Hi tech people. A friend from another forum (www.cskate.co.uk if you're wondering) wants a PC:




Any thoughts?

I tend to source all our work PC's from ebuyer.com. Lately been buying their HP boxes but also look at esys or maxdata.

These are BUSINESS machines and NOT gaming machines though.

On a similar note, a recent corrupt hard drive on my work laptop has made me worried about losing all the purchased (and unpurchased) music that I have on it. Therefore I have decided that I need to get my own PC.

Due to space restrictions in the flat it will have to be a laptop.

What I will be using it for:

Watching video files / listening to music.
Music storage.
Downloading / filesharing etc.
MSN / Skype.
Possibly in future as media centre in conjunction with the HD telly that I don't yet have.
Basic other use (e.g. MS Office etc.)
Surfing the web for porn.

What I will not be using it for:

Gaming.
Hacking.


Reliability is important.

Any suggestions would be welcome along with any advice on what to get in the way of anti-virus etc.

Bo.

Dunno about the laptop but I use Zonealarm which has always worked well for me. I also saw the Yoggie Pico on the gadget show which appears to be a usb device you stick in your laptop and it takes care of all the security, thereby freeing up your cpu to do other stuff. Sounded good to me.

i just got a asus laptop for a councillor at work.

decent spec and comes with a 2yr warranty
laptop link

only £400
seems pretty good on first inspection
2gb ram
200gb hard disk
dvdrw
wifi etc...

That seems pretty reasonable tbh.

As for antiVirus, you could always slap Ubuntu on it instead of windows and not worry about it...

Cheers dudes, laptop looks ideal. Ditto Zonealarm.

Bosh.

i have to say in my experience, zonealarm is the biggest pile of poo i've ever seen...

all i have is the windows firewall behind a NAT router and antivirus...

you'd only need to worry about a proper software firewall if you're using a USB dsl modem directly to your pc... if you're on wireless or using a router, you'd be fine.

just my opinion obviously

ubuntu is quite cool... but if you're already gathered a decent working knowledge of windows xp/vista, then re learning things in ubuntu is a bit annoying, plus compatability of applications/drivers might be a deal breaker.

Okay, perhaps I'll just worry about the anti-virus software once I've got it.

On a vaguely heretical note, I hadn't considered Ubuntu, but I have been seriously thinking about getting a Macbook. I know they are more pricey than the option above, but they are also cool.

GarageBand (not available for Windows as far as I know) interests me a lot.

At the risk of starting an all-out war, what do people think?

I guess my main question is whether all the Music, film and TV shows I have on external drives and my work PC will be compatible with a Mac and also easy to transfer across.

i wouldnt bother with a mac book... they're over priced for what they are, considering you can get a laptop for £200 on ebay and stick ubuntu on it and it'd look just as nice as mac OSX

check this video for comparison fof UI ubuntu vs vista

there is plenty of sequencing/multitrack software for PC tho so if garage band is what you're after, i've been using cakewalk/adobe audition/cubase/fruityloops to do some home recording...

I'm an IBM convert (thanks to Pedro). IBM sold their laptop line to Lenovo who I think still make decent laptops. I bought some more laptops for the office and they were lenovos.

Two things:

1. Make sure you look at the keyboard. If you like your arrow keys - make sure they're as you want them, and not, say, in one straight line. Also if you use page up and page down keys (or home and end) that they are placed reasonably as well.

2. Backup - no computer is reliable. Get yourself an external USB drive for a few bob (like £50-60) and just keep backups. I cannot stress enough how painful it is to lose all your music and photos. Yes it happened to me - 80Gigs worth. Not fun.

Check out:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128465/show_...#specifications

or

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124035/show_...ectype=extended

500GB will do you for a long long time - you could probably use this drive to back up family / Tizzy's stuff too.

Oh and one last thing....

Please don't get a mac.

The quick answer is yes, and it's 99.9% true provided you unf*ck (thats a technical term by the way...) any DRM'd stuff.

As for the war, talking about OSX always brings that! OSX is a pretty good operating system and as far as I can see if as a user you want your computer to:

- Watch Movies, TV, etc
- Play Music
- Browse the web
- use VoIP
- burn a DVD/CD
- maybe use some sort of office suite

~Then your choice of operating system is almost completely irrelevant. Pratically any flavour of Linux, OSX or Windows can do this.

But you'd need a higher spec'd machine to do it in OSX (you don't need a Mac though, my Dell laptop runs OSX10.5 quite happily) or Windows, and if you want it to look pretty in windows then you need excessive specs. But most modern laptops are pretty damn powerful anyways.

I do agree with Ween's point about re-learning an OS, but it doesn't take much more than going, "Oh the start button has a funny icon on it" then clicking it anyway... (for the most part).

Weens spot on about firewalling and anti-virus. I don't bother with AV on my Windows PCs, but I do ensure they are firewalled.

Thanks everyone - I guess the consensus is don't buy a Mac.



Already got about 400Gb of external storage so it's just a case of me being discliplined enough to back everything up regularly I guess.

I'll let you know what I end up with - It won't be for a couple of months at least because I'm a bit strapped for cash at the moment.

So got the new laptop - went for Asus and pleased with it.

Now free from the constraints of my work laptop and KPMG's IT policy I am now fully Skype-d to the max. I'm sure you will be able to find me if you type in my full name.

i thought i'd chip in

File Hippo

as a genius file store for everything you'll ever need. mix of freeware/shareware

its made me move away from using cracks and pirate software

eg nero is 150mb you have the hassle of cracking it, and then the minor niggle about guilt of having pirate software
alternatively, you can use CDBurningXP from file hippo which is about 3mb and is freeware. and its pretty much identical

theres a nice selection of freeware for pretty much anything. plus its a handy place to get AVG (antivirus), windows media player/VLC, at rediculously good speeds.

its my first port of call when i rebuild a pc

I too am on Skype, who can I pester?

Open Office: What's the verdict? Are there any drawbacks in comparison to MS Office?

After two hours of document editing with Open Office Writer I was full of rage. If you have spent any time getting used to the revision and commenting system in MS Word, don't bother switching.

eee pc 901 vs msi wind vs acer aspire one vs hp mininote 2133 vs dell inspiron mini

discuss

I like open office, but that's because I have lamux on my laptop, so its the only version I can use. Also, I don't do anything complex with it at all. It sucks hard on the mac though.

A question from a few teachers I know:

Is there any free PC-friendly movie editing software out there?

If so, what is it called?

Muchas Gracias.

Microsoft Moviemaker?

Noj - you find openoffice useable only because you're used to Lotus. People with normal perspectives find it horrible (and actually quite slow). Rendering graphs in excel took several seconds. In Excel it is instant.