on one drive and the programs and files on another?
I think so, but don't quote me on it. :)
I'm going to go for crappy Vista because MS will abandon XP before too much longer leaving us all up a creek without a paddle.
Vista isn't all that bad, but I wouldn't bet on MS abandoning XP for a few years yet. In fact, I would consider putting money on them keeping XP alive until the successor to Vista arrives.
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Yes, Clive. I have four drives on this machine. A pair of 80GB for system and apps - this has the advantage of being able to move the swap file to a different physical drive to the OS. The third drive is 750GB and carries all my data (still with a little spare room ;)). The fourth drive is used for internal backups, with other copies going to external USB HDs.
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Hell I can't cope with four drives! But I quite like the idea of the OS and apps on a dedicated drive. No, I'll rephrase that. I like it a lot! A high-efficiency cooling system seems neat too because mine sounds as if it's going into orbit during the hot weather. Mrs Clive's makes funny beeping noises similar to a phone off the hook but the frequency of the beep is not consistent.
Talking of power supplies, how much a month are you paying for electricity? Mine costs me £80 and I cook with gas. Will I need my own dedicated power station for my proposed new machines?
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Those four drive are on just one of Rik's machines, Clive! :o ;) I would imagine his electric bill would be equivalent to that of the rest of Milton Keynes put together! Indeed, they have to wait for him to log off before they can boil a kettle! ;D
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I've just bought the new Medion from Aldi at £629.99. They still have them in stock. The machine I'm using just now is a medion and it is 3 years old and never has it given me any problems and with a 3 year warranty what more could you want.
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/2867_4445.htm
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I've been in touch with my computer supplier who refuses to install Vista on new machines because it's too troublesome. He says that if MS ever stop supporting XP then he will load Vista over the top of XP for me but he doesn't think that day will come any day soon. I will have 2GB of RAM and 256Mb graphics card. He will phone me to let me know processor prices but he expects each machine to cost £450 max including data transfer.
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Going on the spec above and presuming you already have your monitors this could be worth a look
Link (http://www.hotukdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122382)
I've had Vista from March and not had a single problem with it after updating my drivers :dunno:
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That's an amazing price for that spec. What a find!
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I remember when my friend pete was soooo proud of having a gig of memory. Now your average person doesn't think a gig is anything.
At the moment I'm running a amd3000 with a 512 and 4hds summing up to a terabyte. The next machine i plan on moving up to will have AT LEAST a quadcore inside. I would wait until the next generation of intel processors get churned out. When they do the quads will drop down to nothing.
Give them two years and these will come out for businesses.
Tigerton (http://techreport.com/discussions.x/11099)
techspot (http://www.techspot.com/news/23329-preview-of-intels-16core-caneland-platform.html)
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I've just bought the new Medion from Aldi at £629.99. They still have them in stock. The machine I'm using just now is a medion and it is 3 years old and never has it given me any problems and with a 3 year warranty what more could you want.
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/2867_4445.htm
Lona you're the lucky one :-X I've had problems since day 1 with my medion pc and the three year guarantee is meaningless as the engineers have been out several times and never cured the problem for long. I hear you have to return your machine back to base now as well, medion are very reluctant to send engineers any more.
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More people should have a go at building there own pc's , basically it's a bunch of components that you plug in to the motherbord then load the OS .If you buy a medion pc
or any other brand is it going to have a decent PSU, ram, will the case have front & rear fans with a dust filter? , will the wiring looms be held together with rubber bands that perish and fall on the motherboard?. Research pc components then build your own pc it's not difficult at all, i had more trouble trying to install my digital box for my tv
:blush:
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So what I've actually bought is a pair of Acer Veriton M661 machines as specified HERE (http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_Veriton_M661_Desktop_PS.M66C6.U01/version.asp?refsource=adwords)
They come preloaded with Office 2007, AutoRoute 2007 and Photoshop 2006 amongst other software. One has just turned up and the other should not be too far behind!
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nice, acer generally do some good stuff - from what I hear... at least it didn't come with f***ing Vista. Are you going to set one of your old machines up at the bachelor pad?
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Well done Clive :clap:
;)
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Are you going to set one of your old machines up at the bachelor pad?
No because we don't have an Internet connection there (yet) and we would use a laptop there anyway. The other good news is that it has XP Professional as opposed to the XP Home I have used previously.
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So what I've actually bought is a pair of Acer Veriton M661 machines as specified HERE (http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_Veriton_M661_Desktop_PS.M66C6.U01/version.asp?refsource=adwords)
They come preloaded with Office 2007, AutoRoute 2007 and Photoshop 2006 amongst other software. One has just turned up and the other should not be too far behind!
I still think you would have been better off with the medion. :)
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Looking good, Clive. My laptop is Acer, and apart from coming with a load of pre-installed sh*t, and, as Sam so eloquently put it, f***ing Vista, it's fine. ;D
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me, eloquently, never!!! ... you should hear me talking about bloody exoplanets!
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;D
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Simon's review of XP made my mind up for me! ;D
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I cant see why people are so against Vista.
Ok you may need new drivers and updated programs but doesnt that always happen when a new OS comes out ?
We went through the same thing going from 98 to XP, I didnt have a PC before ones that used win98 but I assume that happened when the previous OSs were updated.
Its worth having Vista Ultimate just for the extra protection and the media centre part.
The Vista media centre is better than the original windows media centre OS was.
If someone is only just starting out using a PC then they will learn far quicker on Vista than any other OS, in much the same way as they would have starting out with XP over any of the earlier versions.
For anyone who has used any MS OS after 95 they will have no problems using Vista.
Ok I have now been using it for 12 months so I may be a little biased but so far I cant see any problems with it at all, once you disable the UAC (User Account Control) as that can be a pain as it wants confirmation that you want to do something before it lets you do it.
Having said that its probably a good idea for new users as it may stop a lot of IDtenT errors :)
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I do a lot of video converting (DVD to XviD MPEG4) it takes about 20% longer with vista, i have a dual boot system "XP & Vista" overall programs, games seem to run quicker with XP. Speed is more important than pretty icons to me, why upgrade to "Vista" to have a drop in performance? I don't need extra security i use "counterspy",
"Nod32" & "Firefox" thats enough for me. "Vista" is like a new V12 Ferrari but only running on 11.5 cylinders :)
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From what I remember you saying before and your avatar you are using an AMD CPU though arent you ?
I have had it running on an intel 3.6ghz 660 single core CPU, on an Intel 3.4ghz D945 dual core CPU and on an Intel Core 2 Duo, cant remember the exact CPU, for a friend.
AMD have always supposedly been better for gamers, until the Intel Dual Core and Core 2 Duo CPUs came out but the Intel CPUs were better for things like audio and video editing and converting.
The new Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad CPUs far surpass anything AMD has out yet or wil have in the forseeable future.
I think that Vista definately seems to work better with the newer and faster Intel CPUs, anything from the 600 series onwards, over the AMD ones.
As I said before the media centre and security that are built in save problems and the expense of additional 3rd party software :)
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(https://www.pc-pals.com/smf/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi4.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy149%2Fbolow%2FVISTACAPTURELarge.jpg&hash=c74a329438e3b43127772dc7021883fc938536c8)
As you can see my pc is no slouch, my point is regardless of what cpu is being used programs are going to run faster under XP than Vista. I have more faith in 3rd party
software rather than rely on Microsoft, its nice to have a choice
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and if you really want security.... you know what I'm going to say.... well I'm going to say it anyway.... LINUX!!! get ubuntu! (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu)
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and if you really want security.... you know what I'm going to say.... well I'm going to say it anyway.... LINUX!!! get ubuntu! (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu)
But it wont work with my GPS :cry:
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Why do you need GPS, you are located in that big island north west of New Zealand, you cant really miss it ;D
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I agree with Sandra on the general Vista bashing thing and find the pros by far outweigh the cons as long as it's on a machine capable of running it properly.
Yes XP is lighter and could be slightly faster in certain things but not by that much and there may be another reason if it's 20% slower.
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Why do you need GPS, you are located in that big island north west of New Zealand, you cant really miss it ;D
Because when i'm drunk i cant see the road, i need audio directions :crazy:
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you are correct many devices still dont have full linux support, but trust me they are getting much much better!
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whats a good version for a beginner to play around with?, i have an old laptop doing nothing.
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id say the one I linked to earlier is pretty good - ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu) - its pretty straight forward to install, it even runs off the cd so you can test out the os without having to install it. It also has lots of graphical tools so you can do lots of things in a very similar way to windows, but of course has the power of the commandline.
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Ok, thanks
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Soooooo... I've transferred to my new computer! I can't say I like Firefox all that much! Now I know why I abandoned it before. I've downloaded Roboform. (Avant had it's own password rememberer). I can't find my scanner CD. :bawl: Everything else fine. Biggest difficulty was transferring my address book from memory stick. I can't see how to forward my Googlemail back to Outlook Express!! :wtf: Nero 8 is next stop!
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Forward GMail from where, Clive?
It might be quicker to download new software for the scanner, if it's available.
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Back to my BT Yahoo account Rik. The scanner software doesn't appear to be available online. I think I'm going to take a peek at Avant ... just for old times sake. Just the once of course. :hee-hee:
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what brand & model scanner is it?
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So where is the GMail at the moment, Clibe, with Google or on an old machine?
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It's a Canoscan N676U Gmax and Googlemail is on Google.
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I take it you've read it, so it can't be picked up automatically as new? In that case, I think you have to go into each message manually and forward it. :(
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Canon driver appears to be here. (http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/SCANNER-Digital-CAMERA-WEBCAM/CANON/Canon-CanoScan-N676U.shtml)
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I think you are correct about Googlemail Rik. :o I was hoping I could just send the whole lot back in one go!
Thanks very much for the driver. 8-) Downloading now!
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Perfect! Scanner working fine again now! :D
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GMail doesn't seem that flexible, Clive. I would have expected to be able to select all and forward, but I can't see a way to do it. :(
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Perfect! Scanner working fine again now! :D
Result! ;D
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GMail doesn't seem that flexible, Clive. I would have expected to be able to select all and forward, but I can't see a way to do it. :(
It's very disappointing really because I managed to get them to Googlemail all in one go. To be honest it's no big deal just leaving them all there.
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And just what's wrong with Firefox, may I ask? ':| You know I can't let you get away without allowing me to find at least a couple of add-ons for you. ;D What do you want it to do that it currently doesn't, apart from be crap like Avant-a-clue. :bubble:
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Where do I start Simon? With Avant I can perform any task with just one mouse click. All my favourites are in a neat column on he left of the screen. To open a new browser window I just click on the icon. It has it's own Autofill faciility for passwords. If I have 3 windows open when I exit then Avant will open them all back up again for my next session. Maybe Firefox can do all that but if it can it's buried deep within the software and I just can't be arsed with it. I perservered with it for several months a few years back and it hasn't improved one iota. I found it hard work and user unfriendly. Add-ons? Aren't they clever enough to get it to work in just a simple download? Sorry guys... but the Emperor has no clothes! :bartmoon:
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Oh, now you've thrown down a gauntlet, Clive! ;) But it's too late now, so I'll have to think about it tomorrow. :santa:
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I felt exactly the same as you Clive when I started using Firefox, same probs, same moans etc. once I used it for a while it does get easier and better and you will find add ons to suit what you need or want. I think the idea of the add ons is just that, so you can pick and choose, get it set to just how you like. there is add ons to restore the session like you are used to, password remembering, media look ups for when you listen to music etc. loads of stuff. I switched form IE to one called Maxthon, have you tried that, I thought it was great got it set how I liked then re tried Firefox and now use it all the time.
give it another go Clive, go on ;D ;D
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Thanks Ermmm. I haven't tried Maxthon. I'll have a read through the Firefox add-ons. :)
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Clive - googlemail - do you want it to automatically forward your mail, or do it when you want to? If you want it to do it automatically - go (from gmail inbox page) --> Settings (top right) --> Forwarding and POP --> then choose the type of forwarding you want - you can setup the POP account so you can use it in outlook (though Thunderbird is much better) aswell if you like - let me know if you need any more assistance.
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No, I don't use Googlemail Sam. To transfer all my saved e-mails from my old computer to the new one, I mailed them all in one go to myself at Googlmail by highlighting the first, holding the shift key down and scrolling down to the last. I expected that I could transfer them all back just as easily. However, it seems that you have to do it one at a time.
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oh i see, I completely misinterpretted what you wanted to do..
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To transfer all my saved e-mails from my old computer to the new one
Couldn't you do it directly, Clive, over the LAN or with a CD?
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I have always done that in the past Rik but I thought this method would have been quicker!
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Ah, great theory but... ;)