Which pc?

donnajunkie

EveryWhere wrote: »

But the issue is not about whether you change the innards now. It's that you never even attempted it.
If you had, you would not now be daunted about buying a high quality refurb or fitting an NVMe drive to the HP to future proof it or...
.

Or because i am no good at that and can be clumsy i slip with the screw driver and cause expensive damage or perhaps a fault that causes over heating and a fire later. If you are really confident, clued up and financially able to risk ruining a system then fine. For me its too much of a risk for a bit of overly zealous attempts at money saving.
I know this is a money saving forum but not all threads are about that and i didnt ask any advice about saving as much cash as possible.

Kronkis

Buy the Argos one with Monitor for £350

I would.

that

donnajunkie wrote: »

As i said though, i dont do gaming on a pc.

then buy something like that tower I mentioned above, it has a better cpu that any of the two you initially write down and cost £90. You could probably use your current monitor too

These new £350+ PCs compared to the second hand one which have the same or more memory, a better cpu and still £100+ cheaper, with 8GB and a rust spinner. spend £25 on an ssd and another £75 on a monitor and you have a tower that is a better spec and cheaper. Go for a desktop or sff (I do not recommend sff) and it is still cheaper.

If you want to pay well over a £100-£250 more for worse spec pc, with a blemish free case then that is your choice too


Also please be aware many of the adverts on ebay say i3, i5, i7, but they do not say which model or

EveryWhere

donnajunkie wrote: »

Or because i am no good at that and can be clumsy i slip with the screw driver and cause expensive damage or perhaps a fault that causes over heating and a fire later. If you are really confident, clued up and financially able to risk ruining a system then fine. For me its too much of a risk for a bit of overly zealous attempts at money saving.
I know this is a money saving forum but not all threads are about that and i didnt ask any advice about saving as much cash as possible.

Oh my gosh, you are a really nervous person.
No good? What are you thinking? It nothing to do with being adept or not. It's like putting new batteries in your bathrooms scales. You unscrew the hatch from the outside, you put the batteries in and you put the hatch back on.
That is about as complicated as anything I would ask you to do with a screwdriver. To open the outside hatch.
Everything else just clips on by hand.

There is no way that anyone here would put anyone at any kind of risk of danger.

This is the problem. Because you never attempted it, you have built up this great risk of danger in your mind. It's a huge mountain instead of a speed-bump.

If you would have stated this at the time, many would have sought to reassure you.
There is no messing around with screwdrivers in the innards. No risk of fire and no risk of you messing anything up.
It's not like that at all.

The RAM is like a jigsaw piece that can only slot in one way. You could just leave the old hard drive in place and use it's connectors for the new SSD. No need for screws for the SSD, as it has no moving parts. That's it. You could have done that in five minutes.

The long winded bit may have been installing the new operating system. But you couldn't do anything wrong, as you would not have touched your original install, so you could have gone back to that at any time.

I've been on this forum for at least twelve years and have helped a few people to modify and upgrade their devices. Many thought that there is no way that they could do it. Ask them now.
They are probably servicing the devices of friends and family.

So, be reassured that the only things that I would suggest that you do, are things that are ridiculously simple and safe. So I know, that unless you do not have any fingers at all, you can do it all in a matter of minutes.

Everything would have been taken in tiny step by tiny step.

Don't allow fear to rule your life.

If you go through life not trusting anyone nor anything, you life is much the poorer.

The may be bad people and bad things out there, but there are also good people and good things. You miss out on the good if you don't take the opportunity to do so.

In the case of your PC, you suffered unnecessarily. There are even members here who would have done the work for you for free if they lived near you.
Don't miss out on the best life has to offer.

EveryWhere

donnajunkie wrote: »

Or because i am no good at that and can be clumsy i slip with the screw driver and cause expensive damage or perhaps a fault that causes over heating and a fire later. If you are really confident, clued up and financially able to risk ruining a system then fine. For me its too much of a risk for a bit of overly zealous attempts at money saving.
I know this is a money saving forum but not all threads are about that and i didnt ask any advice about saving as much cash as possible.

I'd like to address this misapprehension.
It's nothing to do with money saving, but actually alleviating your suffering.
You suffered for years with your PC. There was no reason for you to suffer waiting for minutes for your PC to start up and settle down and for it to freeze during usage etc.
In fact, one might say imagine that you preferred to suffer rather than spending money on more RAM.
So years of suffering poor performance because of fear and inaction. But instead you made the excuse that you would just prefer to spend money on a new one.
I think you used that excuse for perhaps six years.
So let's not now claim it is just an "overzealous attempt at money saving". No, it was a necessity.
You failed to understand that adding RAM etc is by design. Just like you don't throw your bathroom scales away when the battery runs out. You just put new batteries in and good as new again.

That is exactly how your PC is designed. It is designed so that it is easy to just slot another module in, just like slotting in a new battery. That is all that was necessary years ago.
No more suffering for five minutes work.

Your thoughts on the matter are absolutely out of touch with the reality.

If you had taken the simple step of simply slotting in more RAM and seen the improved performance from such a simple action, you would likely not have had the fear of taking the later step of fitting an SSD to further improve the performance.
The Internet of twelve years ago is somewhat different from now, so you need more capability as the years go by. So that is why you need to add more RAM and then perhaps to add an SSD as the years went by.

It's not about money saving, but improving the capability of the PC as the years go by.

So now the issue, is that you won't get the best out of the HP if you buy it, because it is held back by the same technology that is in your twelve year old PC; a electromagnetic spinning disc drive.
Modern equipment has a entirely different method of storage. One with no moving parts.
If you had learned from years gone by, you would have no fear of slotting in the little super fast module.

On the contrary, your outlandish fantasies of danger make it almost impossible to imagine that you will ever do anything of the sort.
A shame. As only you are suffering because of it. Any problems and you will simply put up with them as you'll be too afraid to do anything about it.

If you would have asked for help, perhaps a long time, trusted member would have offered personal assistance.

Your way of thinking is really not healthy. I hope you can expand your outlook. There is still a lot of good out there.

Frozen_up_north

donnajunkie wrote: »

Or because i am no good at that and can be clumsy i slip with the screw driver and cause expensive damage or perhaps a fault that causes over heating and a fire later. If you are really confident, clued up and financially able to risk ruining a system then fine. For me its too much of a risk for a bit of overly zealous attempts at money saving.

Even your brand new shiny PC from Argos/Curry’s will need a couple of days of configuration to (a) remove the junk/clutter that typically comes with them... trial versions of anti-virus, Microsoft Office, Candy Crush, etc. And (b) install printers and software you want, and maybe adjust font sizes to suit your screen for the software you use. You will have to sit through quite a few Windows 10 updates too, even a 2019 manufactured PC will have a lot of Win 10 updates.

Incidentally, the £219 Dell i7 desktop I bought a few months ago from a Microsoft certified refurb company on eBay, came with just a clean install of Windows 10 and Libre Office (free office suite that equals MS Office for most users), no junk to remove...

The software side is harder and more time consuming than swapping a hard drive to an SSD, or adding RAM, to a desktop PC.

If you want to upgrade the RAM or install an SSD in a PC/laptop and are worried that you might order the wrong part, Crucial UK have a software tool you run which shows you guaranteed to work upgrades, if they don’t fit/work they refund you. They also have videos showing how to fit them too. They come with a 5 year warranty too.

Bottom line, a high street new PC isn’t “ready to use” by any stretch of the imagination.

donnajunkie

EveryWhere wrote: »

Oh my gosh, you are a really nervous person.
No good? What are you thinking? It nothing to do with being adept or not. It's like putting new batteries in your bathrooms scales. You unscrew the hatch from the outside, you put the batteries in and you put the hatch back on.
That is about as complicated as anything I would ask you to do with a screwdriver. To open the outside hatch.
Everything else just clips on by hand.

There is no way that anyone here would put anyone at any kind of risk of danger.

This is the problem. Because you never attempted it, you have built up this great risk of danger in your mind. It's a huge mountain instead of a speed-bump.

If you would have stated this at the time, many would have sought to reassure you.
There is no messing around with screwdrivers in the innards. No risk of fire and no risk of you messing anything up.
It's not like that at all.

The RAM is like a jigsaw piece that can only slot in one way. You could just leave the old hard drive in place and use it's connectors for the new SSD. No need for screws for the SSD, as it has no moving parts. That's it. You could have done that in five minutes.

The long winded bit may have been installing the new operating system. But you couldn't do anything wrong, as you would not have touched your original install, so you could have gone back to that at any time.

I've been on this forum for at least twelve years and have helped a few people to modify and upgrade their devices. Many thought that there is no way that they could do it. Ask them now.
They are probably servicing the devices of friends and family.

So, be reassured that the only things that I would suggest that you do, are things that are ridiculously simple and safe. So I know, that unless you do not have any fingers at all, you can do it all in a matter of minutes.

Everything would have been taken in tiny step by tiny step.

Don't allow fear to rule your life.

If you go through life not trusting anyone nor anything, you life is much the poorer.

The may be bad people and bad things out there, but there are also good people and good things. You miss out on the good if you don't take the opportunity to do so.

In the case of your PC, you suffered unnecessarily. There are even members here who would have done the work for you for free if they lived near you.
Don't miss out on the best life has to offer.

I watched the youtube vid you posted and if doing that i could easily lose one of those screws in an unretrievable place in the system.

donnajunkie

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

Even your brand new shiny PC from Argos/Curry’s will need a couple of days of configuration to (a) remove the junk/clutter that typically comes with them... trial versions of anti-virus, Microsoft Office, Candy Crush, etc. And (b) install printers and software you want, and maybe adjust font sizes to suit your screen for the software you use. You will have to sit through quite a few Windows 10 updates too, even a 2019 manufactured PC will have a lot of Win 10 updates.

Incidentally, the £219 Dell i7 desktop I bought a few months ago from a Microsoft certified refurb company on eBay, came with just a clean install of Windows 10 and Libre Office (free office suite that equals MS Office for most users), no junk to remove...

The software side is harder and more time consuming than swapping a hard drive to an SSD, or adding RAM, to a desktop PC.

If you want to upgrade the RAM or install an SSD in a PC/laptop and are worried that you might order the wrong part, Crucial UK have a software tool you run which shows you guaranteed to work upgrades, if they don’t fit/work they refund you. They also have videos showing how to fit them too. They come with a 5 year warranty too.

Bottom line, a high street new PC isn’t “ready to use” by any stretch of the imagination.

Installing new software, updates and removing stuff i dont want is something i dont have much issue with. I have already transferred anything i want to keep to a usb stick and written down a list of software i will want to install. Just so i don't forget anything.

stragglebod

donnajunkie wrote: »

I watched the youtube vid you posted and if doing that i could easily lose one of those screws in an unretrievable place in the system.

I'd say it'd actually be pretty difficult to get one of those screws into somewhere irretrievable, even if that was what you were trying to do.

Kronkis

donnajunkie get the one for £350 with Monitor.

Anything else is overkill, as you don't need really super powerful specs because you are not a gamer.

The cheaper Argos one will seem really fast and do all you want and need.

Stick to what you are comfortable with.

You can have a play with the Privacy settings on Windows 10 if you want, or leave them be. (As i'm sure most people in the World do).

There will be one major Windows 10 Update to install when you buy it, then you are ready to go.

Install the things you want via your USB stick at your leisure.