Hi all

After Christmas i will be looking at getting the internet at home and a computer (i am with you now via works computer ). I know absolutely nothing about computers, in fact its a miracle I'm here now, but what is best?. There is plenty of room in my flat, but it is only a one bed place and i would prefer not to have a desk sitting in the corner taking up room (Mrs isn't keen on a desk in the living room) when i could have a laptop sat out of the way under the TV or something, but are laptops a waste of time? I will only be on here or e bay or ordering parts from gsf that sort of thing, and i suppose using it to store photos.
I dont have a home phone either yet because i like being able to just turn my mobile off when i get home, and being left alone, but talk talk seem to do a good deal on broadband and home phone, is anyone else with them?
thought i would ask you lot rather than some spotty little child in PC world or somewhere like that.

Thanks

Laptops are ok Dean. I have one which I use now and again. I think its a Hewlett Packard. Only bought it second hand from a computer fair. It's powerful though, got a 2.3 ghz chip in. I paid about £170 for it a few years back. I was at a fair at the weekend and there were some there from about £99 for a Pentium 3 700 mhz.
Plenty fast enough to surf the net.

Be careful what you buy and where you buy from. I've heard some horror stories about Acer for instance. While you're at work ( ) do a Google for computer fairs in I-O-W. I don't know if there are any but you can get some bargains. You might have to pop to Southampton I would think.

As for networks, I'm with Blueyonder on cable. Never had any probs at all. £25/month. Other tarifs available. If you have an idea of what make you want do a Google for "reviews" for that model. If it's bad you'll get people slagging it off so stay clear.

Good luck.

I'm with Toucan for a year with a package including broadband and fixed phone (£25), and free calls to Europe (+£10). All OK with it, their servers have malfunctioned only once in a year, where I couldn't connect for 30min or so. Activating the connection was troublefree. I note that because friends from Glasgow said TalkTalk took ages (2 months) in summer 2006 to connect their home -but I'm in Kilmarnock of 50,000 souls-.

cheers
G

If you're only going to do browsing and light office style tasks, then modern laptops are more than sufficient for the job.

Desktops are nice if you have the space, or enjoy sitting down to use the computer at a proper desk. They also have better displays, a full sized keyboard and mouse etc, but this is all academic really.
Nothing beats the portability of a laptop with wireless internet, you can sit anywhere in the house and browse at your leisure.

If space is at a premium, I'd recommend a laptop, it sounds ideal for your situation.
If you do get one, try and steer away from the likes of Acer, Packard Bell, E-Systems, Advent, and all the other PC World own brand specials. They're cheap, but the quality of them is terrible and they can give real problems when it comes to repairs etc. Fixing computers is one of the things I do for a living and if theres a particular machine I hate to see coming its one with a badge from that bunch!

The big brands like HP and Toshiba are good machines, but you tend to pay a bit more for them. The best of the bunch ATM IMO is Dell. You get a good whack of machine for the money, they're pretty reliable, and their customer service and warranties are reasonable. They're very hard to beat on price, you can get a reasonable specced laptop for £2-300.
Speaking of money, price is one advantage that desktops do have, I'm not sure if this is a factor or not, but you generally will pay more for the equivalent spec laptop than if it was a desktop.

Outside of PCs, theres the whole Mac game. Some people swear by them, and indeed they have a lot of nice features, but they are very expensive in comparison to the WinTel equivalent.

If you need any help while looking around or just a bit of advice be sure to post back, there are plenty here with experience in these areas so hopefully we'll be able to help you

Ciarán

Agreed with the above, laptops are fine if you're lacking in space. TBH they're no less powerful than desktop machines these days; the only thing you lose is the ease of upgrading.

My last Wintel laptop was a Toshiba, and I was very happy with it although it was a little underpowered. Don't worry too much about CPU speed, but make sure it has enough memory - you need at least 512megs to run Windows XP. Vista requires rather more in terms of hardware - others will have to advise you on that.

Or, as a recent convert myself, can I tempt you with a nice little Apple Mac? A little more expensive than their PC counterparts but well worth it. Easy to use, although you will need to learn different ways of doing things (I'm assuming you use Windows at work), easy to re-install if things do go badly wrong (I installed Tiger on my G4 last night while drinking wine and chatting with my landlord), and next to no worries about viruses/spyware.

That immunity to viruses etc means you can buy one second-hand without too much fear if money is too tight for a new one.

Talking of viruses I think you can buy laptops with Linux pre-installed now. Always worth getting away from Gates' mob if possible.

I dont claim to be an expert but I do use the internet a fair bit so what I really wanted was something that was reliable and good value for money, so on the advice of a relative who in in I.T. I bought a Dell and I must say that it was cheap and has proved reliable. Due to the increasing size of programs it has now become to slow, so I have just ordered another one from ebay, 4 mhz processor, 160 GB hard disc and 2 GB ram for just over £300.00 with Dell 12 month guarantee, but that is just the computer as I allready have the peripherals.

I prefer a desk top mainily because you can have a larger monitor, but I am told that they are also more reliable.

Peter.N.

Hi Peter.

Beware the dreaded Vista --- you may well have real issues of compatibility if you are looking to transplant XP or earlier applications onto the new machine. Daughter recently bought new laptop loaded with Vista and is not exactly over the moon with it. I have heard of others too. At least until recently, Dell were able to ship with XP on a new machine; definitely worth badgering them for it. Incidentally, if you are running Norton, that may be the main cause of your machine going slowly --- a truly dreadful program (I speak as a layman user, not an IT bod !) I ditched it and now use 'Avast', a freebie that seems to work fine and doesn't have anything like the same effect on speed that Norton did.

Mike.

Hi All,
Have to agree with the comments about Norton.I was running it on my last machine and had to disable it whenever I wanted to run anything that used a bit more memory than normal. Currently running AVG which seems to do its job and causes no problems with anything I want to use.
Cheers, Carl

Yeah Vista isn't fantastic ATM, though I have to say its in a much better state now then when it was initially released, due to updates etc. Its still nowhere near as stable or compatible as XP though.

From a user POV, the problems with it are (no longer) major in most cases. Silly things like needing to update all your drivers, reorganisation and movement of things like My Documents, incredibly annoying 'User account control' facility that prompts you if you so much as blow your nose. The other infuriating thing about it is it makes such a song and dance out of the simplest of tasks. Copying files, opening folders etc. Basic things seem to require more computing horsepower all in the name of a nice GUI and snazzy, unneeded addons which have no functional benefit over XP whatsoever, in fact they are arguably a hindrance.

That said, it does have some nice features, and given time it will be improved and refined, but for now its still a little rough round the edges.

If you do want XP, make sure you order it before June next year, as thats when MS are gassing sales of it, after extending it from January 2008... (how generous of them! ). That said, its not hard to get sorted out with a back copy, so if anyone is in dire need send me a private message.

I'm on my second iteration of Vista on my main desktop at home. I first installed it at the beginning of the year when it was first released, and what a disaster that was! Serious problems just getting the installation to complete, most applications not running, no drivers for half my hardware. Device manufacturers aren't helping the whole Vista situation, case in point was Creative saying no Vista driver support would be forthcoming for my two year old sound card. A bit of a cheek really, but many of them have jumped on this lazy 'go buy a new one' bandwagon rather than develop drivers for their existing products, further adding to the Vista upgrade expense. I eventually had to make my own sound driver by cobbling together an XP one and some other bits, hardly ideal. After three months of constant bluescreens, and getting fed up with not being able to *use* my computer for normal stuff, I went back to XP.

In September I again installed Vista, and I much say its behaved much better this time around. I love XP, and would like to stay with it, but like it or not, I have to look at it from a business point of view. Vista will very soon become the mainstream OS for everyone, so I need to make sure I know it inside and out to be able to support my customers. I've already had several Vista machines in to repair, so theres no getting away from it really, even if it is a bitter pill to swallow!
Course, theres nothing stopping anyone who wants to make the choice from installing XP, but a lot of users of brand new PCs will never know any different, something we're going to have to get used to.

Ciarán

Hi Mike

Yes, I have heard similar things about Vista, but it's apparantly not consistant, does different things on different machines. I still have my original XP discs, can I load them on to my new machine?

Peter.N.

Blimey Ciaran -----


Work with computers in the day and then go home to a stable of XMs ----- you must be a member of your local masochists group !!!!!!!!!!!!!


Mike.

Hi Peter

Looks to me like Ciaran's your man. (I only use them -- like yourself).

Mike.