Kitz Forum
Chat => Tech Chat => Topic started by: renluop on March 04, 2017, 10:56:29 AM
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Very hesitantly I am here for your views ( head held in shame for lack of knowledge :-[).
My current computer is giving up thr ghost, so I intend to replace it. I have found what is available in my budget at Ebuyer, and made a list of each specification, which is attached.
I hope some of you are willing to make observation on each, that will be helpful to me in deciding. Please!
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Two comments or questions from me :
- Could you hang on until the AMD Ryzen lower order processors are out? Intel are sure to cut their prices when they come onto the market later this year ....
- Ever considered a self-build? I am guessing loads of people on here would help you with the specs if you needed it, assembling a PC is super-easy, all you need is a Philips screwdriver, a bottle of wine and 2-3 hours ....
Ebuyers reputation has also taken a bit of hammering lately, from what I have read, perosnally I like Scan (https://www.scan.co.uk/).
Chunks
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@ Chunkers Thanks for reply
Hanging on.....doubtful, as it has annoyed me too long, and the missus tells me to get up and get out more.
Self build....I was born with 3 left hands on the right foot :(,not literally, but my skills are severely lacking. The bottle of wine seems attractive.
Ebuyer reputation...I was not aware. Can you elucidate, please? Aren't Scan's offerings more high end, than what I am looking for?
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You haven't said what you'll be using it for, and how much storage you need.
Also do you need a new monitor or just the main PC.
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Mundane things with some photo editing (not extensive but moderate), some streaming to TV. Gaming is not an interest. Storage 500GB would be adequate, but if more is part of a good set up, I'll accept. Just the base unit is my want.
Sorry not to have been more specific, but I believed the item I gave and price range (£300-£400) may have given some clue. :)
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Was on my phone, so didn't look at the links, I'll take a look a bit.
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No prob! I wasn't taking a dig! ;D
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For the uses which you envisage you don't need a high powered processor, but extra memory might be useful. There's an example here which might suit: http://www.argos.co.uk/product/6219125
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I think they will all easily cope with what you want, but roseway has a good point you may need more than 4GB. I would also recommend an SSD for OS drive, perhaps keeping the HDD as a second drive.
Perhaps roseways suggestion with one of these (http://www.ebuyer.com/665517-sandisk-sdssdhii-240g-g25-240gb-ultra-ii-sataiii-2-5-inch-ssd-sdssdhii-240g-g25) as the main OS drive would make for quite a nippy PC for casual tasks, and come in at £378
I find this quite good for comparing CPU's (http://cpuboss.com/compare-cpus), such as your existing CPU and the N3050 (http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Duo-E7500-vs-Intel-Celeron-N3050)
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https://www.acerdirect.co.uk/p/1141411/refurbished-acer-aspire-xc-780-intel-core-i5-6400-2.7ghz-8gb-1tb-windows-10-desktop
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Depending on whether you would considered factory refurbished then perhaps worth checking out Dell's Euro outlet store (http://www.dell.com/learn/uk/en/ukdfh1/campaigns/splitter?ST=dell%20euro%20outlet&dgc=ST&cid=41142&lid=1069631&acd=239715600720560&ven1=suqSTGtVL&ven2=e).
I'm a self-build guy myself, but its obviously not for everyone - we use Dells exclusively at work and they are very robust and quiet, an i5 with 8gb RAM would be easy to find and probably within your budget. Dell's warranties are also good, just check what they are offering on the unit.
Chunks
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For the uses which you envisage you don't need a high powered processor, but extra memory might be useful. There's an example here which might suit: http://www.argos.co.uk/product/6219125
Unless there are things that counteract, the processor is slower than what I have now. How do Zoostorm rank in reliability and service? i think a time ago I heard "flimsy".
Thanks for suggestion. :)
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Whats actually wrong wih your current computer?
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I think they will all easily cope with what you want, but roseway has a good point you may need more than 4GB. I would also recommend an SSD for OS drive, perhaps keeping the HDD as a second drive.
Perhaps roseways suggestion with one of these (http://www.ebuyer.com/665517-sandisk-sdssdhii-240g-g25-240gb-ultra-ii-sataiii-2-5-inch-ssd-sdssdhii-240g-g25) as the main OS drive would make for quite a nippy PC for casual tasks, and come in at £378
I find this quite good for comparing CPU's (http://cpuboss.com/compare-cpus), such as your existing CPU and the N3050 (http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Duo-E7500-vs-Intel-Celeron-N3050)
Inquisitive, as usual, I tried to make sense of the final scores with various averages unsuccessfully. Are the methods explained anywhere?
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Depending on whether you would considered factory refurbished then perhaps worth checking out Dell's Euro outlet store (http://www.dell.com/learn/uk/en/ukdfh1/campaigns/splitter?ST=dell%20euro%20outlet&dgc=ST&cid=41142&lid=1069631&acd=239715600720560&ven1=suqSTGtVL&ven2=e).
I'm a self-build guy myself, but its obviously not for everyone - we use Dells exclusively at work and they are very robust and quiet, an i5 with 8gb RAM would be easy to find and probably within your budget. Dell's warranties are also good, just check what they are offering on the unit.
Chunks
Looked on that site, and there is very little there in the Home section in price range- only some Alieware gaming box. There are outfits in the Business section, but nothing in the specs on connectivity. That leaves me wondering, if, having been used in an office environment, it'slacking.
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Whats actually wrong wih your current computer?
Continuation of http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/board,2.0.html, which seemed to abate for a time,but returned.
@everyone
I hope I am not coming across as a finicky fusspot! If I have failed to answer any point, please remind me!
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I'm a big fan of Dell, have bought dozens, desktops and a couple of servers, although for laptops I was always buying Thinkpads before I retired. The Intel Haswell processors and above are very impressive, as for Skylake, I can't see the advantage although support for DDR4 RAM is nice, don't know about costs though.
Unsolicited advice: I wouldn't do self-build, I can't see how it makes economic sense given the fantastic pricing from the likes of Dell. What I would always recommend though is clean-installing Windows properly from a straight retail _Microsoft_ Windows installation DVD, not an OEM one. I know it seems like a waste of money, but its for peace of mind, freedom from bloat and you can repair / recover your installation. And whatever you do, stay away from the Home versions of Windows as they are crippled and _impossible_ to secure, use Pro or whatever it's now called in Win 10. Then as long as you (i) don't _ever_ make it possible for anyone log on as an admin, and don't log on as an admin ever yourself unless it's for maintenance, (ii) set the whole NTFS FS with strict ACLs thoroughly, including locking down the root, (ask) and (iii) set up SRP thoroughly ultra-strictly (ask), (iv) use local Group Policy and lock in secured MS Office settings, and finally (v) lock the BIOS and make it only boot from C:, then you'll be fine. Problem apps that don't play nice on a secured o/s can be put into VMs. I did always stick with IE as it is definitely the most secure browser because of its use of o/s low-privilege 'integrity levels', and is securable by GP. For reliability, no dodgy device-drivers or kernel-mode third-party s/w, keep it minimal, lean and mean and especially don't go near third-party anti-virus / firewalls /anti-malware stick to MS' built-in offerings, so your o/s won’t run like a dog and crashing all the time. That's how I have never ever had crash or a security incident on any of my users' dozens or so machines in eight years - and no third-party a/v running at all. Users were not able to run exes that they downloaded from the web, received in email or imported on removable drives. Despite having non-computer literate users as well. I used such an ultra-secured setup for myself all the time too (we eat our own dog food). You didn't ask for that lot, and prob knew it all already, but I feel better now. Apologies.
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I'm sure everyone understands that you don't have an unlimited budget and you want to spend your money to the best effect for your type of usage. I think that just about any of the PCs mentioned in this thread would meet your performance needs, because you don't have challenging requirements. You're perhaps bothering unnecessarily about processors and their speeds, because your usage isn't processor-intensive. So other factors such as heat and noise might be more important - the Celeron processor is widely used in low power consumption products, and the lower power consumption should be reflected in quieter cooling fans.
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As I see it, there are a couple of issues you can resolve on your current setup.
1. Dump the ATI graphics card, it's not really (Drivers only go up to Windows 8) Windows 10 compatible, get a Nvidia 710 1Gb £35.
2. Get a SSD disk as your main O/S drive, 250Gb will do nicely £70 - 90 (Samsung 850 evo best).
3. More Ram, 8Gb for Win 10 is ideal
4. I think the main issue was Power Supply, did you solve it?
I quite agree with you on being fussy, i'm struggling to find an excuse to upgrade my core i3 system but failling to find any 'Actual speed difference' to justify it.
The core i5 system I found on paper looks slower, but because it's got a bigger cache (6Mb) on the i5 core, will make it much quicker, and with turbo boost will go to 3.3Ghz.
If you look closely at the specs, it supports a M2 ssd card! pop one of these baby's in and your really hitting the max on processor thru-put.
Slowest component in it is the Hard disk which 5400rpm ...
Technical specifications for ACER Aspire XC-780 Desktop PC
OVERVIEW Type Desktop
Operating system Windows 10 (64-bit)
SPECIFICATION Processor - Intel® Core™ i5-6400 Processor
- Quad-core
- 2.7 GHz / 3.3 GHz (Turbo Boost)
- 6 MB cache
Memory (RAM) 8 GB DDR4 (32 GB maximum installable RAM)
Storage 3 TB HDD, 5400 rpm
Motherboard SoniaH_2 H110
CONNECTIVITY Wireless 802.11 ac
Ethernet No
Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 LE
USB - USB 3.0 x 3
- USB 2.0 x 4
Video interface HDMI x 1
Audio interface 3.5 mm jack
MEDIA Optical disc drive DVD/RW
Memory card reader 4-in-1 memory card reader
Expansion card slot - PCIe (x1) x 1
- PCIe (x16) x 1
- M.2 (SSD) x 1
- M.2 (WLAN) x 1
FEATURES Mouse / trackpad Wireless mouse
Keyboard Wireless keyboard
Security features - Security lock slot
- BIOS password
- User password
POWER PSU 220 W PFC (EuP), auto-sensing, 80PLUS Bronze
GENERAL Colour Black
Box contents - Acer Aspire XC-780 Desktop PC
- Power cable
- Wireless keyboard
- Wireless mouse
- Documents
Dimensions 298 x 100 x 419 mm (H x W x D)
Weight 7.9 kg
Manufacturer’s guarantee 1 year
Software included * Full version of Microsoft Office not included
* Full version of anti-virus / internet security not included
- Acer Care Centre
- Acer Configuration Manager
- Acer User Experience Program Framework
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I presume you mean this thread (http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,18621.0.html) as the link above is to the board, I can see why you want to replace it, and given the problems it pretty much rules out reusing anything.
Inquisitive, as usual, I tried to make sense of the final scores with various averages unsuccessfully. Are the methods explained anywhere?
I really just look at the benchmark scores to try and get an idea as to how the CPU performs to one I know.
Prices seem to have risen quite a bit recently, so to get a good PC with a faster CPU than your existing one is going to cost more than £400, it may well be doable but you'll need someone who really knows their hardware and PC's well.
The fastest CPU in your selection is the i3 6100, this appears to give much better performance to your existing CPU (http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Duo-E7500-vs-Intel-Core-i3-6100)
If you can afford to up the budget to £460 then this should make for a very nice PC (http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=1EX45EA&opt=ABU&sel=DTP), if you need more storage you could re-use your old HDD and fit it in the PC.
Or without the SSD at £412 (http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=Z6S48EA&opt=ABU&sel=DTP), but an SSD will make a lot of difference to the feel of the PC.
@Wearver I think most of that is well above the average users abilities, and since the average user is not going to be able to lock the system down I think recommending not using a good AV is a bad idea.
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You found the right link! :) I must be more careful. Lapse was probably triggered by a call; of nature or for coffee I don't know/ can't recall! :oldman:
@everyone
This has been an interesting and informative discussion. Thank you.
The comment about Ebuyer was a bit off putting, as I'd seen generally good reports. I'll dig further. Now, I have to make my mind up.
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I found that HP one at £430 on Laptops Direct (http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/hp-280-g2-core-i3-6100-8gb-256gb-ssd-dvd-rw-windows-10-professional-desktop-1ex45ea/version.asp?refsource=Ldadwords&gclid=CjwKEAiAi-_FBRCZyPm_14CjoyASJAClUigOZZwf_vEkjfa6YMTmaPkw1n780z6Zj7CdtAcuDh41lxoCETXw_wcB), I think I've used them in the past but have used another one of their associated companies more recently and found they could offer a better price if I phoned. Note the price of £329 on website is after £100 cash back which only businesses can claim.
Also £437 on Ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/769941-hp-280-g2-sff-desktop-pc-1ex45ea-abu) - who've I've never had a problem with.
The actual HP part number is 1EX45EA
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Quality SSDs are great. Goodbye to the terror of constant mechanical hard disk failures and the awful latency. Essential for laptops of course, as they get moved. Haswell is wonderful, but beyond that I don't think processors are that important for run-of-the-mill usage. Enough (or more) fast RAM. Chunky caches can matter, but very much depends on the useage. Moving up to Haswell you get all the modern instruction set add-ones.
But there is the perennial problem that app authors and o/s designers dare not rely on the presence of modern instructions, often a 10-15 year time lag. Either that or they have to put in a great amount of difficult work to make code adaptive, or else build multiple versions of components, all of which has a huge cost in terms of development time, complexity and is a testing nightmare. (Although I have seen some tools that offer mechanisms to deal with this issue automatically and hide the difficulties from the developer.) So apps that do not take advantage of the instruction set that you actually have are still a big shame.
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Daft Question
Is the storage capacity for data more with SSD greater than SATA @ same advertised size? I ask because SSDs appear much smaller.
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I have use this firm a few times http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/
With your Dell I would test it by
1 Un-plug at mains wall socket.
2 Open case and disconnect the power supply lead to the DVD drive/s and the Hard drive/s only leaving the power supply connected to the motherboard .
3 Temporary close case and plug in the mains plug and boot up, it will only boot into 'Bios'
Leave on and monitor it for a day or so.
If it re-boots it could be the motherboard or power supply unit ( you have cleaned all the dust out of the power supply unit ?).
4. if ok plug in the dvd drive and repeat.
5. If still ok plug in the hard drive and test.
6. if all seems to work ok with it booted-up and the sides off genitally poke around with a insulating stick/wood or plastic rod etc.to see if there is anything loose.
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Daft Question
Is the storage capacity for data more with SSD greater than SATA @ same advertised size? I ask because SSDs appear much smaller.
No it's not. SSD's tend to be smaller because silicon memory is more expensive to produce than rotating disks. That will no doubt change over time.
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@tickmike if you read this thread linked to earlier you'll see that he's already tried numerous things.
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,18621.0.html
I've also used PC Specialist for all our work PC's, and they are great, but currently a lot more than his budget.
I'm sure some SSDs used to use hardware compression, but don't know if this is still the case.
Cost of SSDs has fallen dramatically, I recently bought a 960GB SSD which cost less than my first 80GB SSD, but still around three times the price of a good HDD the same size iirc.
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@tickmike
Nevertheless thanks for that post! Ilove this bit from it, 6. if all seems to work ok with it booted-up and the sides off genitally poke around with a insulating stick/wood or plastic rod etc.to see if there is anything loose.
There are some risks, that I will not take!(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.free-emoticons.com%2Ffiles%2Femoticons-smileys%2F5870.png&hash=718079811c610ed6891d19a71ab08458ed66ba79) :D
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The best rule of thumb, buy as much 'Tech' as you can afford.
Things to consider are Ram (as much as possible) 4Gb ok 8Gb best these days,
Processor, currently Skylake, pays to get it if possible, Pentium/Celeron have limited on board 'Cache' i3 and up use much bigger 'Caches' more is defiantly faster.
USB 3.0 this is the fastest usb at present, with lots on the system (for your keyboard, mouse use usb 2.0) faster usb 3.0 used for attached harddisks, flash drives etc.
SSD Drives are mainly used for your o/s (You put all your documents etc on to the Rotating Harddisk) but can be used to supplement standard rotating harddisks, as a cache.
Included Harddisk/s should be as big as possible! most people think they will never use it all but you would be surprised at how much pictures, music etc uses.
Windows 10 home is ok for day to day general use, if you don't have a number of computers networked, there's not much point in getting the 'Pro' version.
The system I found represents extremely good value, and with a £100 reduction on price it's well within your budget.
Some company's that I know of , have sent Windows 10 computers back to the suppliers, and have ordered Windows 7 versions instead!. Worth bearing in mind before dismissing any 'Manufacturer refurbs', as they can't sell them as new, they are effectively never been used. This applies to Dell HP etc.
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Daft Question
Is the storage capacity for data more with SSD greater than SATA @ same advertised size? I ask because SSDs appear much smaller.
The main reason SSD's are used in computers is to do with speed. My computer (Core i3 + Intel 535 240Gb) takes about 15-20 seconds to boot from cold! if you had a Rotating disk as your main drive, booting from cold generally takes about 1-3 mins depending on how much 'Stuff' you have loading up at boot time, and how fast the disk spins.
http://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd
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@parkdale @roseway
Thanks both! I had wondered if fragmentation also caused HDDs to be less storage capable.
SSDs seem wonderful, but don't think I'll be going that way. As to drive size, I tend to ditch things once they are no more needed. I don't hoard data etc.
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@tickmike
Nevertheless thanks for that post! Ilove this bit from it,
There are some risks, that I will not take!
I used to work with electronics and sometimes when all else fails poking different components sometimes finds a dry-joint and when re-soldered the system works again.
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Again, I would strongly urge anyone to consider SSDs. Personally I am just so very sick of mechanical disk failures all the time even with quality models. (As I said earlier, as for laptops, not using an SSD is insane, one knock and you are potentially dead, russian roulette every time. And there is the power consumption.) When I had a twin channel mirror-config raid system fail irrecoverably on me, then that was the last straw for me. (I had to tear the machine apart and rebuild using one of the disks, which was thankfully in good shape.) If you are disciplined about doing backups both thoroughly and regularly, either to the internet or to a local server then that makes all the difference, but backing up an entire physical disk as opposed to just your valuable user data is a real challenge. For me backing up to another box across the lan was convenient, but of course you need to be worried about fire and theft destroying local backups. Now I always back up to the internet (incremental backups, done very frequently, use data only, upstream is free) and restores do work beautifully. Apologies for the sermon, everyone's priorities differ.
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I used to work with electronics and sometimes when all else fails poking different components sometimes finds a dry-joint and when re-soldered the system works again.
Look again at the word in quote, I changed to green colour. You'll see why a replied as I did. ;)
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“No”, to your question about storage capacity of SSDs, the reverse if anything. No the fact that SSDs are small just comes down to cost, magnetic storage is very cheap, disks have several platters and bits per unit area figures just keep getting better and better. The cost per GB of SSDs will come down, and bit density will certainly go up. I assume that the price that the market is willing to pay is the limiting factor first. As well as that then I don't know if the physical size of the package is a second limiting factor assuming there are some users with really deep pockets. For very high capacity SSDs, lack of economies of scale will make things even worse as the demand for the entire package will be less healthy, and if they use higher bit-density chips then these may be less economical for various reasons for all I know, which doesn't help either.
Another thing with large SSDs. Why buy one when you could buy two units? (You might save money, or the reverse, I haven't looked. I ought to check which way the economic go.) But you will presumably get superb i/o bandwidth if you use RAID, a sexy combination, especially given the unimpressive read and especially write rates of some SSDs. (I would want a battery-backed RAID controller that is guaranteed to write back its internal RAM cache contents to the drives in a timely fashion, otherwise some of the reliability of SSDs is defeated.) And using raid striping with SSDs means you don't feel bad about such a loss of reliability as with mechanical HDs given they are so good to begin with. But anyway, it occurs to me that the option of running two SSD drives in parallel, even without RAID, might not help sales of the highest capacity units at all.
I ought to know more about SSDs' lifetimes. I've heard so much contradictory stuff, much of it vague, and little science. Operating systems matter - an SSD-aware file system is good for performance and a huge factor in keeping lifetimes healthy. Presumably very lazy write-back RAM caching helps a lot, although dangerous unless done well, but a lack of a correctly designed FS still means that there can be hotspots on the volume which are abused in relative terms. I wonder if a controller could fix the problem, by using an internal block mapping table, but of course this has to be done cleverly so that the region to which the table is eventually committed doesn't become a hotspot in itself. This unsolicited rant (apol) is off-topic (apol again) and might be worth splitting off into a new thread, but only if anyone might be interested in educating me / discussing SSDs. Admins?
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SSDs seem wonderful, but don't think I'll be going that way. As to drive size, I tend to ditch things once they are no more needed. I don't hoard data etc.
I also think your missing a trick here by not going for an SSD, they make so much difference to the feel and responsiveness of a computer. I've fitted them in all our PCs at home and all PCs at work. There's absolutely no need to worry about wearing them out eirher, the average user never will, I'm still using my original 80GB Intel ssd's from years ago.
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Am with Ronski, Intel make good SSDs. Some are rubbish, relatively speaking.
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I've got 3 SSD's in my system ;D all 240Gb ones got Windows 7 (Intel) Windows 10 (Samsung 850evo) Sabayon linux (OCZ Agility). And 2 Rotating Disks, Totaling 2,5Tb
All laptops that came too me via friends all have SSD's in them and the Rotating Harddrives put in USB/eSata caddies.
SSD's do not suffer from fragmentation, in fact you do not defrag them ever!
Cheap SSD's have no or very little over provisioning, Intel out in front with as much as 30%, along with enterprise class drives.
http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/
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Is it me? I get an impression that Pro Win 10 systems are trending vs Home in the offerings. Am I right, and how so?
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Quick word of warning regarding ssd's especially as the budget is tight.
There has been in the past 12 months some dramless ssd's using planar TLC appearing on the market, they mostly designed for cheap OEM parts to go in cheap laptop's, but if you see one for retail avoid it as they have quite bad durability, tomshardware has an article on it where he was told unofficially the manufacturers expect the ssd's to fail in under a year.
If you on a budget then get a 3d nand TLC ssd with a dram cache. Or an older model planar MLC drive (I woud avoid planar TLC).
some info here http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/dramless-ssd-roundup,review-33792.html
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I think Home is all you ever need unless your into small networks at home :-\ or need more than 128Gb of Ram.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/feature/windows/windows-10-home-vs-windows-10-pro-uk-difference-3618710/
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As others here have mentioned I would also suggest an SSD (or Hybrid drive) instead of a traditional one - having an SSD is the one area where you will immediately notice the difference and will have the benefit over your old machine.
As for the rest - if you want Windows 10 go with the home version - 4GB RAM sounds sufficient for your purposes (and if really needed can be upgraded later). No need to spend more on these areas for arguably relatively minor benefits.
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I hate to contradict parkdale, but you're totally wrong. Home versions _cannot be secured_. If you don't know how to secure an installation then that doesn't mean anything.
Do not by Home. Learn about Pro and read up on SRP and local group policy, nothing to do with domains or networking. (mind you the crippled networking is a total disaster in itself.) Then you will know what you are talking about. :-) I have been doing this for decades and I always fully secure single, non-networked PCs for old grannies so that they cannot possibly run malware (be it downloaded, in email or on removable disks) or crap apps that will trash the system. Apologies for the rudeness which you don't deserve, but disastrous advice where it comes to security is, er disastrous. Or something. :-) I can't stress strongly enough how important correct config is because then you will have a totally stress-free and disaster-free life. Do not believe this is unachievable just because you have never seen a correctly secured system. As I said, none of my users have every had a single security incident in a decade, despite being totally non-computer-literate in most cases and unsupervised too.
Do by all means ask if you need any help, or the jargon explaining. Setting SRP, local group policy is really easy, and in fact you can just copy pre-cooked recipes. Setting ACLs correctly is a bit fiddly but again a pre-cooked batch file (.CMD file) will just do the job for you. But it is by far the best to do this on a fresh system, worth the effort even to do a clean install, secure it and then reinstall apps then restore user data, in order to know the job has been done thoroughly with no holes. Follow the brief set of rules to follow in my earlier post. This can't be done unless you buy Pro, not the cynically crippled garbage that is Home saving a pathetic £60 and getting a time bomb for your efforts. Why MS’ marketing scum think home users don't deserve a chance at security is disgusting / incomprehensible. This was never an issue until WinXp came out, all earlier versions were fully configurable (but shamefully not configured correctly by default). It also depends on whether you are willing to learn a small amount, copious good docs on the MS website and elsewhere plus tons of help from humans on the web.
Apologies once again.
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And a cow pat to me for being the most off-topic ever. If any of this stuff is useful to anyone could split it off. Or bin it if not. Love to all and apologies to the OP. Inexperienced users getting into bad trouble is something I just hate to see so much because it's so awful and unnecessary if only MS had a conscience or there were more people around like me who are passionate about true 100% security not just for important people.
In fact, to hell with it, just buy Apple, because it at least comes 100% correctly secured. (iOS is like a brick s_house. Are you allowed to say s_house in the forum?)
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Google "software restriction policies" (SRP), local "Group Policy", and the icacls and cacls commands, all of which I can sort out for you. Can try doing a secure config on a clean install using a VM too if you're new to the game, to see that you're doing the right thing.
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@Weaver you can't have been securing Windows 10 for decades, think about it ;)
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I didn't mean Windows 10, is that what I said? :-) I meant everything from NT 3.5 to WinXp to Windows 7. So quite a while. I started administering NT boxes for my own development staff in the early 1990s and became a professional sysadmin and security consultant in the 2000s until I retired. I was in R&D for sixteen years in the 80s and 90s doing first games programming briefly, then o/s development for six years then after that core networking product development. But I probably am probably incapable of doing mental arithmetic:-)
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I'm very happy to give anyone who needs it some help, tips whatever, just shout, and I'll try desperately to keep the wretched sermons to a minimum. :-) :-)
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Not to worry anyone. Everything is potentially interesting. I'll keep or lose it from the noddle as seems fitting. Mind you, as the aged memory morphs in to a forgettery, maybe fitting should be unfitting!
@parkdale
My comment was not for advice, but merely for views of a perception. The OEM cost differential cannot be great, whatever is the retail.
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I'm very happy to give anyone who needs it some help, tips whatever, just shout, and I'll try desperately to keep the wretched sermons to a minimum. :-) :-)
You're not a Wee Free are you? From what I hear a minimum is less than an hour! ;D :silly:
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:_) brilliant
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SSD's are the way to go, with possibly a second bigger storage drive if needed.
I was cautious about SSD's in the early days. I actually bought a small one when I built my other computer but was that nervous I never installed it lol. This PC I'm currently using as one and it makes a big difference.
I would buy Win10 Pro if you can. You'll have more options available.
I think 8GB is considered to be the standard amount of ram these days.
I've bought lots of things from Ebuyer over the years. I bought all the parts to the computer build I made years ago.
I like Overclockers but the issue a lot have is they advertise products being on sale that they don't always have in stock. The flip side is they have good customer service and a good forum.
I probably missed this but how much is your budget for the computer?
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£300-400
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http://www.ebuyer.com/747124-zoostorm-origin-desktop-pc-7260-0184 (http://www.ebuyer.com/747124-zoostorm-origin-desktop-pc-7260-0184)
Zoostorm Origin Desktop PC - £399.99
CPU: AMD A68 3.1 GHz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
Hard Drive: 2TB
OS: Win10 Home
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/primo-micro-desktop-home-pc-small-tower-intel-pentium-core-i3-core-i5-fs-415-ok.html (https://www.overclockers.co.uk/primo-micro-desktop-home-pc-small-tower-intel-pentium-core-i3-core-i5-fs-415-ok.html)
Primo Micro Desktop Home PC - £423.89 (if you select to remove the wifi addon then it brings it down to around £403).
CPU Intel Pentium 3.30GHz Skylake
RAM: 8GB DDR4 2400MHz
Hard Drive: HDD 1TB
OS: Win10 Home
I've noticed on the overclockers one the video output is through dvi or vga only.. if you have an old monitor then that would work.. i think there are dvi to hdmi converters. I'm not sure what motherboard the zoostorm origin pc is using.
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-h10a-pre-built-pc-amd-a8-7600-quad-core-8gb-corsair-ddr3-ram-1tb-hdd-windows-10-home (https://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-h10a-pre-built-pc-amd-a8-7600-quad-core-8gb-corsair-ddr3-ram-1tb-hdd-windows-10-home)
Scan H10a - £429.98
CPU: AMD A8 7600 Black Edition "Kaveri" 3.1GHz Quad Core
RAM: 8GB Corsair 1600MHz DDR3
Hard drive: 1TB HDD
OS: Win10 Home
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-h5i-intel-pentium-g4560-kaby-lake-4gb-ddr4-1tb-hdd-win-10
Pre-Built Home/Office PC with Intel Pentium Kaby Lake - £389.99
CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 "Kaby Lake" 3.5GHz Dual Core with HT
RAM: 8GB Corsair 2133MHz DDR4 (you might need to check its 8gb, as the headline says its 4gb)
Hard drive: 1TB HDD
OS: Win10 Home
For a laptop option I looked at PC Specialist
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/ultraNoteIV-14-LE/ (https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/ultraNoteIV-14-LE/)
The 14" UltraNote IV LE - £431
CPU: Intel Pentium 1.1 GHZ
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz (I changed the option from 2GB to 8GB)
Hard Drive: 1TB (I changed from 500GB to 1TB Slim)
OS: Win10 Home (full version. It's £30 more to get the Win10 Pro)
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Windows 10 pro
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Sealed-Microsoft-Windows-10-Pro-Professional-64-Bit-DVD-COA-License-Key/162398015369
This is not an upgrade so must be clean installed - still £100 off from shop prices ::)
@Weaver Group policy has been borked in Win 10 pro so you can only get it back if you have Enterprise or Educational versions :( which you can't buy.
Normally I ask people if they really need Windows, would they consider Linux as an alternative. (I think Windows is some form of psychotropic drug that must be imbedded the UI that gives it I must have it ;))
I've converted quite a few of my neigbours to Linux, the only downside i'm on 24hr call outs :-\ to guide them through updates etc, but i'd rather do that than them getting any form of Trojan/Virus etc.
[Moderator edited to fix the URL.]
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On sale with £50 off code, so £349 is Dell3650 (http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-3650-desktop/pd?oc=cd65014&model_id=inspiron-3650-desktop)desktop. The same one is with John Lewis at £399but with their 2 year warranty. Now debating if the extra £50 quid is worth it! hmmm.
An Optiplex SFF is available for £365, but has no wireless, obviously for business. The SFF attracts, but for the cost of getting a card fitted.
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of course we must also remember windows 10 is not the only version of windows, windows 8.1 pro has a working group policy, far less telemetry, no data harvesting, no forced reboots and more. :)
parkdale you mean this stuff? https://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/28/microsoft-removes-policies-windows-10-pro/
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Yep thats the one, as you say this does not apply to Windows 8.1 pro.
My brother bought a new Dell laptop with win 10 home on it, so I had to replace the HD with a SK Hynix SSD 240Gb, then install windows 7 pro on it, 2 days later!! I finally did it with out realising you need to have USB3.1 and NVME drivers on the install disk! and turn off secure boot, still it only took 2 days for my sis in law to find a hacked site looking for recipes! :o, my brother has given her back the Linux laptop she had before.
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Oh learned persons! (https://smileyshack.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/sbowing_100-102.gif?w=150&h=84)
Any comment on my recent post? ;D
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Looks good Renloup, Dell is good choice and has excellent after sales warranty etc.
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From that I'm wondering, however much I like shopping at John Lewis, if that extra £50 for a second year's cover would be as well in my pocket. OTOH I'd not particularly miss it.
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I have never, on principle, ever paid for any "extended" warranty. :no:
I regard them all as just money-making scams.
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I agree with Burakkucat.
I thought John Lewis had their own two-year warranty on everything? Confused.
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@Weaver Yes the John Lewis warranty is their own 2 year. @b'cat The John Lewis one's come within the price rather than pushed as an add-on. Generally the composite sale prices are competitve.
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Dell offer a service to transfer apps and data from the old machine, or one that does that and erases the hard disk. The small cost has attraction. However, with my machine's troubles over the last months makes we question taking that easy road is sensible.
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I had on line chat today and was surprised that there is no recovery disk or partition. If reinstall is required, yo have to contact recovery support team.
Is that par for the course these days, assuming for some reason I can't make my own disk?
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Microsoft offer a free media creation tool which allows you to create a Windows 10 USB stick. It can be used for recovery or reinstallation.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10
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Microsoft offer a free media creation tool which allows you to create a Windows 10 USB stick. It can be used for recovery or reinstallation.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10
I'm afraid this won't work with OEM's such as Dell etc, only works with retail copies.
Renloup http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN297920/reset-or-reinstall-windows-10-on-your-dell-computer?lang=EN
Also when you get your pc use the service tag to get Win 10 iso from dell.
https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/OSISO
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This is why I never ever use eg Dell OEM bloatware o/s installations. I used to just buy the genuine unadulterated thing in MS retail packaging.
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Well I was going to bite the bullet this morning, but happened to view the outlet not thinking there'd be anything. There was the same model, £306.xx incl VAT.
I got on to Chat to verify specifications. I know I'm fussy, but it was a bit painful (attachment). Then the confirmation once I'd ordered made me smile very lopsidedly. I'm buying a refurb after all! It advised me the computer was being made to my exact specification.
Well I never! ::) :wry:
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OOps Chat transcript now added to above.