New computer!

[jamesd]

Cheers for the help guys. Do you guys think its worth try to improve my current computer then or not bother and just buy new?

[Stu3k]

The two best improvements to a old computer are putting in a SSD as a boot drive and upping the RAM if it can take it ,That'll be £80 to £100 thats better spent on a new computer .If its just for work and emails i'd buy something like this below and add a 60gb boot ssd and a copy of windows 7

 

Gladiator AMD E-350 Dual-Core Next Day Desktop PC - Aria PC

[jackmayo]

The two best improvements to a old computer are putting in a SSD as a boot drive

 

What advantages do a ssd have?

[Stu3k]

There Fast very for booting up computers see here

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/solid-state-drives-vs-hard-disk-drives/

[jackmayo]

Cheers Stu3k!

[Al.]

If its a 12 year old machine, I doubt it will take an SSD drive, and it's unlikely to have the slots to take any meaningful RAM. Just get one off the shelf. Al.

[jamesd]

Some good points again! al but which one off the shelf??? there are soo many different makes/models different specs etc etc!

[Al.]

If your current one is 12 years old, and all you're using it for is a bit of office work, then pretty much the cheapest dell (or HP or Toshiba etc...) will be way more than you need. For me, I'd look at getting the biggest screen I could justify (as it makes working easier), and a decent guarantee. If they bundle in some anti-virus software and MS office, then it's quite often worth buying it at the same time. I'll have a look on the dell site tomorrow and give you my 2 pen'th. Al.

[TGB]

Talking guarantee - Collect & Return is always handy. In the event of a breakdown, you just ring up the vendor, who arranges a pick up date by courier. Box up the hardware and then wait for the repaired/replaced hardware to arrive back at your door when all is done. Much easier than having to first find time to go to the PO and a great deal cheaper too.

 

For small business needs, graphics and viewing photos can easily be handled with intergrated graphics as part of the CPU. The speed of loading photos/viewing 'YouTube' vids may be a little slower, (but not that much slower) as RAM used for graphics, will be shared with your main RAM. You'll only really need a graphics card with its own RAM, if you're playing games / editing video / viewing film in HD / regularly crunching big numbers.

[Al.]

Here is where I'd start. Optiplex is pretty much the de facto business standard machine. Not usually as higher spec for graphics or sound, (but unless you're planning on doing video editing, will be fine) but a solid business machine, with a 3 year guarantee. 250 Gb seems to be the smallest hard drive, which is enormous unless you're planning on putting your music library on it. Core I3 and 4 Gb RAM and a DVD writer for under 300 quid. Will be good for several years. Put the rest of your budget on a monitor and you're good to go.

Al.