Computers - educate me please

[h0lmes]

Don't listen to all the haters, Vista is a great operating system. I use it and I never have any problems. It is faster, looks better, and is more secure than XP. Also, if you buy a Dell it will come with Vista, not XP.

[Money$hit]

Don't listen to all the haters, Vista is a great operating system. I use it and I never have any problems. It is faster, looks better, and is more secure than XP. Also, if you buy a Dell it will come with Vista, not XP.

So you are saying that my system, with the same 512mb RAM, 2.5GHz processor will run faster with Vista than with XP?

Thats completely false.

[shiftbmw]

Interesting. From what I gather here and elsewhere, it sounds like Vista is either a love it or hate it type of deal.

['90 325is]

it depends how comfortable you are with computers. it seems people who are more familiar with computers like vista; whereas those who don't know computers well prefer XP.

[James Crivellone]

Screw building computers. I have built hundreds of machines and nowadays if I need a desktop I just buy a 400 - 500 dollar Dell.

[h0lmes]

So you are saying that my system, with the same 512mb RAM, 2.5GHz processor will run faster with Vista than with XP?

Thats completely false.

That's not what I am saying at all. With those specs though, your computer is 4-5 years old which puts it before Vista. If he buys a new computer, it will run better with Vista.

[Surtr]

I think the biggest problem with Vista is that end users aren't used to it. This happened when XP came out too. Going to the NT kernel was a major upgrade over Win98 though, so people were more willing to upgrade. Vista is a bit silly to navigate though.

The only reasons I would say stay away from Vista is if you can't handle slight UI changes or you have old hardware, or a SSD (WinSxS eats up space). Since it's a new computer designed for vista, that's not a problem. Unless you're a power user, you can prolly just turn on the classic theme and you won't even notice a difference.

You could go OSless and install Ubuntu. Last time I checked it was easier to install and use than Windows. Not sure why it hasn't become more mainstream. I was saying the same thing about Debian 10 years ago though.

[Kerrath]

There's really not much wrong with vista after SP1 came out. SP3 for XP is still in beta and screws up many of the computers it's installed on. I put it on my laptop (xp media center) and it changed all my settings and stopped letting the program "run dll as application" work so a lot of things just wouldn't go any more. I'm back with SP2 now.

For 3D graphics rendering, AMD processors are better. They have more flops than intel processors on average. For video editing and other similar things like photoshop, intel is better. Intel performs more mathematical operations per second than amd.

Like others have said, you'll want a graphics card for running photoshop and drafting and 3d, and if you're not going to play any intensive games on it, you'd be best off getting a workstation graphics card. If you're looking for a laptop, dell's outlet has some good deals on laptops with nvidia quadro graphics cards.

H0lmes is wrong, vista is much slower than windows xp because of way more windows components, and especially the visual intensity. I think I read it was around 20% slower for the 32 bit version. The 64 bit version of vista likely runs faster than the 32 bit version of xp.

You mentioned HP computers; I am of the opinion that they suck. I have an HP laptop. They don't do what they say they will on service and a lot of them have sound card issues. Dell is better, but not a whole lot. They also come loaded with shit tons of bloatware. I had to go to some major extremes to get rid of it. I got sick of this laptop so I just built one with an MSI barebone and other components. Had a dead pixel so I am sending it back, but other than that, it seems really nice.

I personally prefer to build my own computers, so if you want, I can come up with a list of components from newegg or other websites I would recommend for building a computer to suit your needs. I used to work at PC Club before they went under, I know my shit.

[Money$hit]

Screw building computers. I have built hundreds of machines and nowadays if I need a desktop I just buy a 400 - 500 dollar Dell.

Amen, Ive had mine for like 5 years with zero failures of any peripheral device, hard drive, processor, etc. O.S. is a different story...;) That and trying to run VMWare with any other app is an epic fail.

[E30 Cabrio]

it depends how comfortable you are with computers. it seems people who are more familiar with computers like vista; whereas those who don't know computers well prefer XP.

I find the opposite to be true in my company, where the user knowledge level is much higher then average and where XP is preferred by far over Vista.

And yes, Vista requires more resources then XP

Also, Dell > HP

[hendrixvodu]

i say do a custom built...i got mine for $150 it has a single core amd with 2.2 ghz decent nivida graphics card, up to 3 gigs, its got 4 disc drive slots 3 hard drives 7 usb ports fire wire 5 cooling fans...i bought it off a kid that said it was fucked...it wouldnt install the op system...all it needed was a new disc drive because his was too slow, so i got a drive for $40 and its burns dvds ect and i put in 2 other hard drives i had hanging around so its got about 300 gigs...its not the fastest comp but it can run PS and other programs...for audio i have 800 watt yamaha surround with 2 10's and you can set up a 6.1 surround with the audio card and for a monitor i have a 37 inch LG with RGB direct input from a computer its 1080p... 3 hdmi ports also...monitor was $750...looks awesome!

for a laptop i have a mac book 2.4 GHZ...and i love it great computer never had any probs and i run parallels so i can run PC , both pc and mac have strengths and weaknesses like...my mac sucks at playing games...and the pc is awesome...but new macs are getting better at gaming


few pix









for a computer i paid $150 i really cant complain at all

look into doing a custom computer...its a lot cheaper and its pretty easy man..nothing too hard it all plugs in...its like legos

[Surtr]

look into doing a custom computer...its a lot cheaper and its pretty easy man..nothing too hard it all plugs in...its like legos

I don't think it's cheaper. Better, yes. Cheaper, no. I'm not sure though. It's been a loooong time since I've built a computer for less than $1k.

If you're going for cheap, you'll probably end up buying a bunch of cheap parts anyway. When those parts die you don't have a coverage plan, except individual manufacturers warranty, which can be a pain. If you're gonna get shit parts you might as well get an OEM computer, cause they will usually back it for a couple of years.

I'm not a fan of cheap computers, but I'm less of a fan of a bunch of cheap parts slapped together.

[Ral]

Dell will now pre-load Ubuntu on their machines. I installed it myself and have had no major issues. There's a few minor inconveniences but the operating system is great and I really enjoy the "cube", it's very useful. (The cube will let you have up to four different screens running at once. I really wish I had it when I was doing engineering work at school, it makes multitasking much easier.) It's advancing to the point that there's a GUI interface for nearly everything you need to do, so learning commands to type into the terminal is less critical. I'm a computer n00b and I made the transition easily.