I need a new one for home cos mine is about 6 years old and a bit shit. Been looking about and gonna cost about £650 to get one which has quad core processor, 4gb ram and 1gb dedicated graphics. For a bit of web browsing, email and downloading HD film from my video camera (not dirty stuff, it's of my little boy before anybody gets disgusting) do I need all the above stuff or am I better off paying about £450 for a dual core processor, 3gb ram, 256mb graphics?

Will buying the first lot of spec above mean that I'm less likely to have to change it sooner to keep up with technology or will I still get about 5 years out of the lower type spec that I mentioned?

Any sensible help appreciated, to make it easier for the "don't know, sorry" kind of answers there's a poll at the top which you can quickly click on to save you typing.

Ta.

For what you want to do the first one is a touch of overkill, the second will do the job perfectly well. That said, its bordering on obsolete now whereas the higher spec machine will not be obsolete for ooh, about a week.

In short; both will do the job but the first one will do it quicker and last longer before you have to upgrade it. Personally I'd buy the latter.

That said, unless theres a good monitor included £650 sounds a bit expensive for that.

are you willing to build your own?

do you need one that is upgradeable?

The £650 includes some package that gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.

Getting it out of the box and putting the wires in the right place will keep me busy enough. I wouldn't know where to start by building one!

Upgradeable in what sense? The one I'm on now was the dog's tail when I got it, I deliberately got 256mb ram instead of the 128mb which was the norm at the time. About two years ago I got that increased to 1gb which was as much as they said they could do apparently to do with slots and space and stuff. Is that what you mean?

yeah thats what i mean, typically its easier to upgrade custom built ones, and cheaper too.

there are some good custom built pc companies that tend to give you more for your money.

dinopc
mesh
pcspecialist

all build good spec PCs for better prices than you PC world etc.

i have just ordered all of the stuff to build my own (1st time i have tried, gulp!) and i have got it all for around £520.

thats a quad core, 4gb ram, 500gb harddrive, 1gb graphics, built in wireless, tv tuner, etc etc etc

Buy relatively cheap, treat it as a commodity and replace it every 2 to 3 years or so or as necessary.

If you look after it it may last 5 years, so option 2 for me.

Get one of the young uns on here to knock you a PC together....

I've just build one for my nephew, not has high spec as yours but good enough for fillums and music and web browsing
He already has a monitor and I used the existing memory and DVD player, but it cost me less then a ton for the case, motherboard, processor and fan


Or go down the route Mr B suggested and get one of the companies he listed to build one

Have you turned it off and turned it on again??

I've never seen so much sense talked about computers on this board.

Mr Ripper - in the short term I agree MESH is a good company. I would also recommend Staples and Tesco on-line. NEVER go to PC World or Curries - unless you like widing their "experts" up, which I do

For the future buy a dummies book on how to build computers and buy an old system to mess about with. Go on a City and Guilds course at Stockton and Billingham Tech to make it "official". Don't bl00dy bother with Hartlepool FE. This is the route I took 15 years ago - now I design and build data centres - my other half still tells people I mess about with computers

Why did I take computing this far - because I was once charged £10 by someone to teach me how to format a floppy disk - hangs head in shame. I still consider IT as a hobby

I think he just wants to buy one Lord Seaton.

what his lordship said except about the it course

Y'wha...

£650 is alot of money for a computer of this spec which you will NOT use the full potential, a dual core and 2 meg of ram would be suffice for what your needing it to do, althougnh if you have the money why not splash out on a little extra

just seen the pc world advert for 1tb computer + monitor for £399

Yeah no problem. Only trying to help

Are the horses compliant?

i might just do the college thing. always fancied building computers n stuff....might turn it into a little business

You'll have to find a different college though, Stockton and Biilingham Tech sites have been knocked down, and had houses built on them since Lord Seaton did his course.

i'm sure they will do it at Stockton Riverside or summat

Stockton Riverside College is on Teesdale in Stockton near to the Dunham Uni campus over there. The SRC has purpose built computer lab's and such. They still do the C&G Courses but also run Microsoft courses. HTH's

BTW I'm not on commission

just never mastered the spellcheck

Oh aye. They always are when you marinade them in rice wine and coriander.

Righty-ho, thank you for all of the sensible answers, although some of this going on line and specifying what you want to be in your machine seems a bit scary like. I think I just need to go and get one off the shelf somewhere like PC World or Comet (although points raised about these places are also duly noted).

Gonna sack off getting the bells and whistles machine after reading the advice, go for commodity and get what I need now and accept I might need to change it in a couple of years.

One more question though, reading the requirements for the video camera it says "Intel Pentium III 800MHz or above"- is this the processor that the compooter needs to have and if so what does it mean?

that will be the minimum specs,most new computers including laptops are way faster than that,if you already have a computer you will already have a monitor have you thought about just getting a new tower and if you can wait aldi usually do a great deal on them,you usually get loads of software included and also a 3 year warranty

any new tower will have a minimum of 2500 mhz processor so that wont be an issue and not something you need to consider.
if you want to transfer your videos via the firewire cable you will need to ensure the tower has that capability or you can simply insert your memory card direct into the tower as most now have card readers built in

I taught Mr No6Bus everything he knows

right aldi are doing a canny desktop,2.5 ghz,4gb ram,1tb hd,nvidia g210 512mb graphics,for £350 instore 7 jan

I've just purchased a Packard Bell laptop, 4GB ram, pentium dual core processor, screen about 16 or 17 inches and apparently plenty of other top end type of stuff that I don't understand. £325 from PC World. Seems like a canny buy.

So you went for the obsolete option after all then?

Well, good luck, Mr R. The only thing I ever remember about computers is ' avoid PC World'.

not necessarily the case nowadays some good prices in there. my compaq (in reality a hewlett packard) with 22 in widescreen monitor came from there at a good price and good spec and free windows 7

Top tip for windows 7 when installing a dodgy copy of said operating system.

Instead of downloading dodgy serial numbers simply pop into PC World with your trusty pencil and copy an unused serial from a stickers secreted about their range of display models.

I suppose that's what happens with bad publicity...the company sometimes gets its act together
as a result. Which is also why Which reports are often quickly out of date.

or you could simply install the trial version, then boot the operating system into safe mode and use the crack to stop the countdown

it will come as no surprise to any of you's, but i didn't understand a single word ofthis thread - apart from the's and stockton and easy words.....all the rest is just a noise

Was the third option added for my benefit?

Because?

the inferal being that pc world sell the end of line pc's laptops that are out of date when you buy them