Going to buy my last PC- maybe

Baldur

macman wrote: »

Macs don't.

That could be seen as either a positive or negative, depending on your own point of view.

Marty_J

Baldur wrote: »

That could be seen as either a positive or negative, depending on your own point of view.

From the point of view of a Mac owner, that's a very good thing indeed.

As for the OP, for surfing, emailing, and particularly photos and video, the Mac is a no-brainer. It'll do those things out of the box, and it'll do them very well.

The only hurdle to overcome is the family history program. Unless we have some genealogist Mac users, I would suggest finding a decent genealogy forum and asking the Mac users there what software they use.

macman

Reunion Family Tree v9 seems to be highly rated, and is Mac compatible.

Simon_B_2

Eric_Pisch wrote: »

yep you should be able to get a monster pc with 24" monitor for £500 that's more than capable of what you want, expect to replace it in 5-6 years thou, that's the nature of the beast.

I bought a quad-core PC with a 24" screen (which is brilliant) for around £449 a few months ago and it fullfils my needs (University Assignments, Music and Photo Storage) and it should do for another 4-5 years as the last one did.

I'd go with spending £400-500 on a nice PC and save the rest until you have to get another in 5-6 years time, who knows by 2017 we could all be using Ipads!

Eric_Pisch

Simon_B wrote: »

who knows by 2017 we could all be using Ipads!

why is apple planning on chemically lobotomising us all :rotfl:

Im an uber tech geek with just about every gadget and even i think the IMaxiPad is pointless

RachelD

F1_Fan wrote: »

HI, at present the Intel Core i5 is the one to go for.
With 4gb of 1600mhz RAM and say a 1tb HD.
This will give you the best mix of performance V price.
Its also the latest platform from Intel so will be good for "future proofing".
Good system with W7 premium and 22" TFT should be around £700 all in.
Best of luck!

Thank you all for your advice. I'll ll go with the above spec or 24 "monitor. I tried costing it on Dell but it was about £800. Any advice on where to buy?

JasX

I've spent silly money on a high end PC before, to be fair it was still going strong 5 years later.... then one day the motherboard went and fried the graphics card at the same time.

They all die eventually. Spend what you need now, save the rest for the replacement.

Grade_A_Reject

Eric_Pisch wrote: »

Im an uber tech geek with just about every gadget and even i think the IMaxiPad is pointless

Indeed.

I love my iPhone, I can do most of the stuff I would want to do on a laptop on something the size of a phone.

And the iPad? I could do all of the stuff I'd want to do on a laptop on something the size of a....ahh. :cool:

sharkie

RachelD, think twice before you "futureproof".

At the start of windows 95 usb was unleashed, but only started being to be somewhat used on windows 98 second edition. USB was v1, v1.1 and now v2. Futureproffing meas often paying over the top and usually makes the price expensive, ask any one who bought those motherboards that were allegedly able to take upgrade processors. Also it may limit speed, may tie you into bespoke items and limitations. Beside the odd video camera user and apple, firewire never really took off either. There is a lot of stuff around that either does not work, too expensive, or unpopular.

This year we have already seen the 6 core CPUs have hit the market. Expect usb3, sata3 (these chips have already been around 2 years), and solid state disk to become bigger, cheaper, and faster. With all this information traveling around at high speed, there will probably be new bus designs and chips not too many years away either.

On the other side, if you go really top end, in three years time you still will have an ok machine: I'm sure if I bought the £450 motherboard, the two £1300 (each) 3.4Ghz quad xenon processors - roughly about £4000 in total, think it still will be an ok machine in 3-5 years time, but will probably be equivalent to a £500 one.

to be honest I would keep an eye on hotukdeals or some of those Aldi offers that appear every few months around £400-500 would probably suite you.

JasX

sharkie wrote: »

RachelD, think twice before you "futureproof".

At the start of windows 95 usb was unleashed, but only started being to be somewhat used on windows 98 second edition. USB was v1, v1.1 and now v2. Futureproffing meas often paying over the top and usually makes the price expensive, ask any one who bought those motherboards that were allegedly able to take upgrade processors. Also it may limit speed, may tie you into bespoke items and limitations. Beside the odd video camera user and apple, firewire never really took off either. There is a lot of stuff around that either does not work, too expensive, or unpopular.

This year we have already seen the 6 core CPUs have hit the market. Expect usb3, sata3 (these chips have already been around 2 years), and solid state disk to become bigger, cheaper, and faster. With all this information traveling around at high speed, there will probably be new bus designs and chips not too many years away either.

On the other side, if you go really top end, in three years time you still will have an ok machine: I'm sure if I bought the £450 motherboard, the two £1300 (each) 3.4Ghz quad xenon processors - roughly about £4000 in total, think it still will be an ok machine in 3-5 years time, but will probably be equivalent to a £500 one.

to be honest I would keep an eye on hotukdeals or some of those Aldi offers that appear every few months around £400-500 would probably suite you.

Sharkie the OP is a good few weeks old, just some "Grade_F_Reject" fancied going round bumping old posts with nothing remotely relevant to add to the original question......