Posted on 04/15/2002 6:21:31 AM PDT by American Dreamer
OK, all of you out there in internet land...
The wife and I need to buy a new computer. Rather than let the boys down at Circuit City and/or Best Buy push the most expensive one onto us (with a lot of bells and whistles we don't need), I thought I'd see what my fellow Freepers recommend. We are looking for one that will not break our bank or be outdated next month.
OUR NEEDS: We use our current system for surfing the web, creating documents, and the rest of the "basics". With the new system we will be doing a lot of digital photography, and possibly a home-based business. A DVD player is a desired option, along with a CD-burner. We don't do a whole lot of gaming or graphic-intensive stuff, but it would be nice to know we could if we wanted.
So, what do you folks recommend? Most important, what should we stay away from? Words like Celeron and Pentium mean nothing to me (yeah, it's a wonder I can even turn one of these beasts on!) Anyone know of any "deals" out there?
Another question, I have three hard drives on two different computers, I'd like to use all three with a new set up. I've been told that I can't just install them in a new computer, the new system won't be able to read where the files are. Whaddayasay?
Work PC is a Dell and it is not bad.
Dave in Eugene
You made this up. Unless you are using NTFS on one and the OS on the new machine isn't NT/2000
Why not? I can't see why the new machine wouldn't be able to read any or all of them, unless you have them formatted in a way that the OS on the new machine doesn't understand - e.g., NTFS drives on a WinME machine.
Unless you mean you want to just stick the drives in the new machine, and boot them and run the software that's already on them. That's a dicey proposition, at best.
My first piece of advice is not to buy directly from a retailer. Look for a computer show/sale in your area and go there, you'll save at least 10% and quite possibly much more.
I bought a returned Compaq machine with ME installed a few months ago. Many of applications, including applications that were bundled with the PC, would not run (some examples: Roxio CD Creator, MGI VideoWave and several others).
After trying many things, in frustration I finally went out and bought the Windows XP upgrade - It cleared up all my problems, it boots faster, and I have almost no system crashes anymore.
Unless you are prepared to endure the hassles of Linux, then I would upgrade to XP. Windows Me is a lousy OS which, IMHO, is more problem-prone than the Windows 98 OS it replaced.
Personally, I build my own. ASUS A7V 266 with AMD Athalon 1.8Ghz processors and at least 500MB of RAM.
My advice has always been; to buy the most computer you can. The reason? While you say your needs are fairly simple today, tomorrow they may not be. And Moore's law being what it is; software will continue to bloat to keep up with processor capabilities. So buying the most top of the line system you can afford now, will maximize your investment.
If your considering a DVD and CD-Rom burnner, you might want to consider a highspeed DVD reader (reads audio and data CD's too), and a DVD Writer, which also burns CD-ROMS as well.
From HP's website: First External Drive and New DVD+R Write-once Feature Make Home Video Editing a Snap. HP DVD drives
PALO ALTO, Calif., March 11, 2002 -- Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP) today announced it will ship its latest super combination DVD writers, which allow customers to create and share custom CDs and DVDs using video, digital images, music and data.
The HP DVD Writer dvd200i, a powerful internal drive, and the HP DVD Writer dvd200e, HP's first external DVD writer, include features making them very easy for consumers to use and enabling the creation of DVDs by notebook PC owners.
To support the variety of ways consumers use DVD writers, these new drives can write to several different media formats, including DVD+RW/+R and CD-R/RW. And, with the industry's fastest write speeds, the HP DVD Writer 200 series burns those discs quickly --allowing consumers to write three hours of video to a DVD in less than 30 minutes. (3) The drives offer speeds of 2.4x (write), 2.4x (rewrite) and 8x (read). In addition, CD recording is simple and fast with 12x CD-R (write), 10x CD-RW (rewrite) and 32x CD (read) speeds.
Furthermore, the HP DVD Writer dvd200e drive allows customers to choose a connection type -- either IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 -- with the flip of a switch, making it easy to install and share the drive on a desktop or notebook PC.
I don't own any Dell's, but we do use them at work and several people have them at home, and seem to be pleased with them. I don't buy them because I can't get Linux on them and Refuse to buy XP which I won't use and end up taking off the system anyway.
Whatever you decide; get the most you can today.
Its doable if you clear the Registry (assuming Windoze) of hardware info under HKEY LOCAL MACHINE ENUM.
Clear everything under ENUM before removing the HD from the old system. Place HD in new system and start up. Windoze should detect the new hardware and install drivers accoringly.
Note: The above works for 9x. For W2K the process changes. Basically you'd have to boot from the W2K CD and do a "Repair" of an existing installation. This will detect new hardware and copy appropriate files.
I've done both proceedures over the years without any major problems.
If you don't want to build your own, I suggest that you seek out a local no-name clone building shop and buy from them a pre-packaged model or order a custom made machine. Buy state of the art as of 6 months or year ago, not the overpriced state of the art as of today.
Yes, you can do these sorts of maneuvers, but frankly, I don't trust them. I know you haven't had any bad luck with it, but my preferred method in this case would be to use one of the three as a data repository for the two old machines, storing any data files I wanted to keep, and wiping, reformatting and reinstalling an OS to the other two drives once they were in place on the new machine. It's a good excuse to clean out the lint and crud that Windows inevitably collects over time anyway. And just moving the drive to a new machine is almost certainly going to add more lint in the form of orphaned drivers and registry entries. :-)
Well, your cable provider may have their recommendations. I have a Toshiba cable modem which I installed myself after getting the Comcast quick start kit at CompUSA. I prefer to own my own equuipment rather than rent if from the cable company.
What ever cable modem you get, I would also recommend a switch router (4 port ethernet switch such as: Linksys Router/Switch) which also has a built in firewall. I use that firewall in addition to Zone Alarm on the PC. The 4 port switch will allow for up to four PC's to share your cable connections. You may not have more than one PC now, but you might in the future and the firewall is worth the investment by itself.
Well, I've always liked the ASUS motherboards. They have a dual processor models. They also have onboard PROMISE IDE RAID controllers. Hey, can't have too much disk redundancy. :-)
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