I need a new PC and have no idea what to buy - please help

prudryden

Call Dell - they will put one together for you based on your requirements. Probably £300-£500 depending on whether you need a new monitor.

Donnie

Not a big fan of DELL, I'm sure they'll get you by stealth...with you ending up spending more than you could have.

If you know exactly what you want, you can avoid this, but you don't so you won't.

You really need someone here to pick a specific pre-priced system for you, so there will be no chance for someone on the phone to just whack on silly extras.

closed

Backing up, and fixing slowness either by reinstalling windows or by looking at the reason is feasible and cheaper. You are presumably going to transfer the data to the new one anyway, which will take the same amount of time. If you have important data, it should be backed up, 15 minutes with some disk imaging software to an external hard disk would probably do it.

Post specs, how much ram, which operating system, and commit charge (in task manager, performance tab).

Just_landed

Check out the Argos catalogue £500.00 for a good one like the one in Aldi.

flossy_splodge

I wanted a laptop and finally went for the one in Aldi, branded Medion and I am totally satisfied. Excellent spec for my money. They currently have a PC for about £5-600 which includes a TV tuner.
On my experiences so far I'd have no hesitation recomending a Medion PC. Have a look sooner as it has been out for a while and their stock never lasts that long.
Good luck.

BrokeBrunette

closed wrote: »

Backing up, and fixing slowness either by reinstalling windows or by looking at the reason is feasible and cheaper. You are presumably going to transfer the data to the new one anyway, which will take the same amount of time. If you have important data, it should be backed up, 15 minutes with some disk imaging software to an external hard disk would probably do it.

Post specs, how much ram, which operating system, and commit charge (in task manager, performance tab).

ok hope this is right, thanks for your help
commit charge 994M/1481M (means nothing to me unfortunately)
Operating system is XP
Pentium4 cpu
RAM 504mb
3Gb hard drive

Richie-from-the-Boro

Brief
____

- play poker
- kids college
- bit~0~browsing
- down & play video
- Win7 gives free AntiVirus & kids chat lines & Vid & editing & u~tube etc
- larger screen

Change your price to £500 MAX, buy a quietish PC, plug it into your BIG SCREEN [ or any ] TV, it's right for your needs !

Any treat yourself to something nice with the other £500

researcher

kabayiri wrote: »

Aldi do PCs every now and then for about 500 quid. They seem well specced, guys at work have bought them.

They are branded as Medion.

Three year warranty too, which can't do any harm

You could add a 24" monitor on top for between 150 and 200 notes easy.

We read the reviews in the computer magazines and we bought one end of last September and it has been an absolute bargain - for £399 we got a super fast pc with all the space we'll need (and a free upgrade to Windows 7). It didn't come with a monitor, but spend another £150 will bag you an excellent monitor. Read the reviews in the computer magazines - but honestly, you don't need to spend anywhere near £1k to get a brilliant machine.

RussJK

Slighty OT, but I was thinking with your hand injury that you might be helped by changing your keyboard layout to Dvorak?

Supposedly the QWERTY layout was designed to slow down typists by being difficult to use, as early typewriters would jam when typed on too quickly. The problem is that there is a lot of unnecessary finger movement and strain. Dvorak developed a keyboard layout designed to minimise finger movement and so reduce stress on the hands. The most common letters that you type are all in the centre keys, i.e. where ASDFGHJKL sit. There is a program somewhere which you can type anything into, and it'll tell you what percentage of letters would be in the centre slot - Dvorak tends to have >85% of letters in that middle bit, so you aren't moving your hand all over the keyboard to type.

I used it when I was completing my degree 7 years ago, as I was getting RSI. It takes awhile to get used to, but typing speed increases dramatically, and it is a LOT easier on your hands and wrists. Its easy enough to change the physical layout of a desktop PC's keyboard (I now have a laptop which I share with my wife, so I've left the physical layout the same - and if I'm using Dvorak, I just have to go from memory).

Anyway, just a thought!

closed

I suspect this is part of your problem

commit charge = 994M is greater than RAM 504mb

Easy to resolve by cutting down the applications running at startup.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849

post a hijackthis log http://go.trendmicro.com/free-tools/hijackthis/HiJackThis.exe

Are you sure it's only a 3GB drive?