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 We are looking for one that will not break our bank or be outdated next month.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?
Even the most diehard Gates-worshippers will probably agree that Win ME is a major turkey. Win 2000 is best, Win XP a close second, but if you want to recycle a lot of older components you may have to go to Win 98SE to get the driver availability.
Don't count Sony out. Both systems ended up being loaded like I wanted, and were cheaper than the Dells. I was very pleasantly surprised.
I got my Dell Dimension 4400 last Tuesday and I love it. I did have to get me a new printer though as Windows XP did not reconize the driver of my old one HP Deskjet 612c. My new one is a HP deskjet 920c which I bought at Circuit City and is compatable to Windows XP
WindowsNT/Windows2000 can use a format called NTFS instead of FAT tables. This renders the disk unreadable to Windows95/98/ME machines.
NTFS=(Windows)NT File System. It can only be read by a system capable of reading NTFS. You cannot normally boot DOS and go to drive C: and read its contents if it is NTFS. NTFS allows windows NT to control access. More than just FAT tables, it also contains permissions and rights filters.
There are drivers to allow you to read and modify an NTFS partition. Win98 NTFS and NTFS for DOS
Take your digital camera with you to the Apple store (with your USB cable, if you have one). Ask if you can download a couple pictures to see how it works. They say yes, then ask them to step aside. Plug the USB cable into the side of the keyboard, plug the cable into your camera and turn the camera on. The iMac will automatically launch either Image Capture or iPhoto, and ask if you want your pictures downloaded into iPhoto! Say YES, then see how they come out.
Play with the images once in iPhoto, re-sort and caption them. Crop, remove red-eye, see for yourself. Then pretend to send them for digital prints or email to someone. Print them on the store's printer.
If that isn't impressive enough, then we can throw around useless terms like NTFS, file systems, XP/ME/pee-pee, until your head spins.
Or you can just get something you have seen work with your own pictures and your own camera. Your choice, of course. And of course the iMac will do all the text editing, email, and browser duties.
What else did you need/want?
Basically, a dual-processor motherboard is exactly what it sounds like - instead of a single CPU, it has two that work alongside one another. The advantage to that is that it adds a significant amount of processing power, as you can imagine, since the two processors can split the workload between them, and complete tasks that much faster. It's not quite twice as fast as a same-speed single processor machine, since there's some overhead involved in getting the two processors to work together, but nevertheless, it's generally good for a speed boost of about 80% more than a same-speed single processor machine, depending on the task involved.
But, like everything in life, there's a downside. Dual-processor motherboards are somewhat more expensive than single-processor boards - they tend to be targeted at the workstation market, rather than the home market, for starters. Also, you have to, not surprisingly, buy two processors instead of one. Finally, you need more than just the hardware - you also need an operating system that can take advantage of multiple processors. That rules out Windows 9X/Me and the home version of XP right off the bat, since none of them support more than one processor. Which means that your choices are limited to Windows 2000 or XP-Professional, or some flavor of Unix.
Dual or more processors allow processing work to be spread out amongst them. In theory 2 400MHz processors can do work faster than a single one. This is usually seen in high end servers and requires that your OS support SMP (Symetric Multi Processing).
Exactly....
Since you aren't a computer person, I would also recommend going to a local shop and having them build one for you.
You can purchase a computer from them with the Linux OS/desktop already loaded or buy a PC with no OS loaded and download the Lycoris Desktop LX for free. If you want it on CD with a manual it will still only cost you $29.99 and this desktop is SWEET!
It comes with a ton of software bundled with it and it will perform all of the tasks you have outlined flawlessly and it's a breeze to install.
It includes the new Mac OS X operating system and several excellent applications like iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.