All-in-one desktop?

bluesnake

Have to ask the obvious.... Have (a) formed friends with an approachable it person at work, (b) then tried asking your work IT department for a faulty PC when it becomes available. Many companies once the PC is outside the 3 year warranty period ditch the PC, even it is just a matter of replacing the disk drive to get it working.

Even screens, it is often possible to easily get one working out of 5-ish. Sometimes the plastic button just breaks and the screen is dumped, while work around are often easy, but not always pretty.

NiftyDigits

AliceBanned wrote: »

Not sure of model number; it is HP Pavilion Entertainment PC.

Turn it upside down.

InsideInsurance

AliceBanned wrote: »

I think I just need a good, brand new PC that is reliable for average work. I don't do any gaming. I may watch movies on it sometimes. It would be good to have a disc drive - call me old fashioned.

I'm afraid I am a complete beginner on RAM GB etc and what it all means - so I won't really know what I'm buying. I am sure I need to do a bit of research. I don't know what HD or SSD is.

Mac Pro looks like a nice machine..I am not sure what I will be doing in the future workwise - anything that might related to publishing, but mainly copy editing so just Word and Excel! Just not sure what I will need for the future but nothing more than the average office PC I guess. I have not got into doing any design work but this is a possibility in the next year or two.

Even an entry level PC is going to be sufficient for browsing, word processing and watching movies.

Going up the levels really is only going to make applications open a touch faster unless you are dealing with very large spreadsheets.

You may want to pay a touch more for better build quality but there really arent many "professional" quality internals these days.

Mac Pro or MacBook Pro looks nice? The new Mac Pro certainly is a good bit of kit but is big money even if you are doing very heavy video editing which is the only really justifiable reason for having one.

AliceBanned

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Turn it upside down.

I did this last night (whilst using it) and it switched itself off.

I expected that to be honest. It takes about ten mins to log back on so I couldn't be bothered. It really is annoying..:mad:

AliceBanned

bluesnake wrote: »

Have to ask the obvious.... Have (a) formed friends with an approachable it person at work, (b) then tried asking your work IT department for a faulty PC when it becomes available. Many companies once the PC is outside the 3 year warranty period ditch the PC, even it is just a matter of replacing the disk drive to get it working.

Even screens, it is often possible to easily get one working out of 5-ish. Sometimes the plastic button just breaks and the screen is dumped, while work around are often easy, but not always pretty.

Hi - I suppose I could ask, I chat to someone in IT now and then. We have some very old PCs at work so I don't think they ditch them though - I work in educational for a not for profit organisation.

AliceBanned

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Even an entry level PC is going to be sufficient for browsing, word processing and watching movies.

Going up the levels really is only going to make applications open a touch faster unless you are dealing with very large spreadsheets.

You may want to pay a touch more for better build quality but there really arent many "professional" quality internals these days.

Mac Pro or MacBook Pro looks nice? The new Mac Pro certainly is a good bit of kit but is big money even if you are doing very heavy video editing which is the only really justifiable reason for having one.

OK thanks. Then it will really come down to other brands that are recommended by this forum, as value for money. I can't afford to be fussy about style etc, in reality.

I work with doctors and a few of them swear by their MacBook and say it is completely different (better) but they have the money to pay for one - it's hard to know what to believe as there seems to be some allure to Apple and mystery surrounding this - may be no more than marketing but I am finding it hard to differentiate, especially as academics have recommended it.

InsideInsurance

AliceBanned wrote: »

I work with doctors and a few of them swear by their MacBook and say it is completely different (better) but they have the money to pay for one - it's hard to know what to believe as there seems to be some allure to Apple and mystery surrounding this - may be no more than marketing but I am finding it hard to differentiate, especially as academics have recommended it.

I will fully admit that I am an apple fan and for me, as a "business person" I really cannot see massive advantages of OS X over Windows. There are some bits that are better and there are some bits that are worse.

Apple computers are not that much more expensive when you compare a true like for like. By that I mean not just the processor and memory but the weight of the unit, battery life, thickness etc. Obviously there is a separate question on if having a laptop that is 10mm thicker and 200g heavier is such a big thing -v- a £300 saving or such but thats another matter.

Reliability for me has been fantastic, iMac has only ever been restarted when installing a couple of updates or when moving house. My windows desktop rarely went 24 hours without needing to be restarted because something or other had become buggy. Our MacBook Air has been almost as good, just one problem with the screen that was immediately replaced FOC despite being just out of warranty.

Wife who works in the creative space sings the praise of OS X more than I do.

Previously I used to build my own PCs, spent hours tweaking them, trying to get the perfect combination of driver versions to get optimum performance etc. Now I like the apple "it just works". Have a number of other apple components and within 5 minutes of having a new toy at home its up and running, backing itself up automatically to the timecapsule, interacting correctly with the other components etc.

AliceBanned

Thanks InsideInsurance; I think one of them said it was the virus protection etc that is so good.

I am tempted because I have had this awful rubbish laptop which hardly works for so long now, and it would be nice to have something fast and almost completely stress free.

Have to seriously consider my budget though so it is probably unlikely - I could get something for the interim and then save up for one. At least that means the interim one can be fairly cheap.

InsideInsurance

AliceBanned wrote: »

Thanks InsideInsurance; I think one of them said it was the virus protection etc that is so good.

Apple are protected by obscurity, similar to those that run Linux or any other non-windows operating system on their computer. People who write viruses simply go for low hanging fruit and there are more windows users than anything else.

Arguably, when security holes have been found with Apple they have actually been a bit slow to react but then they so rarely deal with them -v- Microsoft that has a whole division that does nothing else.

The risk on viruses for Apple for now are not those that infect your computer, as there are almost none, but those that you can pass on to other windows machines inside your network as there tends to be lower security applied for things that come from inside the network than from outside.

Cisco001

Consider this itx if you don't mind it is slightly expensive than standard tower.

£357
i3 4150 (get G3258 if you want to save money)
Windows 8.1
Asrock H81-ITX
4GB DDR3 1333
1TB HDD
DVD burner
Onboard Video
Cooler Master Elite 130
Corsair VS450