PC Specification

[securespark]

Hi Folks

10 years ago, I knew what was the latest spec for a PC.

These days, things have changed: there are many chips around.

The last time I looked, there was a P4 chip or cut down Celeron version or AMD Duron/ Athlon. Now there are Pentium D's (next generation up from P4?) and Core 2 Duo's. As for AMD, I have lost count. What became of the chip code named Barton?

Anyhow, I'm looking for a basic PC to run internet e-mail, photos (no video) and dowload/handle music. Nothing fancy. What is the best set-up in your opinions?

As for the OS, I have heard Vista is best run using 2 Gig of memory, but others say Vista is carp & the last generation of XP is better.

 

[SunnyUK]

I don't think I have an opinion on the AMD vs Intel discussion - there seems to be a lot of solid opinions based on previous experiences, but as we know from the stock market, previous experience isn't a guarantee for future performance!

I got Vista on a new laptop I bought 6 months ago. For the first month or more, I was a firm member of the "vista is a piece of cr*p" group, but as I've gotten used to it, I like it more and more. Yes, it's different from XP, and some things have been moved arond and now behave differently. But many things feels a lot more intuitive (once you manage to forget your memory about how it used to be, if yo know what I mean). I wouldn't hesitate recommending it.

It's correct that Vista is most happy with 2 Gb memory. I would suggest going with that.

If you're doing a fair bit of photo stuff, Vista's handling of pictures is vastly improved over XP. For instance tagging of pictures in the OS and searching by tags is a great improvement. Likewise, Vista now understand ID3 tags for your music.

 

[crapday]

Hi Folks

Anyhow, I'm looking for a basic PC to run internet e-mail, photos (no video) and dowload/handle music. Nothing fancy. What is the best set-up in your opinions?

Why not get a 2nd hand apple, a lot safer for web browsing as their are 100 thousands of viruses for the PC but only 1 for the Mac OS (and its very hard to catch that). Apples leopard is years ahead of vista.

 

[Deluks]

Build your own if you feel confident enough.

Price suggestions for your requirements:

CPU: Get an intel dual core 2160 or 2180. Very good chips that come in under £50 and are basically cut down core 2 duo's. If you fancy AMD get one of the BE-2*** chips for about the same price. But Intel have the performance edge over these.

Motherboard: Get an Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, MSI, and spend over £50. Make sure it is a Socket 775 (for Intel), or Socket AM2 (for AMD). They all have onboard sound these days and some have onboard graphics (see below)

Memory: You can get 2GB for about £35. get a posh brand like OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, Crucial, Patriot or Geil. Make sure it's DDR2, 6400 is a safe bet.

PSU: Don't skimp on this. I highly recommend Corsair or Seasonic, anything over about 400w will suffice, as these brands are notoriously power efficient. Spend up to £60.

Graphics card: Probably not necessary as you won't be gaming or watching vids, make sure the motherboard you select has onboard graphics. If mobo doesn't have onborad then get an Nvidia 8400gs for about £35.

Hard drive: Make sure it's a SATA2 drive, and get one about 250GB or more. About £40 ish is a good sweet spot to be spending.


Barton's were the faster of the Athlon XP's, but these have been overtaken several times by the AMD 64 chips, then the dual core chips. You can only get them second hand these days.

I tried Vista recently, It seems to add a few extra features over XP but with a much heavier resources penalty. Your printers, scanners digicameras etc might not even be compatible.
I'd stick with XP, but you might be feeling brave?

Don't buy any of this from PC World

Try:
Aria.co.uk
Scan.co.uk
Dabs.com
ebuyer.com
komplett.co.uk

etc etc

Or if you wanna take the plunge get a mac mini, and reuse your mouse/monitor etc, I'd strongly recommend having a go on a mac before shelling out though

 

[crapday]

Or if you wanna take the plunge get a mac mini, and reuse your mouse/monitor etc, I'd strongly recommend having a go on a mac before shelling out though

I was in John Lewis last week (in Glasgow) and saw a 24 inch core 2 duo imac (white) for £650. This was over £1300 6 month ago. I have also seen G4 mac minis for £240. The G4 range of mac are good for what you want, but I would recommend going for a G5 or intel.

PC's seem to be out dated very quickly, but macs keep their value a lot longer.

If you do go for an intel mac then you can dual boot in to either macos x or xp/vista, so in theory you are getting to computers for the price of 1 (or 1.5).

I do use XP at work and its Ok, but after you have used MacOS X for a while (you need to give it time to getting used to it, as you will have to give vista time too) you will not want to go back to microsoft XP/Vista.

what ever you do, good luck.

mac mini


this is not a G5 but an intel

Intel imac

 

[duckegg]

I think for basic usage any off the shelf pc would be ideal for you. The 2gb of ram you're talking about would purely be for running Vista, as all the other tasks you use your computer for would happily run on a 512mb / 1gb XP pc. Vista does seem to be a heavyweight, overloaded operating system. I work in IT and even with the bugs ironed out we are still not recommending or even supporting it with our clients.

Before I get shot down in flames here it does have a number of good points both as a technical user and for a home user who wants everything with bells and whistles on from an operating system, but for what you need I think you'll find a nice cheap pc with Windows XP, 1gb ram will more than suffice. As for the processor, again for what you're doing you're never going to push it to the limits so just go with your budget!

 

[securespark]

Thanks, guys, for comments so far!