PC help please...........what to go for!

[northwind]

Originally Posted by Lissa

Pretty much what we use this one for........storing photo's and info, browsing the internet. We don't have a DVD drive at the moment, that would be a must. I have to admit, maybe just upgrading this one would be a better option. I've just looked at the specs, and apparently it has 80 gig hard drive, an AMD 2000+ processor, and an ASUS motherboard...............all of which means sod all to me How difficult would it be for total numpty's like us to upgrade?

Pretty easy... That's not really enough info to ID the processor, there's an assortment of 2000+ AMDs, but for what you're doing there you really don't need cutting edge, really only video processing and gaming needs a really fast processor if you ask me. If you can find the exact model of the board and processor then you could probably find something faster that'd fit, if you felt the need.

The hard drive's wee, though... Well, for photos and browsing alone it'd be fine, but if you want to do more- music, videos etc- it's probably too small. But that's dead, dead easy to sort really. DVD players are dead cheap.

What does your PC not do at the moment that you want it to do, is the question?

[Lissa]

Doesn't play DVD's, and we've never had sound, bizarre though that may seem. I guess we're just looking for something a bit better, that will last us a few years. We're never going to be pc-literate enough to put any to full use anyway

Originally Posted by Lissa

Doesn't play DVD's, and we've never had sound, bizarre though that may seem. I guess we're just looking for something a bit better, that will last us a few years. We're never going to be pc-literate enough to put any to full use anyway

Its not a sinclair spectrum you,re using is it ?

[Lissa]

Originally Posted by stewie

Its not a sinclair spectrum you,re using is it ?

You know what, it might as well be, for all my capabilities

[northwind]

Nah, they had sound

Weeeell... If it's supposed to have sound, but doesn't, that could be fiddly. If it's just never had sound, less fiddly. You could get a DVD player for under £20, no probs, and a cheap soundblaster card of some sort for much the same... And I suppose, you might need speakers too This stuff is all fairly easy to set up, assuming your PC isn't way older than I think it is. Hard drives are easy enough too but you need to know you're buying the right thing, for which you really need to know exactly what the motherboard is.

But then, there does come a point where there's no point in upgrading, to be honest. I'd watch it though, most of the really cheap PCs scrimp big-style on hard drive space and RAM, a small hard drive's easy to upgrade (just add another) but it's something to budget for. My MP3s take up 80gb, frinstance, that's the entire of the drive that came with my PC

Originally Posted by northwind

What does your PC not do at the moment that you want it to do, is the question?

Best Question in the thread, this one - if you're not experiencing sluggishness when browsing your photos or whatever else you want to do, I wouldn't recommend upgrading the processor (and the motherboard, as it tends to need to be swapped as a pair). RAM (Short term memory) is probably a much more economical upgrade (between £30 and £40) to get more performance if you've got 512Mb or less, and a second HD for storage.

A DVD writer would cost you around £20, and there are options on the sound front - one I found was a plugin piece to let you use hi-fi speakers with your PC for £30. If you want surround sound, you'll have to lay out a bit more cash though - I'd budget about £80-100 for the internal card and speakers.

The other option is to go with one of the dells suggested above. At work, we go with them because of the support (we had a laptop with a dodgy screen, which was taken away and sorted in one business day). Don't know if home support is as good as that, mind. Also, special offers at dell rotate fairly regularly, so if the one currently on doesn't suit you, hang around for a fortnight for the next one.

Hope thats useful to you - finally a subject on here I can speak with some authority on

Originally Posted by orose

Best Question in the thread, this one - if you're not experiencing sluggishness when browsing your photos or whatever else you want to do, I wouldn't recommend upgrading the processor (and the motherboard, as it tends to need to be swapped as a pair). RAM (Short term memory) is probably a much more economical upgrade (between £30 and £40) to get more performance if you've got 512Mb or less, and a second HD for storage.

A DVD writer would cost you around £20, and there are options on the sound front - one I found was a plugin piece to let you use hi-fi speakers with your PC for £30. If you want surround sound, you'll have to lay out a bit more cash though - I'd budget about £80-100 for the internal card and speakers.

The other option is to go with one of the dells suggested above. At work, we go with them because of the support (we had a laptop with a dodgy screen, which was taken away and sorted in one business day). Don't know if home support is as good as that, mind. Also, special offers at dell rotate fairly regularly, so if the one currently on doesn't suit you, hang around for a fortnight for the next one.

Hope thats useful to you - finally a subject on here I can speak with some authority on

Good post mate

I can't really add much as I tend to build my own PC's (Most people have covered the bases). The one thing I will say is make sure you get a decent amount of RAM, with Vista 1GB is ok but I would say 2GB is a nice sum to have. (If you like the eye candy that can go with it).

I have recommended Dells and they are running fine including my grand parents that just use it for a little web browsing, sending e-mailes to family and some web cam talks to family overseas.

Cheers

Rich

the only thing i can say . . .is dont go for dell.

[Luckypants]

I'm a fan of the 'if it ain't broke, leave it alone' school. My home PC is over 6 years old, runs Windows 2000 Pro, 1.5Ghz Pentium 4, 750 Mb (ish) if Ram and 80 GB HDD - does everything I want, fast and reliably. It has two faults I can't seem to fix, despite what my PC guru's recommend, so it may be coming to the end of it's life...... What I'm saying Lissa is that you need to think about why you want to upgrade before junking your current one.

The question has already been asked, what do you want your PC to do that it don't do now?

[Blue Flame]

If you are buying now then get this on Thursday

http://www.aldi.co.uk/special_buys/s...pid_56411.html

Great value and a good package.