I'm in the market for a new computer and would like some advice from any computer savvy folks on here. I only use it for FHC, YouTube, bill paying, school stuff online class and papers, and my wife wants to start dabbling in photo shop for her photography stuff. were trying to keep it under $500 but at the same time I want to get something good that will last for several years. Oh and I've been told by the missus it has to be an all in one computer.
Compruter? Never heard of em. But seriously, get something with a good processor and a big screen. RAM prices goes down significantly as they age, so you can always upgrade it when they get slow. Same with the harddrive. CD and DVD ROMS are a thing of the past, don't fret too much over them either.
Since you are indicating what appears to be a Microsoft bent the only thing I can say is that given the propensity of bloatware in that world don't expect the machine to last all that long. It seems that the faster they go the further behind they get and the bigger they are the bigger they need to be. What most folks have these days in their cell phones, some of us ran systems for big $$$$ companies on.
Problem is Mac/Apple and under $500 are typically mutually exclusive. My wife has a MacBook and my daughter has an older iMac. Both good machines, the iMac is 6 years old and the MacBook is 3 years old. We got tired of trying to run Windoze apps inside Parallels (wife's business has some Windoze only apps) and bought a cheap Toshiba laptop last fall for $299 at Best Buy. Nothing spectacular, but it works. So much of the hardware is commoditized today that the manufacturer doesn't really matter much. It's more about support and warranty than anything.
I am on a brand new all in one, love it so far. I used to have cpu's on the floor, the heat sinks and fans were always collecting dust and pet hair despite a clean house. (All bets off on clean house now, we still have drywall dust every time I turn around, so I am thrilled its up on the counter and not on the floor anymore, also less cords to run to/from cpu). Do you have children? I recently lost a laptop when the toddler spilled on it, too $$ to repair. If there is a spill on this one, all it will need is an inexpensive keyboard. There are substantial discounts during back to school sales and holiday sales, black friday should start in 3 weeks. Newegg & Tiger Direct as well as big box stores always compete. Good luck!
Yup and a new mac under 500 probably not gonna happen unless you buy a mini. A mini is a good computer we have had ours problem free for the last 3 years and it's fast! With mac hardware specs are different than windows as less is required to operate initially. The real issue with Mac is each operating system uses more power despite what apple claims... That said ours flies with 8gb ram no lag at all. Here is a big secrete lol all of apples computers are made out of the same laptop hardware even the iMac is its all in different configurations with different uses in mind as well as better hardware in some models than others. I am firmly in the Mac camp however if you already use windows and all your files are windows and you don't wanna resetup and convert things buy windows. I have windows because my wife's schooling a few years back and that's it no other reason we have mostly had mac. We run winblows on our Mac mini and it runs as a side by side distro via boot camp with no issues at all but your back to cost. Stick with windows in that price range! If your going for an all In one you will pay more for less in a windows machine. If you spend 500 on a desktop you will get more power for the money. Using photoshop requires a good amount of processing power it isn't a lightweight program. As for where to buy online places like TigerDirect, Newegg or Ebay are great places to get the most bang for the buck if you know what your looking for..... Best buy, Walmart and places like those though good do not give you the best bang for the buck! In your price range your looking at the pentium series processors around 2.3ghz to 3ghz dual core and sub par graphics in an all in one. In windows world you need to buy bigger than you need in terms of power if your going to keep it for a while. Programs in windows tend to become more and more demanding on a computers processor as the computer ages mainly because the programs are made and upgraded for the new generation of computers constantly. In order to keep up with this in the long term you'll need to get into a more powerful system or you will find 2 or 3 years from now it won't run for crap.... In the 500 range on a freestanding desktop you can get into the quad core processor range if not better than that. Quad core allows for things like higher ram allotment and much better delegation of tasks with heavy programs like Adobe Photoshop. You will also find that watching video isn't what it was years ago there is a noticeable difference in video on a quad vs a dual core processor. Basically your processor has 4 sections to delegate tasks to instead of 2 sections. In a quad vs a dual. Matt if I lost you I am sorry lol hopefully this helps. All that suns up to in an all in one you are buying a monitor with a low end PC included for $500 in a freestanding your buying power. Dodge pony vs dodge charger! If you went up to $700 to $800 range on an all in one you'd have a much better computer but you have to pay for it with an all in one. Another thing to keep I mind is cooling with modern computers you want good air flow thy get hot! I'm not trying to crush your dreams at all I'm hoping to explain a little and save you trouble down the road...
Do you want a desktop or a laptop? I'm going to buck the consensus and say that anything you buy now will probably last a long time - especially with your very low demand uses. The old Moore's law 18month rule has slowed down a lot... most of the gains in CPU power now are coming from stuffing in more cores, not from higher clock speed. And you can only take advantage of that if you are running highly multithreaded apps or a lot of intensive programs at once. I used to put together a new PC almost annually and it would be slow as molasses in 18months. Right now I'm gong on over 5 years on the Core i7 quad I bought last and I still cant find anything it wont handle. Of course Ive given up gaming. If its a desktop just get one with a higher end CPU and make sure its expandable to add more ram and replace the video card down the road to be able to keep it current... things that will make much more of a difference in feel for your usage are a fast hard disk (get an SSD if you can) and a quick internet connection.
Also you current PC if it can handle SSD and if it is at least dual cord would run pretty dang good with that upgrade. Keep in mind SSD is between 1 and 2 dollars a gig so not cheap. Solid State is instant or very close memory like a huge sd drive. A hard drive needs to spin up to speed. Your computer would love that!
I got a second gen intel SSD early on.. It was expensive but was the single biggest boost to the perceived speed of my system Ive ever experienced in 30+ years of working with computers. My win7 boots in about 20 seconds from cold and the browser will open in 1-2 sec. 1-2 $ a gig is still cheap compared to what hard disks costs in the 90s.. or 80s You dont need a big one, a good combo is to get a small 50-100G SSD, mount the C drive on that and load windows and your applications on it. Then buy a dirt cheap 7200rpm traditional hard disk of 500Gb-1Tb and use that for all your data.
I went to best buy and bought a close out, but before I even took it home, I had the ram bumped way up. I run two 22 in monitors side by side and attached a Bose sound system. It has more features than I can imagine. I added Microsoft office 13. I don't add many apps and I'm picky about what I save. Ch the system start up menus frequently for start up hitch hikers that like to eat ram. My system is lightning fast. I mostly use my iPad, but for bills, other stuff, I use the desk top. I have a lap top but seldom ever use it.
Before the system I bought this spring I ran a 2.8GHz P4 Prescott with 1GB DDR2 and 160GB of RAID0 hard drive. That system was over 9 years old when I replaced it, however I could no longer run the eye candy windows manager that GNOME turned into the other ones were just fine. That machine never had a Windows variant on it. Meanwhile several of my friends as well as my wife were running Windows machines that were faster than mine in theory but became very slow due to bloatware caused by persistent feature creep in the off the shelf applications they needed to run. The current machine is plenty fast and cost less than the one it replaced. I expect that as soon as someone discovers a way to feature creep their software it also will slow things down. There is a maxim in computing that goes somewhat like this if your system is X in less than a year the software you run will require it to be Y > X at the next release. Now I have 250GB of spinning data on this machine and can easily see that at over 1TB by the time I get some stuff loaded. I use my machine for internet browsing and email along with media streaming (currently my music collection and part of my DVDs) via DLNA. I also got a SmartTV this spring as well. The new machine is much faster than the one it replaced. ETA: I've been playing and working with computers on both the system software and application software side and have seen a lot of water over dam and below the bridge the last 45 years.
I just looked at the recommended memory information on the latest Photoshop release and it is 8GB (minimum is 2 GB). So that is where you need to start as the browsers and such are all less than that.
Can it be upgraded in the memory department if so to what and how much? That photoshop has undergone substantial memory creep to the point they recommend 8GB twice what that machine has in that ad.
Apologize STB, it was a reply to the OP. I am not a computer pro. I have called Tiger Direct in the past, and the customer service guy set me up in no time to upgrade the ram on my old computer. It was a desktop to very easy to put in. I wonder if you can upgrade you current computer? Is it 2GB currently or 2GB max? Newegg also has a ram upgrade wizard that helps you find the right kind.
No need to apologize wildwest, I know you were replying to the OP my question to you was the result of the OP wanting to be able to run Photoshop on the machine at some point and the recommended memory size according to Adobe is 8GB for that application and that all in one is only a 4GB system. As for me, my current machine is 16GB and can be upgraded as it is a desktop and has empty ram slots.
Wow I really appreciate all the replies here I only wish they were in English so I could understand I think Ive got the jist of what yall are saying but maybe not heres a few of the computers were looking at and some questions about each one that yall might be able to answer. Could yall give me a list of things I should ask about when I go back to the store? My biggest concern is that Im going to pay $5-800.00 for this thing and in a couple years it will be a reject. I would like something thats going to last for several years mechanically and be upgradeable in the future to bring it maybe close to whats on the market at that time. This one says its expandable up to 16G that seems sufficient for me and I believe that the I series processors are the better ones offered by intel? http://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-...8448794&st=categoryid$abcat0501005&cp=1&lp=11 These two are almost the same except for some minor differences http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...ments/product/olscompareproductcenterwell.jsp
That second link you provided likely only works for you I see nothing except a BestBuy page with general navigation menus and no products. You need to ask about how is repaired etc and about the cost of memory upgrades (that one I think takes its video memory from the system) and the ability to upgrade the hard drive or add another. The general performance of the I3 line is less than the I5 line which is less than the I7 with some overlap while all these processors are plenty fast compared to their predecessors they pale in comparison to Intel's high end microprocessors. Whether you'd need something faster than a I3 line processor is something I can't speak too. Once again visit the Adobe site and see what Photoshop needs. Video and photographic processing can be demanding. You also need to discuss backup needs. Windows 8.? will require 32GB of backup storage without any applications installed (I may not use Windows but this machine came with a copy installed and I backed it up to a USB stick before wiping the hard drive clean and installing Linux. I also ran Windows to boot Linux as a virtual machine to verify Linux would run on this system)
Thanks I'll try to fix the other link and I'm waiting for my wife to tell me what Photoshop program she wants. We have a terabyte and a couple pretty empty external hard drives (500gb) that we can use for backup or expansion I think. Oh and what is Linux? I'm guessing something similar to windows?
