New desktop PC

Macrae88

Hi,

I was originally looking to get a laptop to replace my dead laptop, but having thought about it for a while, I have decided a desktop may be better. The laptop would probably live on my desk anyway.

Plus I HAD an iPad mini (until I dropped it, but I'll be replacing it) so I'll be using a tablet if I want to browse the internet on the sofa, whilst out and about etc.

So, I think for the money desktops are more powerful? aren't they?

I've found this at Argos:
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5074392.htm

What do people think? It fits in my budget £300 and includes an 18.5" monitor.

I don't think I'd be able to find anything better including a monitor would I?

Are the specs good enough? I want to start working from home part time to up my income, and I've got numerous idea's (bookkeeping, web design, programming). Would this PC be able to come this them? Presumably the bookkeeping would be no problem?

If anyone has any alternatives, I'd love to take a look.

Thanks,

Cycrow

its difficult to say if the specs will be good enough without knowing what you will actually be using the PC for, but from the sounds of it, its just general usage that probably doesn't require much in the way of power.

as for the programming, what kind of programming are you actually planning on doing ?

Macrae88

Cycrow wrote: »

what kind of programming are you actually planning on doing ?

Thanks for the response.

I can program in FORTRAN 90, but there doesn't seem to be much of a demand for that, so I'll be trying to teach myself Java or possibly C#. With the idea of moving onto programming for mobile apps. And getting freelance programming work on peopleperhour.

I might also play a few games such as Civ IV & V, and StarCraft.

closed

you can program/do bookkeeping on anything, but you need to make sure it meets your gaming needs

what's wrong with the laptop?

desktops use more electricity than a laptop, so cost more to run

Macrae88

closed wrote: »

what's wrong with the laptop?

HDD's knackered, battery doesn't hold charge, charging cable has broken, DVD drive is no longer recognised. I've reinstalled Windows numerous times, even had Ubuntu on there a couple of times, but I think it's dead.

It's a Dell Inspiron M5040.

It runs on an AMD C-60 1.0 GHz dual core processor. So it was slow at the best of times.

closed

does it power up and boot or not?

how old is it

software and bloat makes machines slow

Macrae88

closed wrote: »

does it power up and boot or not?

how old is it

software and bloat makes machines slow

Yes it does power up, I can run it off another charging cable from a family member laptop. But every time I boot it the BIOS says the HDD needs to be checked for errors. The HDD is really knackered, it often gets stuck in 'loops', when my PC freezes and I put my ear to the laptop I can hear 'click, click, click, click-click' and it repeats for hours if I leave it.

The dvd drive isn't detected by windows or a live copy of lubuntu. It does have power though, and spins disks up.

It's over 2 years old now, the CPU fan is broken (i think) occasionally when it spins up (which it does a lot) I can here bits of plastic rattling around in the fan.

I do know my way around PC's, I built my first PC when I was 8, it had an Intel 386 and ran Windows 3.1 which came on 4 floppy disks. But I think this laptop is now beyond economical repair.

closed

it's unusual for a newish machine to have so many hardware faults, a new hard disk is around £45, dvd could be a software issue - games/itunes can cause problems, fan could be catching the case

Cycrow

closed wrote: »

you can program/do bookkeeping on anything, but you need to make sure it meets your gaming needs

thats not entirely true, the hardware needed for programming would depend on what you are actually programming
afterall, you will need to be able to run the program that you are making.
althou ideally, you should have a better pc than what the end program will needed, as the program will run slower while its being developed

For mobile apps, its better if you have the devices to run on, as the emulators are mostly terrible, and even with a decent pc, they can struggle, which isn't really a problem if you are testing on the device itself

closed

Hole picking is an interesting hobby.

Cycrow

im simply pointing out that for programming, it very much depends on the types of programs you are actually making as to what hardware is required to do.

And for mobile app development, the emulators are usually pretty slow, and require a decent pc to run them.
Even my pc at work struggles from time to time to run the certain opengl android apps in the emulator, and it has multiple cpu's in and a ton of memory