New Computer required

[Barney McGrew]

My machine is getting quite old now and will be looking to replace in January.

Is it still worth building your own or is it worth purchasing a package from say Dell, whos specs look quite good, although no expert.

Alternativley, where would you shop ?

I am also running a P4 chip and they all seem to be Dual Porocessors now, how do they compare in speed, is there a chart somewhere showing how equivelent they are ?

[Curry]

http://www.dell.co.uk

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[Barney McGrew]

Cheers, I expected Dell to come under attack for some reason.

[keri]

Cheers, I expected Dell to come under attack for some reason.

It is bound to come under attack at some point, but unless you are a hard core gamer or a processor crazy person you can't go far wrong with a dell for the money.

[Barney McGrew]

Nope, I dont do gaming at all. I just use it for everyday stuff along with storage of music, video and photos of the kids etc.

Is there anything to avoid ?

[keri]

I don't think there are many computers to avoid on dell, my company buy the cheapest ones on there that are above celeron chips and they all work fine.

With dell it is worth checking the site regularly as their prices fluctuate a fair bit.

i bought a dual core intel with 2Gb RAM vista home premium and a tv card as a media centre a couple of months ago from dell for £500. It even came with a 19" widescreen monitor that i didn't need as it is now connected to a 40" bravia

The model name for that computer is inspiron which i think is the new name for Dimension which is dell's bottom of the range. the middle of the range computers are optiplex and i think the top end ones are called XPS.

In my company we must have at least 30 dimension/inspirons, and about 2 or 3 optiplex machines, only one has ever died in the last 3 years. it was a small form case (half width case) and it had a had disk failure when a numpty kicked it over whilst it was running, dell replaced the HD within 2 days under warrenty and all has been fine since.

[sarahA]

Inspirons are usually the cheapest, but they've been around for several years, at least as laptops. XPS are top of the range home computers where as Latitude are probably the top business laptops (not sure if they do desktops).

For a family computer then inspiron should do you fine as Keri said.

[Barney McGrew]

Looks like Inspiron is the lower range, with Precision being mid and yes, XPS the top range.

We all use Dells at work and they are fireman proof which mean a lot, we too have had very few failures.

Having spent the afternoon researching the processors, it appears that the AMD ones are far better ?

[keri]

Having spent the afternoon researching the processors, it appears that the AMD ones are far better ?

Unfortunately that is down to who you ask, most people prefer AMD or Intel and are never impartial, so depending on their preference they will tell you which is best.

I am an intel person myself, although we have both AMD & Intel machines in work and they all seem to be as good as each other to me.

[rutty]

Intel have upped their game over the last year and the dual-core processors out-stripped the AMD by quite a distance. Not sure how they match up now though.

Unless you're gaming or using something CPU-intensive I don't think you'll see a huge difference for home use.

[Tanthalas]

Intel have (temporarily) taken the lead from AMD in the processor field, having more modern fabrication methods.  They have, however, tried very very hard to be "the first" with things like quad core, etc - to the extent that their early quad core chips are, frankly, crap. 

AMD are often cheaper and (in equivalent fields) somewhat faster.  However, they have also been notorious for running very hot, as my "coffee maker" laptop will attest.  My friend with an AMD laptop certainly agrees.  From what I've seen, the Intel laptops will have better battery life, too, though that is, of course, as much down to what you do with the laptop as it is the machine itself.

[Barney McGrew]

Looking at their HD configurations they have so many options I am not sure which to go for. I have seen one which gives 500GB Hard Drive capacity with DataSafe Local Enhanced Backup solution (2x500). Is this second 50gb HD just a drive that the system will use as a backup place.

I currently have 1 drive which is partitioned, which I do like, so the idea of 2 drives would be even better, although I suspect the above is not what I am after.

However, another option is 640GB (2x320GB) 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive - Dual HDD Config which I presume will be two 320 GB HD I can actually use, as one for my programs etc (C Drive) and the other 320GB as a (D Drive)

If anyone can confirm or clarify, it would be appreciated.

TIA

[keri]

Looking at their HD configurations they have so many options I am not sure which to go for. I have seen one which gives 500GB Hard Drive capacity with DataSafe Local Enhanced Backup solution (2x500). Is this second 50gb HD just a drive that the system will use as a backup place.

That configuration is using mirrored raid, basically all your information is on both drives at all times - one goes pop, you still have all your data, insert new drive and the data gets mirrored from the remaining drive to the new one.

However, another option is 640GB (2x320GB) 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive - Dual HDD Config which I presume will be two 320 GB HD I can actually use, as one for my programs etc (C Drive) and the other 320GB as a (D Drive)

That is striped raid, all your information is written half to one drive and half to the other, this speeds up disk read/writes roughly by half, but if one drive dies you loose everything.

Both configurations will show up as a single C: drive in windows as the raid is controlled either by the motherboard or a controller card plugged into the motherboard

[Barney McGrew]

Typical, I ordered a system with the 2x320 GB drives. Not sure I like the idea of half and half. I like to know where its all stored, physically.

Perhaps I should just change it once it arrives. I presume this could be done, although I guess it would invalidate the warrantly.

[Rosco]

Typical, I ordered a system with the 2x320 GB drives. Not sure I like the idea of half and half. I like to know where its all stored, physically.

Perhaps I should just change it once it arrives. I presume this could be done, although I guess it would invalidate the warrantly.

speak to them, you should be able to change it via software/bios without invalidating your warranty (although this is an assumption, you may have to change a jumper or something), then format both drives and use the recovery discs to reinstall windows etc... I've always found Dell support to be quite friendly and knowledgable, it used ot be in Ireland and now Glasgow, so I've never encountered a foreign callcentre yet (apart from the paddys of course)

[keri]

I've never encountered a foreign callcentre yet (apart from the paddys of course)

I've only once had an Indian callcenter answer the phone to get my details, once they had the company details and the invoice number loaded up they passed me through to Ireland who sorted me out straight away

[Barney McGrew]

Pc Arrived with 2 hard drives set up. Not sure that they were striped or not, but it showed a C and a D drive. To cut a long story short I decided to play clever buggers and do a fresh install to get all the Dell crap off it. In doing so I removed the little bit of drive that restores the PC

After a few hours of working out what I needed to do I installed the Vista CD that came with it along with the bits I needed.

Although I have deleted the partition with the ghosted factory setup on, I have ended up with a fresh install of Vista with 2 x 320gb Hard drives, just as I wanted.

So all in all its worked out well.

Only trouble I had was installing an update from m$, apparently it has trouble installing on systems with 4GB ram. Soon googled a work around, now working fine