Impending Computer Purchase - ARGH! HELP!

[daughter of pearl]

So I have been reading the flyer and buyers guides, etc. to research my next, unavoidable computer purchase.

I know I want a desk top. I know I want 4GB hard drive and 500 thingies of memory...

Thingies...uh-oh...

I keep reading this stuff, and realizing more and more, that if it said "plug this in and unicorns will come flying out the screen, bringing you an endless supply of rainbow coloured cupcakes", I would believe it.

I KNOW NOTHING!!!!

I am trying to make a smart decision but it is like comparing apples and...vaccumm cleaners! I don't even know what I'm really looking at.

Any advice from some tech-savvy FV-ers would be greatly appreciated. All I want is internet acccess, basic officey stuff, and to watch movies, run Itunes, have it talk to my phone and camera...blah, blah, blah...

[Russ]

This is a job for Linus.

[Sonnenwende]

Hehe,

thingies

A computer with a 4Gb hard drive may live up to 1997 expectations. Even if you say you want nothing more then a fancy typewriter, your computer should be fast enough for a currently supported operating system like Win XP, Vista, or 7 (assuming you want to use Windows).

My recommended specifications:
(feel free to object, people get religious about it all the time )

-Memory/RAM: min: 512MB
-Processor: min: Pentium 4 2GHz or AMD with 1.6GHz
-Hard drive: min. 40GB

-Personally I would try to avoid custom built machines, not knowing anything about what components are good, bad, cheap or expensive.
- Try to get a decent Dell, HP, IBM package (I would avoid eMachines)

With an older CRT monitors this should be available for $80-$120.
With an LCD display probably around $150.

Here is an example from Craigslist

[nancycg56]

I am FAR from an expert so you can just ignore me but when I am looking to buy a new computer, I buy the most RAM, biggest hard drive, and at least a 3 GHz processor that I can afford.

I won't buy a Dell because I know too many people who have had problems with them. My desktop is a HP and my laptop is a Toshiba and I've been very happy with both

[nodmicks]

Any chance you can settle for the netbook until closer to back to school sales? We got a new one last year when those were going on. Add the sales and the rebates and it was a big price reduction from before the back to school sales. I was real;ky happy a client recommended I wait when I was saying we were going to go buy a new one.

[frugalwarrior2]

My DH is a computer savant but I am NOT. However, when I buy anything I ask myself FIRST. What do I want It to DO. Like-will it run a business in the future,play kids games,go to sites like FV,do home acct.

EX. My DD wanted a drawing tablet on hers so we got her a swivel screen. Cool feature but not one I'd need.
I have to also ask-why a desktop?? I wish I had a laptop to hide away or take to the park or outside to do bills in the sun.
I just finally graduated to a flat screen.lol

[daughter of pearl]

Desk top versus laptop because I already have a netbook, which is what I use to travel or sit on the patio, etc.

[Sonnenwende]

The use has been specified in the first post:

All I want is internet acccess, basic officey stuff, and to watch movies, run Itunes, have it talk to my phone and camera...blah, blah, blah...

Btw.: I am Sonnenwende's (tech savvy) husband.

I very much agree with nancycg56!
And say,D.o.P. what is your budget?
I assumed the smallest budget possible to buy a (desktop) computer that (in my opinion) fulfills the minimum requirements.

Experiences with manufacturers like Dell of course vary. Every company has a few lemons in storage. On average I find nothing more / less wrong with them. Overall I find name brand machines more predictable then a custom built one (unless you are in a position to judge such a computer).
(...) There are too many pros & cons. Just like buying used cars (beaters), if your are not satisfied with the current status of "it runs & drives" got to a dealer and buy a used or new one on sale with warranty - and pay extra.

Get a tech savvy friend, relative etc. and skim through Craigslist, Ebay etc. is my best guess.

Laptops: Especially a Netbook may provide limited productivity.
The screen resolution on many is not the greatest, the keyboard quite small. At least the non dual-core Atom processors are slow(!) when it comes to some tasks.

( I really like my wife's HP NC4010 subnotebook - and Ebay has those for around $120 )

PS: If anyone lives in the Indianapolis area, I can probably help in person, hehe.

[Sonnenwende]

Oups.. the posts overlapped a bit.

[mndtrp]

If you want to store your media on the computer, for using with itunes, you'll want to just go right to at least a 300 gig hard drive. I would also get at least 1 gig of RAM.

HP has been pretty decent with me. Their customer service is a joke, but I imagine most are.

It would help to know how much you want to spend.

[spot]

So I have been reading the flyer and buyers guides, etc. to research my next, unavoidable computer purchase.

I know I want a desk top. I know I want 4GB hard drive and 500 thingies of memory...

The essential information is: "All I want is internet acccess, basic officey stuff, and to watch movies, run Itunes, have it talk to my phone and camera..."

We can set out a list of what each of those needs.

The units you're using are "bytes". One or two bytes are a letter or a number. A million bytes are a John Gresham novel, that's called a Megabyte and written 1MB. A thousand of those is a movie, that's called a Gigabyte and written 1GB. A thousand movies is about the biggest disk (called a hard drive) you can buy, that's called a Terabyte and written 1TB.

An image from a camera uses between 1 and 10 MB. If you think you might build a library of a thousand photos that's going to use, perhaps, 4GB. All of those can be written for safety to a writable DVD for fifty cents every month or two. If you don't write them off the computer into a drawer in a relative's house then one day you'll lose all of your photos. Computers die all the while and they often lose their disk in the process.

Ten stored CDs of music on the hard drive take up 1GB, whether you've saved your own collection for convenience or bought them from iTunes. How many CDs do you own that you'd like to make a safe copy of? A hundred CDs? That would take 10GB, and you'd again need to take a monthly copy onto three DVDs because a DVD only holds 4GB at the most. If you want space for 500 CDs then that would be 50GB and at that stage your DVD backup is starting to get unwieldy, you'd need to rethink how you're keeping a copy of your important files.

If you take your own home movies, they can go onto the computer for editing and titling. How much space that takes up depends on the movie camera you use. 2GB might store an hour's filming.

Every computer capable of doing those functions can do the Internet and the Office stuff as well without extra charge, including computer phone programs like Skype or video phone like MSN or Yahoo Instant Messenger. They don't add to the size you need to buy and you don't need to pay for the software, there are free packages which work perfectly well.

Add up all the size you need to store on your disk over the next four years - that's a reasonable lifetime for a computer before passing it on to someone else. Then add 20GB for the computer itself to use. That'll give you your minimum size. Given that all new disks cost between $50 and $150 it's hard to justify trimming the cost and buying a smaller one, you'll get a lot of use out of whatever you buy.

Then you need to decide what Operating System you're most comfortable with. Do you know a lot about Microsoft products already? If you do then that's an investment you might not want to throw away. If you know nothing about anything you might do better to put a Live DVD of something like Linux Mint into a friend's desktop and decide whether you'd like to learn that instead. Either way there's a learning curve involved in playing with music, photos and video editing on any computer.

Assuming you're buying a new computer, Microsoft Windows 7 is an attractive operating system. Buy it on a computer with 2GB+ of memory.

If you're buying a used computer, make sure you get the instructions on how to set it back into the factory default condition and that it's claimed to be working perfectly. If it has Microsoft Windows Vista it needs 2GB+ of memory to feel fast, if it has Microsoft Windows XP it needs 1GB+ of memory to feel fast. If it has something older, don't buy it. If you want to try one of the Linux Operating Systems, that needs 1GB+ of memory too.

The speed of the processor is practically irrelevant. Computers run slowly either because they have junk downloaded onto them or they have too little memory installed, not because they have a slow processor. I'd be reluctant to buy a computer slower than 2GHz if it only had one processor, to do what you're looking to do.

Ask in this thread if there's anything meaningless in this, there's plenty of people better able to explain than I am.

[shoiji]

I know how you feel about not knowing what you need in a computer purchase. I went to best buy and just spoke with one of the computer people there at the store. I went on a day to just ask information with no intention of buying. That way I could think about what the person said.

Ended up buying during the August/September sales time period for computers. Was able to get a good package deal that included a printer/scanner/copier. Still haven't tried to scan anything. And my computer has a whole bunch of options on it that I haven't even tried out yet. In August the computer will be two years old.

Good luck, and hopefully you will find some good information.

[spot]

I'll add a thought, if I may.

Taking copies of whatever you've put onto the computer that's irreplaceable - your own photos, stuff you've written, your home videos, that sort of thing - really does matter. I suggested that the DVD writer would be adequate but quite likely you'd do well to at least look up "external hard drive", probably with a USB2 connector, and see whether you can fit that into your budget even at the expense of a slightly lower specification desktop.

It would allow you to easily move files back and forth between your desktop and any laptops in your family. It provides a fail-safe fallback in the event of any of the computers dying suddenly. I know people often skate on thin ice and never take backups but it's a route to disaster in the long term.

[MomToTwoBoys]

I have a few words of advice:

Never, ever get a computer that's been used by someone else. You don't know what they could have done to it in the time that they had it.

Next, you're going to want a machine that'll run at least Windows Vista or even Windows 7. There are machines out there with XP on them, but XP is being phased out. If you want the machine to run a while and be viable, get one with Vista on it.

You're going to want something that can support your OS and anything you're doing (meaning that you want it to be able to run Windows, your video player, upload photographs, etc without "bottlenecking" or being bogged down). A minimum of 2G of DDR2 RAM is a must but with DDR3 being widely available nowadays, RAM costs about $35 per 1G stick of DDR2. Make sure that the motherboard has the capacity to hold at least 4G of RAM.

If you want it to do the basic stuff, you can get a laptop. Make sure that the laptop has more than one USB hub.

Here are some recommendations:

Notebook - HP Mini 210-10101CA PC ($329.99)
Desktop - HP Pavilion p6300z ($299.99)

My PC cost about $1399 but it's also adapted to handle my gaming needs. Either one of the HPs that I recommended are pretty good, especially if you're doing basic items.

[monkeywrangler71]

I know I want 4GB hard drive and 500 thingies of memory...

I think you probably meant that the other way around. 4GB memory, 500GB hard drive.