New computer set up needed

Nicki

Our computer equipment at home is in dire need of upgrading. At the moment we have

1 a PC with windows vista os which has died completely (hard disc has gone I think)

2 a laptop with windows XP which is getting very rickety. A few keys on the keyboard are loose and the cd rom drive is unpredictable. It's about 6 years old so has done us well

3 an iPad which we currently use for all our surfing. We also both have iPhones

4 a 3 in 1 printer which has also died completely and also about 6 years old.

In addition our son who is about to start secondary school has a new laptop for school use which is windows vista and working perfectly, although it was the cheapest lowest spec model for sale last Christmas.

2 questions really. Is there anything a PC can do which a modern laptop can't? Would it be feasible just to buy a decent laptop and printer to replace the defunct stuff or would a PC be of greater use. If all the equipment were working properly it would be used primarily by OH and DS to play games (of the Rome Total War kind), and by the whole family for standard word-processing/spreadsheets/ power points, and for internet usage.

Second question is what would be the best printer to get? Are any of the modern printers high enough quality to print decent photographs as well as documents and copying, or do you need a separate photo printer for that?

All advice welcome. We haven't really worked out the budget yet, until we firm up in our minds what we actually need to buy.

dixiebb

2 questions really. Is there anything a PC can do which a modern laptop can't? Would it be feasible just to buy a decent laptop and printer to replace the defunct stuff or would a PC be of greater use. If all the equipment were working properly it would be used primarily by OH and DS to play games (of the Rome Total War kind), and by the whole family for standard word-processing/spreadsheets/ power points, and for internet usage.

^^provided it's a decent 'desktop replacement' laptop then it can probably match the power of a desktop machine -- the spanner in the works often is the graphics chipset and also screen size -- nothing quite beats a lovely external 27/30 inch monitor -- although might be overkill for some .

stilltheone

Fix the Vista PC, a new HDD is perhaps £30. Some more RAM, clearly away any dust and a clean install can work wonders.

Let's here some more about this machine. Make and full model number and the symptoms of the failure.

You can still buy another machine if you wish, but if you can get this up and running and performing better than when new, it might not be necessary.

closed

as well as a cheap hard disk to fix the vista machine, depending on the model, you may be able to get a cheap keyboard or keys to replace the broken one. rickety cd could be software related, have you put itunes on it, what are the symptoms?

Nicki

stilltheone wrote: »

Fix the Vista PC, a new HDD is perhaps £30. Some more RAM, clearly away any dust and a clean install can work wonders.

Let's here some more about this machine. Make and full model number and the symptoms of the failure.

You can still buy another machine if you wish, but if you can get this up and running and performing better than when new, it might not be necessary.

It's an ex lease model, a Phillips dual core. Model no HEPC 7511/05. It wont boot up. Get the blue screen each time. It's been back to our friendly repair people who reloaded the operating system but as soon as we got it back home the same problem showed up. At least we did manage to get all our data off before it collapsed.

If we can get it up and running all well and good, but we've already spent £45 having it looked at with no joy, and to be honest we don't really have the time or expertise to fiddle with it too much ourselves, so don't want to throw good money after bad if putting a new hard drive in for example will only buy us a short respite. That being said, if there is a quick and easy solution to it's ailments, I'm game to give it a go!

Nicki

closed wrote: »

as well as a cheap hard disk to fix the vista machine, depending on the model, you may be able to get a cheap keyboard or keys to replace the broken one. rickety cd could be software related, have you put itunes on it, what are the symptoms?

Keyboard has been replaced lots of times . We have a young child with learning difficulties who likes to pick the keys off. The keyboard itself isn't manufactured anymore, we'd need to find one on ebay now to replace it.

The cd rom judders when you open/close it and often doesn't open or close at all when you press the button. Discs sometimes load, sometimes don't. Yes we do have iTunes on the computer, though not very many other programmes as it was also relatively recently rebooted as the os got corrupted. (the cd rom problems predate this).

stilltheone

Nicki wrote: »

It's an ex lease model, a Phillips dual core. Model no HEPC 7511/05. It wont boot up. Get the blue screen each time. It's been back to our friendly repair people who reloaded the operating system but as soon as we got it back home the same problem showed up. At least we did manage to get all our data off before it collapsed.

If we can get it up and running all well and good, but we've already spent £45 having it looked at with no joy, and to be honest we don't really have the time or expertise to fiddle with it too much ourselves, so don't want to throw good money after bad if putting a new hard drive in for example will only buy us a short respite. That being said, if there is a quick and easy solution to it's ailments, I'm game to give it a go!

It might be a problem with the device drivers. Try booting it up in Safe Mode.
That means switching it on and tapping F8 straight away until the Safe Mode screen opens up.

You shouldn't have spent the £45 in the first place. That's why we are here.

Let me know if booting into Safe Mode works.

closed

what does the blue screen say, it's unlikely to be the hard disk

do you have the vista dvd?