| Author | Message | ||
     Prior |
There are folks here who know a lot more about these things than me. My 7 year old laptop has been on it's last legs for the past few years and my recent addition of Lightroom and many gigs of DSLR photos has brought it to it's knees, so I am in need of a replacement. Any recommendations for an inexpensive desktop that can fit the bill for storing/processing photos, doing some media stuff (streaming Nexflix to the 'tube), general surfing etc? | ||
| Court |
Vostro from Dell with Windows 7 Pro. Cheap Easy Works | ||
| Josh_ |
How are you processing photos? Photoshop CS5 Extended with lots of plugins? Or MS Paint?  Surfing and watching Internet videos can be easily handled by any $400 PC at Best Buy (plus monitor). Adding in a specialty application like Photoshop and you might want a faster CPU, faster hard drives, better graphics and a nice monitor. Some options: Nice system $750, no monitor http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/2 57448 Nice system, nice monitor $930 http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/2 57298 Just-the-basics-surf-the-web $269 http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/2 57171 The trade-offs are features/performance for $$. | ||
| Drkside79 |
If you have some patience build your own. It's not hard that hard to do. It's kind of like an expensive jigsaw puzzle that doesn't like static electricity. In all honesty its your best bang for your buck. I paid 550 for a comp that would have cost over a G to buy in a store. | ||
| Froggy |
These days they are all basically the same, there aren't really any brands to avoid (except Sony). The more you spend, the better equipped the computer will be. If you are just doing basic photography, web surfing, and netflix, any computer on the market would suffice. You will probably want one with HDMI output if you plan on hooking up to a TV. | ||
| Blake |
What is the benefit of the "Pro" version of a Windows OS? I've heard it is mainly for corporate networking setup (ease of administration by corporate IT); is that accurate? | ||
| Froggy |
The biggest difference between home and pro is the domain support. You can't put home edition on a domain. That is irrelevant in most home environments, but pro does add a bunch of little features like being able to backup to networks, greater memory support, Windows Media Center and some other things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions#Co mparison_chart You can buy Win7 Pro at many college bookstores for around $20, so its worth getting over Home in my opinion. | ||
| Josh_ |
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/produc ts/compare?t1=tab05 XP Mode (run a XP Virtual machine) Join a domain backup to a network using the built-in utility | ||
| Josh_ |
I build my own, but if you have to ask "should I build my own" the answer is "no" CPU: Intel i7 950 3.06 Ghz Quad-core CPU with hyperthreading, stock cooler Overclocked to 3.8Ghz MB: Asus Rampage III Formula RAM: 6x Corsair 2GB DDR3 1600 XMS3 (12GB total) GPU: EVGA GTX470 1.2GB RAM HD: (2) WD Black 500GB RAID 1 C: / (2) Samsung 400GB Spinpoint RAID 1 E:, (1) Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB / (1) Seagate Green 2TB in external eSATA dock Optical: Samsung 22x SuperMulti Lightscribe Case:Antec 900 w/ (3) 120mm and (1) 200mm fans PS: XFX 650 XXX modular PSU Monitor: Two Dell U2211H 21" IPS monitors zoom zoom | ||
| Phelan |
I know a guy here in town that refurbishes Macs and sells them dirt cheap. New enough to run Snow Leopard (And probably Lion when it releases next monto). We got one to run Pro Presenter (among other things) @the Church for like $200 (this particular one had a bad optical drive though- most of them run $275-up). | ||
| Crusty |
Well, my computer literacy level isn't quite up to "Hooked On Phonics". I think I'll take Court's suggestion when it's time to upgrade. That won't be for a while yet, though; this computer's only nine years old. You might think I'm joking, but I'm telling the truth | ||
| Scooter808484 |
Vostro from Dell with Windows 7 Pro. Cheap Easy Works Cheap, maybe.... I would never say that anything with Windows is easy, or, especially, works. Once you go Mac you'll never go back!! | ||
| Froggy |
Scooter obviously hasn't used Windows in the last 15 years  Without turning this into a mac vs pc thread, Win7 is fantastic. Fast, stable, and the best part is, everything works. It is like a Mac now, except you don't need to worry if your hardware is Mac compatible. When I installed Windows 7 on my computer, it picked up and installed all the drivers on the first try before I even made it into Windows. It really is an amazing OS, it makes me wonder why anyone would use anything else for home use. Crusty, you are going to have to upgrade soon. Even web browsing is starting to get more computer intensive as sites are getting heavy on content like Flash and HTML5. Badweb is one of the last refuges of the dial up friendly days. | ||
| Greg_e |
I block flash and when I run into a lot of HTML5 content, I'll find a way to block it too. | ||
| Josh_ |
I'll go back to OS/2 before I'll use a Mac again. | ||
| Drkside79 |
Froggy i concur that windows 7 is great. Especially in comparison to that lump of crap Vista. However for don't discount macs. They are pricy but are fantastic if used properly. | ||
| Crusty |
Crusty, you are going to have to upgrade soon. Even web browsing is starting to get more computer intensive as sites are getting heavy on content like Flash and HTML5. Badweb is one of the last refuges of the dial up friendly days. I don't deny that you're right; however, every time I get a couple of bucks ahead, Something comes up that the bikes need, and that's where the money goes. One of these days... | ||
| Sl33py |
Froggy has it as usual. Vostro is a great little system. cheap and works. Win 7 vs Mac - both are great. Pick one. I run both on several systems. Equal opportunity geek... (PC on Mac, Mac on PC ). I love the new driver support in Win 7 - grab any old laptop or desktop and for what it doesn't have a driver it finds one online easy peasy! And since Josh tossed down the gauntlet... My in process build: Mountain Mods extended Ascension EVGA Classified SR-2 w/ EK chipset Waterblock Xeon x5680 (hexa core) - have one of two w/ EK Supreme Waterblocks 48GB DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance (can only use 24GB until get second x5680) OCZ Revo x2 480GB Sata Blu-ray burner (nothing special 10'ish speed) Radeon HD5970 (x2) Corsair AX1200 PSU - one now w/ a spot for a second in MM case. CoolIT systems Boreas chiller and Tygon 1/2" tubing. Res, yata yata yata. Dual top redundant w/ 2 D5 pumps. So... A Vostro would be simpler, but just about anyone can build a decent system nowadays. Get your parts from Newegg and you're off to the races. The nice thing is if you get a decent case, PSU, HDD, and Optical Drive - every couple years you can get a Motherboard/CPU/Ram and be pretty much a new system. SSD in a little while for better performance... etc. etc. You are welcome to PM me and we can chat sometime about what you'd like to build on what budget. Happy to make suggestions. | ||
| Froggy |
I guess I'm gonna have to up the ante, my only claim to fame these days is my eight 2TB drives in Raid 5, and it is close to full.  My rig ain't anything special anymore, perhaps this fall I'll overhaul it, for now its a Core2 quad overclocked a bit, 8gb ddr2, Radeon 6870, all on a piece of crap gigabyte board. | ||
| Greg_e |
If the budget gets approved I'll be installing a 64TB system at work. Not sure of any specs other than some form of Linux OS with iSCSI support. As far as a new computer, sale prices at BestBuy, Staples, etc have some really good machines for low prices, hard to beat if you need a laptop. A desktop I would build from parts but make sure you buy enough to qualify as a new system so that you can get the discounted price on the OS, cuts the OS in half. | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
two words: iPad pc's are for old people. | ||
| Swordsman |
DAMN Froggy, that's a LOT of porn. ~SM | ||
| Josh_ |
I have a couple of NetApp 6280s at work. 1440 hard drives. 8TB of cache. works for us Re:5680s at home I do have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 with dual 5410s but only 32GB of RAM. It runs vSphere 5, several Windows servers incl Exchange 2010... | ||
| Drfudd |
there is another option, a ChromeBook, inexpensive, fast and simple, i've been using a CR-48 for a month now and have barely touched my full fledge laptop. if you do a lot of photoediting you'll be amazed how much web based stuff is out there and picasa is great, you can just about find any webapp out there that will replace nearly every piece of software you will use on a daily basis. it does take some adjustment living in the cloud, the biggest adjustment is spending the time searching through the various web apps for ones that you like and can do what you need them to do. Other than that, take some time to think about it, how much time do I really spend on the web? you'll be surprised how high it is. oh, google and netflix has promised netflix streaming on ChromeOS, still waiting for it to be delivered. | ||
| Josh_ |
Oh,and I have an iPad 2. Since it I can run the VMware View client to get a work desktop and VPN and RDP to access my home system, it will work for now, but the limitations are crippling. | ||
| Scooter808484 |
Scooter obviously hasn't used Windows in the last 15 years Forced to use it every single solitary hateful working day. To be fair, that's primarily XP, but that has caused me so much pain over the last 30 years, that when I started looking for a laptop for my wife it made me physically ill to actually look at Dells. | ||
| Prior |
The Vostro looks intriguing- found a few with decent specs for a decent price. I don't necessarily need the fastest thing in the world, just a decent upgrade from what I've got now. I'd build one, but lack of time and lack of patience (as a result of a lack of free time) means that's not going to work out so well... I do plenty of work with instrumentation, computers, engineering software etc. but know just enough to get my job done well. Hell, I finally bought a smart phone this week! | ||
| Phelan |
I thought about building a hackintosh for fun, but I don't know how hard it would be to convert it to Lion when it comes out. Right now I don't even own a comp. I'll probably just buy one of the Macs I mentioned above. Really all I need a comp for is for jailbreaking stuff and iTunes. With updates and everything going to the cloud soon I don't even need a comp for updates anymore. I'm always on my iPhone. I want an iPad or iPad 2 to put movies on to watch while I'm on the treadmill at the gym. With my bad eyes it's not too fun on an iPhone, even with retina display. | ||
| Danger_dave |
I've been running an iPad2 for a couple of weeks. Fantastic thing, but I wouldn't use it as a desktop replacement. Particularly with photo management in the brief. Great ancillary device around the home and office-on-the-road though. | ||
| Scooter808484 |
<< Still doesn't have smartphone. It might have Windows (or Office) on it. |
