Help With buying a new PC

[sparky]

At the beginning of the year a fairly basic system from Mesh was better deal than a Dell - and an Asus rather than custom Dell motherboard.

If you can still get one with XP or XP Pro better than Vista.

1GB memory normal now and at least 250GB hard drive.

Worth paying a little more for Intel processor, may not be quite as fast but more reliable and less likely to be upset by some software.

[The Last Word]

sparky wrote:

> 1GB memory normal now and at least 250GB hard drive.

I've noticed a lot of the high street retailers offering their pcs with large hard drives as a selling point, when process power is much more important.

I imagine for a lot of people that memory space will either remain largely empty or it'll encourage them to house things they'd be better off sending to an external drive. Getting into the habit of keeping all important stuff external is the still the best (and most simple) advice I've been given.

[crofter]

RE The Vista hate thing - people don't like change, they prefer to get into a routine which they feel comfortable with - hence wanting to stick with XP .... but you can guarantee all those Vista Haters were probably XP Haters as well at the beginning, gotta move with the time. I like learning new technology as in my job it is something you gotta get used to. Vista SP1 beta is now out and the full Service Pack should be along soon. Ok it is a resource hog but it is far better and safer than XP that is for sure. Put it this way if you were to hand a novice a PC containing XP and one containing Vista I am pretty sure nobody would pick the XP computer to use.

Dell are pretty shite it has to be said, ok the machine might be pretty nice to look at and pretty reliable but the minute you want to upgrade and add things onto the machine your hands are pretty much tied with their stupid basterdised components, and as for overclocking etc. - forget it. Best to build your own that way you know how cheap/expensive/good/shite all the components are.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]but you can guarantee all those Vista Haters were probably XP Haters as well at the beginning[/quote]

Nah....had Win98SE before XP. WinME was shit, and so was Win 2000 if you wanted to play games. XP was the business and it showed in sales. Vista is shit; I know it, business knows it, the PC stores know it, and Microsoft know it because they're hoping to bring another OS out sharpish as no one wants Vista like they did XP.

18 months after the launch of XP, it outsold/outused W2000, and the various Win98's(that includes WME) put together at taking up nearly half the market. Nearly 12 months after the launch of Vista and not even 7% of people have made the switch. Out of the 6% that do have Vista, I'd guess half of those are 'point and clickers' and first time buyers who just buy what the guy in the shop tells them. The other half will be tech savvy nerds who just bought it to see what it's like, and then went back to XP sharpish, wishing they'd spent their money on a new pair of jeans and a decent shirt.

I'd rather go 100% mac -and that's scary enough- than have Vista.

[Deuce Bigolo]

XP was winner because it combined the power of a business computer with the flexibility of the home for a reasonable price

I used win98se for eons with more blue screens of death .
Haven't had one on XP as yet which says something

I think if Microsoft and computer stores were honest when selling vista they'd get a lot more customers.

Running vista basic on 256/512 ram which many in OZ are trying to do is a bloody insult

Independent sources tell us you need a minimumof 1 GB of RAM to crawl and 2GB s for reasonable performance

Personally I think the only thing that will save vista is the otpion of dual booting...smart cookies will opt for linux as the other o/s as its the future IMHO

[Sam Slater]

I seriously think Microsoft will need a mother of a service pack to get most people switching.

If Vienna looks like it will be ready for 2009 then most will stay with XP another 18 months or so. I know I will.

[fudgeflaps]

How would i safely change from vista to xp on my new laptop?

Sounds like an IT nightmare.

[Sam Slater]

If you have a full copy of XP then I'm sure you could do a clean install Fudgey. Vista doesn't install anything before the boot sequence does it?

Doing it will void any warranties on the laptop though.

[Deuce Bigolo]

I won't be entering the fray till I've read the dummies guide to vista front to back plus finding all out about ubuntu for linux

By 2009 the hardware will have moved on again and it will be time for another upgrade if you really need it

These statements just about sums it up

If you have a PC running XP and it works well enough for what you need,
leave it alone

Final stmt

You probably will be more productive with Vista if your machine(especially the graphics card) can handle the load

[Deuce Bigolo]

The dummies guide says clean install

I'd be googling your laptops make & manufacturer to see if there are any known problems

As a certain posters recent experience of upgrading over the top of XP showed unistalling & going back to XP is a job for a techy and not a novice

Plenty of stuff written about it...google it