IT Help - Purchase of new PC

Originally Posted by hovi5

troble is i dont know a thing about em

Take a friend shopping with you. Helps if your friend knows at least a bit about computers.

Maybe someone close from the site can help? I'm too far up North, but you're in VB's neck of the woods and I'm sure theres other folks that can be bribed at the expense of a pint or 3.

Don't forget the speakers with that one that Rich W pointed out, or you'll never get full benefit from all the video links that Razor posts up

[timwilky]

You are obviously not going to be one of those who justify buying the latest fastest wizz bang computer on the grounds that you wan't to run your trillion dollar company from it and take over the world at the same time.

TBH, you would get away with almost any old "rubbish" as long as it will support some sort of connectivity to the net and a browser. I would suggest you try to talk to a couple of local techy types and you will probably find they have bits in their loft or garage etc suitable for your requirement gathering dust. Certainly if you lived near me I could have provided you for the cost of a pint, a computer sufficient for your bike porn requirements.

Don't forget, having aquired suitable computer, you then need to get internet connectivity, If you are lucky there may be a local cable company running a deal, or sign up for sky etc and get free internet. Otherwise pay as you go dial up is the cheapest toe in the water. Slow but as my step mother is in exactly your shoes. (Very lightweight user) she gets away with using a onetel dialup account and paying by the minute. I gave her a 6 year old ex work dell computer P3 processor, 256Mb ram and a 20GB disc. Nothing special, but works well enough for her to check her bank accounts and email.

[northwind]

Dell are good if you want something that works and is cheap. Which I think is what you want When I got mine, there was just nobody else that could come close on price- I thought Mesh were doing OK till I discovered the price they'd quoted didn't have Windows, or a screen! It was still more than the Dell.

If all you want to do is do the web and email, you can just about do that on a calculator. We've got an old PC in the spare room that's build out of bits from 1995 and can still do all of that. No need to be going for power or big numbers at all. If you want to do CDs and DVDS, you obviously need a DVD writer, and you'll want a bigger hard drive to keep the stuff you're burning on. This could be a problem with Dell, they like to send you tiny wee drives. But you still don't need a lot of RAM or a big processor.

Thing is though, it's actually quite hard to buy a rubbish PC if you can't build or maintain it yourself... You could go to Cash Generator and get a working PC that'd do email and web stuff, but it'd not be so easy to get it going, and you'd need to add the DVD player etc and maybe a bigger hard drive. And with a decent machine coming in so cheap these days, that might be a false economy.

Originally Posted by timwilky

You are obviously not going to be one of those who justify buying the latest fastest wizz bang computer on the grounds that you wan't to run your trillion dollar company from it and take over the world at the same time.

TBH, you would get away with almost any old "rubbish" as long as it will support some sort of connectivity to the net and a browser. I would suggest you try to talk to a couple of local techy types and you will probably find they have bits in their loft or garage etc suitable for your requirement gathering dust. Certainly if you lived near me I could have provided you for the cost of a pint, a computer sufficient for your bike porn requirements.

Don't forget, having aquired suitable computer, you then need to get internet connectivity, If you are lucky there may be a local cable company running a deal, or sign up for sky etc and get free internet. Otherwise pay as you go dial up is the cheapest toe in the water. Slow but as my step mother is in exactly your shoes. (Very lightweight user) she gets away with using a onetel dialup account and paying by the minute. I gave her a 6 year old ex work dell computer P3 processor, 256Mb ram and a 20GB disc. Nothing special, but works well enough for her to check her bank accounts and email.

That's a fair point you make there, an older PC could do the job as well, if its just occasionly internet/e-mail/bank balance check.

Cheers

Rich